pixelplucker

Laser is cutting 3d from the image pretty well, I need to muck around with the speed, wattage and stepping but looks pretty cool from defaults. I'll post some picks when I get my scanner hooked back up. Big thanks!

I couldn't seem to get the gradient material to map correctly on the stl, probably because it has no uv coordinates. Might work fine on an obj though.

Fog could be a good technique for composing scenes that ortho would normally make look lousy.

Depth buffers do work! I remember in the previous version they just produced a silo of the objects. I couldn't get the fog to work since lights interfered with the render and not sure if fog works with an ortho camera. For the depth buffer I needed to invert the image and clip the threshold to the image got gain the most range. Just need to test it on my laser next. If all works well I should be able to produce masters for molding easily from a composition of models as well as some cool wood carvings etc. Lots of fun. Original model is an stl. Seeing that is is possible to do this through AM opens up a lot more flexibilities since I can just plob shapes together and not have to fiddle fart with open surfaces etc. Thanks!

I couldn't seem to get the depth buffer to see differences on the mesh itself but only as silhouettes of each object in the scene. I wanted to be able to create a bas relief from objects and then cut them. Am I doing something wrong?

I am wondering if I could generate a height map from objects in a scene. What I want to ultimately do is create one grayscale image that can be used as a displacement or height map. I have a small laser engraver that seems capable of carving from grayscale images into various materials such as wood, plastic etc. I'm also thinking of doing carvings to make molds from for pewter castings. Thoughts?

I'm using the 3d connexion space navigator with the "Anywhere" driver and noticed the Zoom and Pan up/Down seemed to be transposed. Zoom functions as Pan up/down and Pan up/Down functions as Zoom. Not a big deal but just didn't notice it before. Anyone have the regular space mouse driver? This might be specific to the anywhere driver. Anywhere Driver is here: http://www.3dconnexion.com/supported-software/anywhere.html Curious. Thanks

I'll try to see if Painter uses protexis, if so the it's a no go here. As far as tracers, if you do a lot of tracing check out Imagaro Z. It will integrate with Corel and has probably the best curve preservation when deleting points or adding points. You can also trace individual objects at different settings. Professional version offers a wider database for font identification. One of my pens on my Cintique fell pray to one of my nephews.. Cost me $100 to replace it!

Does the new Corel Draw use Protexis? That is the primary reason I shy away from all their products. I do miss Painter. I do a ton of artwork for t-shirts which are primarily spot color work and require complex underlays, chokes, spreads and fills. Most auto tracers will stack the objects which causes major headaches in separations. What I have been doing is the illustration parts that require drawing in Manga, usually 600 dpi max is sufficient. I then can generate clean un aliased edges that butt up perfectly. I run those images through Imagaro because it has edge matching that creates shapes that butt up to each other rather than stack. This allows me to pull out the shapes that need underlays and generate white plates etc for separations. Toonboom looks really nice, though in my business I don't think I have that much use for it. Ever think of snagging a Wacom bamboo at least? They are a little bigger than 2x3

I used Corel Draw from versions 1-5. At that time I was outputting film for people but discontinued Corel Draw because they were limited to 1270dpi. We needed 2540 for separations. Couple of my customers use Corel Draw and can't import eps files well from Adobe CS series, Freehand 9x or Canvas. I have probelms with importing eps files from Corel as well and end up using pdf files they generate. Compatibility is always an issue when it comes to vector files no matter what program suite your using. I never understood the reason why Illustrator isn't backwardly compatible other than they force you to purchase the latest and greatest because it makes them the most money. I can open Canvas 14 files in Canvas 9 without a hitch... The copy protection issue I ran into was with Paintshop Pro and Protexis that killed the program because I put in a couple of hard drives and replaced a dvd drive. Took a couple of days for Corel to get back to me to re-authorize the software and by then I replaced it. IMO if they are that worried... sell the software with a dongle or come up with a better program that doesn't kill it because of a hardware change. Whats wrong with a Mac Address? I have seen tracings done from Corel, good expamples is many of the logos on Brands of the World site are done in Corel. Edges are poor and text is crude. It couple be bad settings, poor originals not sure but most often curves are lost. I have seen and receive quite a few tracings from Illustrator which are pretty nice. Canvas has a descent auto tracer but works best on black and whites, color tracings are clunky. If your doing mostly digital printing and supplying pdf files you should be fine with the Corel and price wise it is easier to get into and Adobe CS and Adobe's rat race upgrading every year. For a stand alone program I prefer Canvas. It is dead on precise, fairly easy to use and has probably the widest i/o of any program out there. Do you use Manga at all for digital ink? For quite a while now I have been doing illustrations in Manga, outputing a high res bmp file and auto tracing them for spot separations. Not sure why Manga isn't as popular as it should be. Nice fox btw.

