Fuchur

The problem with CUDA is, that it is NVIDIA only, while OpenCL is available for both. CUDA is longer on the market, but in the long run I would say, OpenCL is more important just because it is available on both systems. NVIDIA does support OpenCL, but much less effective than CUDA (because they want to promote CUDA). Like that I prefer OpenCL and like that AMD is the better option there. In the short term CUDA is a little faster for some renderers. It depends on the software you want to use I would say. See you *Fuchur*

Yeah, really interesting developement... we will see what it can do... The most interesting part is the 3d-Scan-Technology for Smartphones they showed there... I thought about getting a 3d scanner, but if my 950XL can do that for me, it would be great. We will see what resolution that has and how well it works, but it is exiting . See you *Fuchur*

What exactly do you want to know? Terrain: This is the height-map... wherever your map is brighter, the terrain will get higher than where it is darker. 128 is the "mid-level". Since RGB-Channels (however in this case only "grey-scale" is interesting) have 256 states (0-255), this can be seen as "ground-level". Paint (if "Filter: Make Mountain" is set): There are 3 modes: - The first one "o" will paint with the "height" defined by the slider above it. (defalt 128, but can be set to whatever you want from 0 - 255. - The second is "+". This will "add on the existing height available at the pixel you will paint on. The longer you press, the brighter will be the color / the higher the mountain you create. - The third is "-". This will decrease the height where you paint. the longer you press, the lower the level will be. Fill: Set the whole image with the color defined by the slider on the left. Load: This is one of the most important features. You can load an image-file (for instance jpg or tga) in the generator... this means, get an existing height-map or create one in photoshop to create a terrain. Filter: This defines, what you will do by painting on the map. There are several possibilities available like "Make Mountain" (more or less the same as "Paint" in a normal graphic software), blur, sharpen, etc. Try them out if you do not know what they do... they will just change the map where you will paint on it differently. (oh, and dont forget to apply the change there before you start painting...) Noise: This is more or less like a "random" height generator. Use one of the Noise-Algorithms (defined by type). - Ocatves are the same like in materials and will change the visible octave-range (we are talking about curves internally here... it is not very important to know what it is mathematically, you just need to see what it will do if you set it higher or lower...). - Lacunarity is a value which will more or less define the resolution of the map (not really, but close enough ). - Gain means, how high or low it will be. 1.0 means the highest points will be 100% height (white color), 0.0 means black / ground-level. - Scale: The noise algorithm can be used at 100% or higher or lower values. this is defined by the algorithm and will act exactly as if you are using a material and a noise-algorithm on it. - Seed: This can be used to change the result. You can set everything the same and it will always result in the same result. If you do not want that because you need more random results each time you use the wizzard but all the other values are what you want, change the seed number. (same as with particle-generation in A:M for instance). Smooth-Step: I would recommend to leave this at 0 - 1. It will result in harder edges on the map if you decrease this, just because the blur-factor will not be "smooth" (as smooth as 8bit can do) but harder. Grid: The height-map will be applied to this grid you create here. For detailed terrains, use high step values (depending on the width and height. It will define how many subdivision you get in your grid. Magnitude means, how high in "world-units" a totally white pixel on the map will be in A:Ms resulting terrain model. Edges flat will just ignore the outer edge of the grid and will ot apple the map to it but keep it at ground level. Orientation just says, on which axis the grid will be created. Hope that helps a little. See you *Fuchur*

I doubt that it is an A:M bug... that would occur on all of our machines... Intel's Graphic unites are just not good at that stuff, if you ask me... most software I know of has had problems with these thingys and they are slower than NVIDIA oder AMD hardware anyway... See you *Fuchur*

That is the secure way as long as W7 is still getting security updates. But it is too simple to say it like that... the problem is... the Acer is maybe around 1.5 years old but on the other hand I have a HP Elite 745-laptop (AMD APU, no own GPU) which is slightly older but runs perfectly and all of my desktop computers (including the once in the office where we have computers which are everything between 8 years and 2 month old) run flawlessly too with W10... most are APUs or they have AMD card in them (just because I am more of an AMD guy then an NVIDIA guy... not to say that NVIDIA is worse or something... I just know more about the AMD cards and had no bad experiences with them) What I would say is the following: Be careful if you want to update to any new OS and have a look at driver compatibility before you do. The newer OS have cool features but try to make sure at least for critical components like GPUs that they still support the new OS. This is not only for Win10-updaters but also true for any other OS. The "problem" behind it is (only talking about desktop pcs here... laptops or tablets are a different story): We are using computers very long nowadays... a few years back people (including myself) bought a new computer every 3 years. There is no real need for that anymore... we can get faster computers after a few years, but the once we have can still do most or all of the things we want them to do in a reasonable time. My own PC is about 6 years old. Such "old tech" would have been ancient 10 years ago. (meaning if you would have had a computer from 2000 in the year 2006).

