photoman

Welcome Back! I use A:M (v13 2006) on a Mac and it works quite well.... 1. When you import your 1080i footage is the frame rate 23.967? If you can try changing it to 24fps. Also Targa sequences are the best way to import video footage. 2. Make sure it is set to rotoscope (There is a popup menu). I try to keep my roto's around 2-3k resolution. There is no need to go above that. Also if its a 10mb+ compress it to around 2-3mb 3. To get better performance, you can run multiple instances of A:M. You can use 1 instance for every core, but make sure you leave one core open for your OS. Photoman

Update Finished modeling the forks. They took a bit longer than I thought they would. Next up is the handlebars with the brake levers and shifters. The whole thing is at 6.7k patches Photoman

I plan to model the disc brakes with actual geometry. I am mainly creating this model to increase my modeling abilities and experiance. I will probably go over the model when I am finished and take out the unneeded splines. I want to model the welds.... but I dont know really how to do that (simple lathed shade + displacement map?) Thanks! Photoman

Hello, I am taking a little "breather" from my other project. I noticed my bike sitting lonely in my garage today (My dirt jumping and downhill biking days are over just the scars that remind of what Im missing ) and I thought that it would be a great idea to model it. I plan to model every single component that is visible (Thats a lot!). Here is the real thing: I managed to finish most of the frame: Its at about 4k patches right now Photoman

Update: I redid the tree and am in the process of tweaking the rock's texture. I did take out the pointy top too. I want to use the poly rock but it would equate to a 70k patch model and I dont want to spend the hours weeding out splines. The grass has some problems that I need to work on a bit. I also need to "update" the ground around the tree and add some rocks and pebbles. I really like the day radiosity shot too, I plan on working on both. I find that radiosity really does give that extra push in realism. Photoman

Quick input. I happen to be on my windows partition now and on A:M and I opened at 75k poly version of the rock I had sculpted in as a prop. (For some reason props dont work on the mac ver of A:M...). 50sec 4pass 768x1024 I hastly made a procedural texture and slapped it on and got this: Kinda random post... Photoman

If you happen to be using a Mac I find that iShowU HD is the best "Free" screen capturer. You have many compressions codeks and options and you can record as long as you like with only a small watermark. You can also set it to display which buttons you are pressing as well as when and were you click your mouse. Photoman

Thank you Eric for the C&C. I agree with you. I am trying to simulate a long exposure so thats why I am "spinning" the stars. The bright oerange light is to simulate the light from a fire. I dont really like the rock texture to much right now (I have a really nice zBrush sculpt but it is about 2mil poly's and I dont know how to convert most that to displacement and etc....). I plan to rework those textures. As for the specular the settings are : Spec Size:5% Int: 5% so I dont know why it has that look. I plan to change the Hair/grass to image emittors also. The ground is very simple right now, I am trying to think of a way to get the best dusty feel, whether it be displacement mapping or actually modeling a bunch of pebbles... I also tried making a day atmosphere with some radiosity: 1million photons, took about 10 minutes to calculate the radiosity. And as you can see it is taking a bit to render Photoman

When I record my video tutorials I compress to H.264 and I then upload that to a third party video hoster (I.E. Youtube, Vimeo, etc). So that the file size does not matter, I also use 15fps at 1280x720. Photoman

Update: Just a few minor things tweaked. I feel like its missing something.... dont know what though... Photoman

Hello! I have yet another idea that popped into my head. I got this idea when I was sorting through some photos I took while I was on vacation (About 1500 of them ). The images that sparked it were: 50mm f/1.8 119 second exposure, Canon Rebel XT Panarama of 7 photos at 50mm perspective When I looked at these I though, Hey why not make that in A:M So here is where I am at: 15min3x3pass 768x1024px The giant monolithic rock is basic a simple extruded model with some eXtreme displacement mapping. I originally modeled it in A:M and opened it in zBrush to sculpt in the details, but I could not figure out for the life of me how to get UVs that would work.... Anyway I made a few seamless textures and displaced it using those. C&C Welcome Photoman

