R Reynolds

This is the first time I've ever seen this (v19.0o). Attached is a model of what will ultimately be the hinge on the back door of a 1950's vintage truck trailer. The attached image shows that it has one strange patch that doesn't respond well to "refind normals" which has the effect of pointing its normal opposite to all its neighbours and messing up the smoothness of the surface. The only way to correct it is to select just the patch and flip it's normal. It's not much of a bug but can Steffen fix it? Fruehauf_hinge.mdl

After using it for a week I think love is too mild a term. It's more like an addiction, as in, how did I live without it? What I hadn't anticipated was how much time it saves in not having to orient the model view to just the "right" angle for each bias alignment. Now I just pick a suitably scaled isometric view and happily Alt-click all the bent splines. My thanks to Steffen and Robert for their efforts.

You're correct Robert. Everything seems to render as expected in all modes in v19o and as a bonus I get to play with the new aim bias tool. Wheee!

Same result with or without multi-pass. See attached project with all components embedded. avg_normals_test_embed.prj

I've found something strange about v19n progressive and final renders. When you model old railroad vehicles you use a lot of rivet heads. The most efficient way to model a rivet head is a four patch circular quadrant bent into the right shape using bias. Sometimes to get the right look for such a simple shape I add a material to the rivet group with just the Normal Weight parameters set to less than 100. v19n doesn't play well with this parameter. The attached image show examples of rivet head renders. The first two image columns show the models rendered three ways in v19m with the d

Livestock used to be shipped via railcar using stock (or cattle) cars. They were essentially box cars whose walls were replaced with wooden louvers. The wooden louvers did less damage to their hides for better quality leather. They also provided ventilation but if you were nearby a stock car as it went by (even if it was empty) the odour was unmistakable. stock_car_walkby_02.mp4

I totally agree but I thought it was worth asking. Believe me, I'll gladly use whatever Steffen can manage.

I'm hesitant to request a new feature (I think Martin once said "add a feature and add five new bugs") for a "problem" I've been living with for almost 30 years. If a plug-in is the safest way to go, by all means, use a plug-in. I have no problem with your first thought Robert. I admire your approach to minimize key clicks but having spent who knows how many man-hours aligning bias handles, a few extra key clicks would be a small price to pay. My first thought was something like this. With the desired bias handle already selected LMB File>Plugins>Wizards>Bias Aim and you get to

Is there a defined process for making such a request?

I didn't know you could do this. So you can teach an old dog new tricks! I'm not yet sure how this makes modeling easier but if I could have a switch for "aim selected bias handle at selected CP" that would be a great time saver when building orthogonal filleted corners. None the less, the ruler related notchiness is still proportional to window zoom.

That can't be because the "notchiness" also occurs while adjusting bias handles. I suppose that depends upon your definition of "extreme". 😉 (See attached images.) I agree it's most noticeable when zoomed in (zoom = 43000) but on my machine even zoomed out (zoom = 3200) it's still there. And when I'm trying to align all splines in a flat surface using a ruler line as a reference, zooms of 100,000 are not out of the question. At those zooms, aligning a notchy bias handle becomes a bit of a chore. Thanks, Steffen.

I think I've discovered the cause of the cp's moving in large discreet increments in v19m; turning the rulers on. Turn them off and moving cp's or adjusting bias is smooth as ever. Turn them back on and movements gets very "notchy".

GeForce GTX 560 Ti performed as expected. BTW Why the seriously nasty splinage?

My standard outdoor sunlight chor has white/blue klieg suns with AO on and a circular array of eight, inward aimed, no-shadow sunlights (6% intensity), each aimed 20 deg. up from horizontal to simulate bounce light from the ground. But the factory interior was just too dark so, as shown in the attached image, most of the large factory windows are filled with three large kliegs casting low intensity light that's a bit greyer than the blue sun. Original renders were 1280 x 720 with 9 passes. Render times on my i7-2600K 3.4Ghz CPU varied depending upon the camera's location. starting in

Walking from the factory out into the parking lot. tank_car_walk_around.mp4