Not to bash Corel but their software is on the iffy side in a serious environment for a few reasons. One big one is compatibility with importing files from other applications as well as creating compatible eps files. Another big issue I ran into was their copy protection software that forces you to re-register if you install additional devices such as hard drives, replace a cd or dvd drive etc. I ran into an issue where if it weren't for Gimp I would have missed a deadline because the re-authorization too a few days to come through. Keep in mind their publishing is proprietary, their tracer is sub standard. If tracing is important to you then Adobe, Canvas and Imagaro are far superior. I personally use Imagaro Z Pro and Canvas for most of my 2d work. Canvas has the ability to render at any resolution combinations of vector, raster and raster effects on vector objects to what you want. The treatment of images as objects is far superior to traditional layers. Imagaro Z is a dedicated tracer that is very precise and edge matching used in vinyl cutting as well as a font finder. In general I am not so crazy about subscriptions outside of AM. One thing I avoid are "Maintenance Programs" where you not only pay for the software usage but pay additional fees to fund their bug fixes, check Quarks ridiculous and useless terms. Wonder why they are fizzling out of the marketplace?

I use 3d Coat quite a bit for work, though I haven't really used it for texturing but rather for complex sculpturing for my die casting. The little bit of texturing I have done in it did impress me. A while back I tried to get Andrew to make some sort of mdl importer exporter for 3d Coat but because of the proprietary splines it would be too costly to code to be simply a feature. What I would like to see is AM have the ability to load psd files with layers so users can assign a channel to a layer (ei: layer 1 color, layer 2 bump, layer 3 cookie cutter etc.), and be able to invert the layer color if needed. This would make textures compact and better organized. This would also make editing easier. I would think more people have Photoshop or a program that supports psd than 3d Coat. In some aspects I still like 3d Painter but not sure if that has fizzled out or if there is a new version in the works. Would be nice to have 3d Paint support real time bump maps. Especially since it is already able to bring in mdl files and is 1/3 the price of 3d coat, 1/6 the price of Photoshop.

Characters look great. One thing that bugs me is the feet seem to scuff along rather than rolling the balance of the body to the toes. Looks a little too flat footed to me. Maybe the feet are too far forward to do that?

I thought of getting my own just for fun too, the Solidoodle seems to be in a good budget range and has a really nice resolution. Quality of those types of devices are the drawback. If your not in a rush, Shapeways isn't bad but larger parts can get very pricey and quality is ok, not great. Alternatively I have gone over to Cideas http://www.buildparts.com They so far offer excellent turnaround and the quality is really nice. Most of my stuff is output on a polyjet since it fits in my production methods best. Keep in mind do you output $2000+ in parts in a year to justify the cost of one of those machines?

Impressive. Nice demonstration on the theory of "0" inclusive. Wouldn't you want to render fps according to the playback device and format?

I never had to actually quit AM to get around it, usually just a quick change of views but can be annoying when working. I did notice it happened more when there are other programs in the background that are graphic intense, maybe it is the way the images are stored and low memory conditions make it happen more often. Am I correct to say that gamer cards are better at playback and don't page the screen the same way as cad cards do?. I wouldn't bother with the on board Intel video, that is probably worse and most likely doesn't support open gl.

Interesting, I just checked and I don't have workbook mode on at all.

Big problem is the background image itself doesn't have a whole lot in terms of shadows and is too bright and flat. The 3d models seem to look ok for the scene but if the image was better you could do better with the characters composed into it. Nice ground shadows on the flowers or the rocks and the characters having shadows on the ground with the same approx sharpness, darkness would be convincing. Overall with what your working on it looks good.

Do you know any more about that? I'm only taking a stab at that since I often have stuck images on my screen when modeling or navigating around in AM as if the screen stops refreshing. If I use a keyboard to change views, ie top front right etc. it will be fine. Oddly this only happens in AM and I have 7 other 3d programs I use and never experience it. Keep in mind this is barely an issue with 17 64bit but was a huge issue on 15. I am not entirely sure the major differences between the Quadro series and the desktop series of cards. Maybe Yoda knows why this happens?

It is the default smoothing angle on how the model renders. Default is usually fine. Max supports multiple smoothing groups but believe that all gets ignored in obj format.

I have been using AM with Nvidia Quadro series card and found AM to be a little quirky with it, probably because of the way the cad cards cache. If you don't do any cad work, a descent gaming card would probably serve you very well.

You can break the 3ds file into working parts and export each out as a prop. Re assemble them in a chor and assign constraints. Nulls can be used as pivot points and or targets for the parts.

I had an issue with SSS and bump maps, maybe it is all related. Do you really need SSS on the hat?

I use a cad program and/or 3d Coat for most of my 3d print jobs though I do use AM as an intermediate program and convert those in 3d Coat. For the most part OBJ files work fine for program hopping.

Thanks