Thats looking mighty fine On the ice, there should be some slight transparency to it.... I once heard a person (On another forum) use SSS create a really nice ice texture. Maybe fiddling with that could yeild some good results? Photoman

Specularity and radiosity arent good frriends, If you used specularity make sure its very low (10%). Photoman

300000 for the sample area is WAY high (I use around 2500 max on my outdoor radiosity scenes), that could be the reason for the spots, Try scaling the whole scene smaller. That way it uses less photons and can give you more flexability with the radiosity settings. Though a kool feature request would be to have a higher limit on the amount of photons. Photoman

Oh and here is the base mesh I had modeled in A:M: NOTE: I figured out that the OBJ exporter doesnt like hooks or flipped normals. So thats why there are no hooks. Photoman

Hi. Ive been wanting to expand my modeling skills. So I started modeling a human... My friends has a student ver. of zB.. uhm a program and let me install it on my laptop. I created a 1200 Patch base mesh in A:M and used the OBJ exporter and exported it out to the.. other program. I then sculpted it there and brought it back in, though I had to do a lot of resolution changes in the polymesh to have a clean convert to patches. The model that I use between the programs to work on has 21k patches, just at the threshold of what I needed. Here is where I am at: These to rendered at 1min15sec 5pass at Super35 each. Wires: I am enjoying this process very much, I now need to learn how to texture it well and fake some SSS (im in v13 plan to upgrade when I get the $$) Photoman PS I use that material when I model in A:M now, it is less contrasty with my modeling window.

For a big forest like scene, render a tree and use it as an image in a hair material. And for the foreground use actual tree models. Photoman

Yes it can. Ive used this plugin various times before. Mtpeak, where do you get the branch alpha's? They look real good. Photoman

Hi! Ive been doin a quick browse of my hard drive and came up with a few previously unorganized projects. So.. I picked up this project first and I plan to finish it. I started the old thread here: Here I just did some atmospheric adjustments and lighting adjustments as well. I updated the grass with a better alpha map (soon do be better too). I also changed the skymap and a few odds n ends. The render time is killer though, the screen shot below is after 10 hours of render time (was set a 1500x800 4pass, the first pass took 2 hours and it froze on the second pass) Its not the full render but a screenshot of the frozen screen and cropped. More soon. Photoman

Hmm... does the light have specularity turned on in its optioins? Photoman

Thanks! The red shadows are from the reflectance (right word?) off the paint, and are also due to the fact the car had no bottom and is empty I wanted to render in radiosity to get some of that. Also some metals that are colored reflect their color on objects around them, but thats more of a caustic thing. Ex: Photoman

Heres the radiosity render. The model had a high speculartiy and I had to rerender it and to make up for lost time I reduced the resolution. 3:10:05 5pass 720p Canceled render with specularity off. Fun headlight shot w/ slight DOF: I enjoyed modeling the car and I have gained a wealth of experiance and knowledge. Mostly in modeling but also in radiosity (From playing with different scenes ) Thanks to all and Enjoy! Photoman

The wheels are giving me problems... I rendered those in a different project than the original. (It had the scene already) ... and in the orginal I had set the whole car up in an action window, and when I exported the action to a model, I lost half of my groups which held the proper shader for the rims so they just took up the shader that the rest of the car had (Paint), but... I didnt catch it til halfway through the render and I didnt want to lose the 50 or so minutes it took to render that (3x3 pass @ 1080p) I plan to start the radiosity render before I go to bed... 1 million photons Photoman

Ok, I finished it. But by that I just modeled the outside and made the windows more reflective to hide the lack of interior. The wheels are the a modified versions of those that Tralfaz donated with his Gallardo model (THANKS). I can spot various flaws which should be fixed (spline issues on grill....) but Im counting this one done. I will probably come back to this project later and fix it up. This is the beauty pass, with faked GI (I used a couple of point lights). I have set this scene up for radiosity (Everything is literally ready) but havent had the time to let it render (14+ hours guessitmating) Thanks for everyone that helped and pitched (Eric, Agep). Photoman Oh and the final patch count is 8685.

My god, that alien head has some of the best SSS Ive ever seen! Did you use A:M paint for it the other textures? You are really a "Pro" modeler! Photoman