[Mysterious Black Triangles?]

Hmm.... Working on texturing some models in my current project when I came across these mysterious triangles :

 

Does anyone know whats wrong and/or how to fix this?

 

Help very much appreciated!

 

-Photoman

[Animation Master on the ipod Touch/ iPhone]

Couldn't someone just create an "iPhone App" for AM? Or do you have to pay Apple ridiculous amounts of money?

I remember going to their website a while ago and seeing their adds for the SDK kits. There are two different ones, one for making FREE apps (I believe this kit is only 299$) and one for making apps to be sold (549$ I think). I may be wrong though

 

-Photoman

[Quickie Project]

Update! Re-textured ground with maps instead of shader, created billboard/sign:

Used Eric2575 tutorial method to texture the sign part and dirt. The rest are darktrees. 9:23 render with 4pass

Main shot so far. Working on re-texturing the big "monuments" in the background and the cactus. The stars/sky is going to be worked on too.

 

 

-photoman

[Quickie Project]

Update! Mostly adjusted the textures. Created the background pic from a material with 2 gradients and a starmap.

 

Still needs alot of work to do. I plan to do a short (10 sec) clip using this set in it kinda like this:

desert_perpestive.mov

Its going to be slower. The perspective effect I am going for uses a wide focal length (24mm) and go to 70mm while still keeping the same angle of view (i.e. moving the camera to do this)

More soonish.

 

 

-Photoman

[Star Wars AT-AT]

Amazing work! I wish I had half the skill in modeling you have ! Just wondering? What are you going to animate with the AT-AT?

[grass]

I've been doing a lot of work with grass recently and the methods I use vary a lot between each scene. I learned the basics from Fuchurs tutorial on Hair particles. Try a forum search for it.

 

-Photoman

[New Project.. Golden Hills]

Update. Worked yesterday, didn't get much work but the prohect is almost done. I added the oaktree to it.

Took out the dirt texture to render faster b/c I was in a hurry.

 

More soon.

 

-Photoman

[Quickie Project]

A bit bored this morning went onto google images and got inspired to make a pic after seeing a couple of Ansel Adams. Here it is:

Took about 5min to render with 4passes at 1200x1800. The dirt is a Darktree

 

 

The road is a off (Texture wise and Model wise).

Used AM Hair for cactus spikes and tumble weeds.

 

 

PLEASE CRITIQUE! I want to make it better if I can. Tips on the road would greatly help!

 

Thanks

 

 

-Photoman

[Branches/leafs]

Thanks but Im running on a Mac right now (I fried my windows proccesor ) I will try a google search though

[Branches/leafs]

You could always shoot imagery like that with your digital camera...if so equipped. Then you would decal-map it onto simple patches.

I was thinking about doing that but I am looking for one I could use in a hair emitter (aka a image with transparency in it)

 

I dont have the right software to do that right now (set transparent color) either.

[Branches/leafs]

Wondering... where do you find more of those like on the A:M CD?

 

Thanks

 

 

-Photoman

[New Project.. Golden Hills]

Update. First thanks everybody for the tips they really do help. I did a ton of render test on the grass. The diffuse map I put on it seems t darken to a brown rather than a gold so I have to fiddle with that. I edited the telephone pole some more too by moving some of the steps. I got the lighting down which includes 5 sun type lights. 1 at warm yellow/white at 85% and the other 4 at cool blue at 10 - 25% to get the bounce light.

Here is the lighting. The grass looks grainy b/c its a small 750x400 render. It will look more clean at the final render.

Here is a moody lighting at twilight-ish. Light color and direction is off looks cool though.

 

 

I may update the landscape by adding more hills for more depth and grandeur like AniMattor recomended and I will add some big oak trees to it too. More soon.

 

 

 

-Photoman

[Landscape lighting]

Thanks sounds like a good idea.

[Landscape lighting]

Hi, having trouble with skydomes and IBL and decided to go old fashioned and just place lights manually. I did a search for tuts but only got skydomes, skylights, and 3 point lighting setups. A link to a tutorial would be nice.

 

Thanks,

 

 

 

-Photoman

[SDK Question about Constraints]

My immediate goal would probably be to research and enhance the Font Wizard.

 

That sounds like a good idea. Nothing like finishing a project with text to realize fontwiz screwed up your text (Happend twice )

 

I tried learning C++ didn't work out for me but I learned GML for gamemaker which is related to C++

Get Gamemaker here

[New Project.. Golden Hills]

Heres the quickie pic I made 1.5 hours with preview renders (9 min each x 3 = About 1 hour without renders)

3000x1600 4 pass with particles, fog, shadows, reflections. 48 minutes.

