R Reynolds

Typically most of my renders are exteriors shot under direct sunlight. Since I have this factory in the background I thought I'd take a crack at an interior with sun and sky light streaming through the windows. Ultimately the desk will be pushed against a nearby wall so I don't have to ask any awkward questions about where the lamp and phone cords go. The ceiling has a few hanging incandescent lamps, the hand car under repair is under one of them.

That's unexpected since it's the latest H.265 HEVC codec. It even runs on my Android 7.1.1 phone. But then the Alphabet overlords have won.😉 Let's try the older H.264 AVC codec; see attached. You and I have been down this road before, Rob. We've even tried using the same monitor calibration images without success. For reasons unknown, monitor images that are acceptable to me are too dark for you. I'm beginning to believe our problem isn't technical, it's aesthetic. And to reinforce that idea, I offer this. To me, the video looks equally acceptable on my desktop monitor (which I

I wanted to get the effect of a "climbing aboard" video using a phone. I probably could have sold it better if I had rendered it in portrait mode but I simply refuse that particular form of insanity. street_car_walkthru.mp4

It may not exactly be "rolling stock" but it runs on rails so I'm rolling it out of the factory. The PCC (President's Conference Committee) style of street car was the type used all over North America during the 1940's, 50's and 60's, This was an attempt to design a standard, modern street car that would keep cities from paving over their street car rails. And we all know how that turned out. I remember travelling as a kid to Toronto where these types of street cars were kept running long past their design lifetimes. I liked their shape then and I still do.

I've been updating some of my old models including this wooden desk chair. The large image is from today, the small inset image was rendered on Dec. 20, 1997. If nothing else my colour sense seems to have improved.

Of course...It was the player not the file! After running the avi through other players the source of the problem was clear. My VLC video effects switch was not turned on, so I'll have to do some more investigating. Thanks Robert. Now how do I erase Issue 7027 in Mantis?

I was experimenting with saving an image series as an uncompressed AVI and I noticed that the brightness and contrast in the avi was different than the original frames. So I cooked up a grayscale test pattern, gray scale frame.tga. I made 30 sequentially numbered copies and saved them as an uncompressed avi (gray_scale_01.avi attached). Then I did a screen grab of the video on VLC. That screen grab is shown in the lower half of the attached comparison image...obviously something has changed. This is consistent with what I've been seeing in other, more typical images. After submitting a bug re

Afraid not...the outbound route will have to be carefully chosen.

Although I've said one's interest in any flat car is proportional to the loads it's carrying, even an empty drop-centre flat car with its curved side beams is inherently more striking. Since such a flat car is designed to haul over-sized cargo it's important to load it with something more than just a very large crate. Something like this steam hammer that may still be functional but has seen better days.

Thanks for your efforts Robert. I tried your idea but the render bug you mentioned was more severe in my case in that I could only get the desired results in a final render if I was rendering from an isometric view (v19e). I had similar render problems with my own attempts at both pose and action based solutions. Camera view progressive and final renders yielded inconsistent results. I'll revisit this technique if and when Steffen can fix it but for now I'll simply have four versions of the same model with different decal sets...brute force but guaranteed results.

This was a really tantalizing idea but I couldn't make it work. I went with applying all the required decals to the model and only the desired ones are selected using an ON/OFF pose; four sets of decals with four poses. It worked like a charm while editing the poses and with only one instance of the model in a chor. But within the chor, a model's decals are not appended with a number that gives them a unique name for that instance. So the second model's decals are affected by the pose of the first model. I tried renaming the decals in the second model instance but that isn't allowed. Too bad.

I just tried v19l Netrender and it doesn't seem to find the paths to all the various components; forcing me to lead it to every model in the chor. I tried consolidating the project into a new folder but it stopped after loading the project, not asking to select a chor. Would someone please confirm this in case I'm doing something wrong? Thanks.

The next boxcar is the more modern style with the brake wheel mounted vertically to the end wall. Once again I used the same model but put different signage on other side. CPR with NYC, N&W with PRR. I got carried away with detailing when I found a good reference image of a vintage NYC waybill. I reproduced it in PSPro and filled in the blanks with Lorem Ipsum words.

This was an intriguing idea Robert. It was also a bit daunting since I've never used poses before so I had to do some forum research. Your "Basics of making a new pose" from '09 was quite helpful. After spending a day of trial, error and documentation, I think I have a good handle on it and will use it on the tank car I'm currently building. Thanks!

The first type of boxcar I built was the older style where the handbrake wheel is mounted horizontally above the roof line. In order to maximize the number of boxcars, I decided to cheat and put a different railroad line and specs on each side of a single car. This scheme only breaks down when looking at the end of a single car where you see the two different numbers. However once the two cars are connected together and their ends are somewhat obscured I now have two boxcars for the price of one model.