 

 

Lol I love the treez plugin :Dl. The bark is a darktree.

 

 

-Photoman

[New Project.. Golden Hills]

Havent gotten much done. I started doing test renders to get the grass right and lighting when I decided to add a tree. Made the tree on a seperate project (To load faster) and exported it. BUT when I tried opening my main project file A:M would just load and not do anythin at all. Since I have it where A:M will open the last proj it loops like that so A:M doesnt work.... Fixed it by changing the the defualt opening projh by editing the settings ini file.... So instead of opening it (Fear of freezes) I decided to do a quickie random scene wehich is rendering right now. But I am afraid my main proj is corupted. but whatev

[Lighting Forum?]

Just thinking here but wouldnt it be a good idea to have one. You could clean up the Animation:Master forum of all the questions about skydomes and other misc. lighting questions.

 

Just an idea...

 

 

-Photoman

[Render Problems]

I did mage to fix the problem. The AM Hair settings had a few wrond decimal placements oopps i.e. instead of hair 0.1" thick it was 1" and kinkinees was at 100% instead of 0 with density at 4 instead of 1. Thanks for all the help

 

The render settings where at Jpeg 750 x 400 shadows, particles, AO 40%, fog.

[New Project.. Golden Hills]

Update! Managed to fix my render problems(lol hair density was at 4 and width was at 1" instead of 0.1"). I tinkered with lighting and other things... Thinking about doing a skydome with IBL but that seems like a lot of work . Besides that I did a bunch of little tweaks here and there (adjusted placement fixed on parts of models and deleted all extra cp's that weren't used or in view).

Here is the final shot without the grass. The dirt texture is the Terracotta texture that comes with A:M. Added fog (That needs to be adjusted). Thinking about doing depth of field. 42 min at 1 pass with Fog, Particles, and shadows at 3000 x 1600

Here is a render with the grass. Still needs alot of tweaks and for some reason the colors are off (Maybe lighting). Also I turned off the Dirt texture to save render time.

 

 

If you have any tips or notice anything wrong please reply

Thanks

 

-Photoman

[Render Problems]

Ok.. Used that trial and error method of troubleshooting... which brought me to the conclusion the AM hair was the culprint . BUT.... AM hair is the grass in my shot and it "makes" the picture. How would I fix this problem (I tested on 2 different computers and Its A:M not the Computer(s))? I am using A:M v13 so Im a little outdated (Need $299 for CD b/c I use multiple computers at multiple places i.e. work too).

 

If you have any ideas please help

 

THANKS

-Photoman

[Render Problems]

Thanks I'll try that method... A while ago though I heard someone say that AM will crash if you have to many darktree materials.... Thanks though I will try that.

[Render Problems]

Hi, the problem I am having is that A:M likes to crash while rendering. I have a scene which has about 4 darktrees, AM hair, several decals, and a couple of selfmade materials and my models are not very complicated and dont have imense amount of CP's (I fixed the Telephone pole in my proj. though its not updated),(See link to my proj in my signature). It (A:M) likes to crash about 40% through the render. But when I do render views of each object seperatly in the model view it doesnt. PLUS I was only doing a preview render at VGA at a single pass of the scene.

I dont know if your not supposed to have too many darktrees or if Its just buggy on Mac OSX.

 

Help much appreciated.

 

Thx

-Photoman

[Badminton Court]

For transparency's I used to use a old game making program where you can choose the alpha channel of the picture.

I think the website for the program (Its free) is Here

 

Young animator pride lol

 

-Photoman

[New Project.. Golden Hills]

Update!! Didnt get much work yesterday (None to be exact) but today I got some in. I mostly updated the models(Changed the Telephone pole a little and added the fence) and I Textured everything. Most of the textures are darktrees though... :-)

Here is the next updated shaded render. Its at the aspect ratio (3000x1600) I'm going to use. Lol its a 9x9 Multipass shaded multipass. :-)

Here is a Final render of the top of the Telephone pole. The green things are the insulators and they did used to be green like that.

Here is the texture and Final rendered fence.

 

 

 

I'm having trouble with A:M and render though. I tried doing a vga render of my scene and I started it but A:M crashed halfway through :-(... Is this b/c Im using 3+ darktrees? Or is A:M just buggy on OSX?

 

 

Thx

 

-Photoman