My dad has a laptop (from Acer with a Nvidia Geforce GT 750M) I am currently struggeling with because the NVIDIA driver seems to not be compatible to the newest Windows 10 update in combination with that hardware and which exits on him before windows can be used in any way with a bluescreen... so I had to format the harddrive and reinstall everything, but since W10 does install new drivers automatically it went bad again... There really is no "better" in terms of more reliable if you ask me... both hardware manufactures can produce great hard- and software and they are equally good in producing bad things too . See you *Fuchur*

Hi Tyson, thanks for downloading, testing and your kind words . I have put in some additional work since the last post... it is the 5th version now... See you *Fuchur*

Steffen is using a AMD card (I think a R9 290x or something like that... that is a quite expensive card... you can use A:M with much cheaper once just fine...) That is why it is still a good bet to get something like that for A:M. And if one GPU went bad, that really is nothing that can't happen with any other card, especially if you are after warranty periode. But in the end it should not make a bigger difference if you us Nvidia or AMD... only Intel should be avoided if possible... AMD has recently gained market share against Nvidia and I still like their GPUs. (but I am still using a HD 7870 if I am not wrong...) See you *Fuchur*

The problem is, that that is an old video card. Last Update available around 2013 and which was very likely released around 2007 to 2009. You can see the info on that video card from AMD here... they say the last supported OS for that card is 8.1, after that all you get is the Windows default driver: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Driver-Support-for-AMD-Radeon%e2%84%a2-HD-4000%2c-HD-3000%2c-HD-2000-and-older-Series.aspx It just might be, that you need a newer card. There are low cost once available which should be just fine for A:M. First, we need to see what connections does your mainboard support... is it AGP or is it PCI-E? Both versions are available for that card, if I am not wrong. If it is PCI-Express (PCI-E) it should not be a big problem. Most cards today use that standard. It very likely is one of these anyway, since AGP was already declining at that time. If it is AGP, it is harder to find a new GPU, since that is an old standard. But I think there are still some around and I can see if I can find something. Best wishes *Fuchur*

Windows 10 installs own graphiccard drivers. Go to Nvidia, AMD or Intel (whatever you have there) and have a look for updated once for Windows 10. Very likely it will be solved by that... W10 needs different drivers than W7 and so it cant use those from before and installs its own once instead. (would have been nice if they at least told you about it...) See you *Fuchur*

I haven't checked for quite a while, but A:M does it in a very easy and intuitiv way which I could not find elsewhere. Most projected textures I saw where... well projected, not fixed on the surface. So moving the object meant to have to reposition it, you could not move CPs around and morph the texture too and/or adding several "stamps" above each other did not work or was much more complex to do than in A:M. But I am sure others can do that too... it just was not that easy to do and most tutorials concentrated on UV sets/unwrapping itself. Have tested it with 3ds and XSI... coming from A:M those were VERY complex without much of a benefit for many things. Of cause this is subjective, but any other 3d artist I have shown A:M in such situations was amazed on how easy it was to do that stuff. Modelling itself was something people did not get (when coming from heavily box modelling based software), but all other aspects they found very easy and intuitive... See you *Fuchur*

I had to check their site just to confirm that was a real offering... The use of the title 'amateur' makes that one of the strangest marketing names I've seen in 3D programs. I suppose it might be good for more than a few purchases of the pro version as folks consider whether they prefer to be a professional or an amateur. I note the amateur version does not allow use for commercial purposes. Just another name for "Personal Edition" or something like that. See you *Fuchur*

If you have a crash that is repeatable you should use consolidate and send the project file to steffen so he can have a look at the problem and fix it. See you *Fuchur*

You can use that but still a real patch structure is better for A:M than a 4 vertex poly that gets imported. (you will have to rework some stuff on complex models and especially for well layouted animateable complex models, but it is your decision. Both can work well. Do whatever you think is the best for ur workflow.

My last time contest entry used 3dcoat too. (the chameleon). It really is fun and works great . Let us see some progress for your project here . See you *Fuchur*

Sounds very good. Thanks for the good work, Jason . See you *Fuchur*

Goed gemaakt, arthur . ...and of cause congratulations to everybody else too . See you *Fuchur*

Very cool space monkey . I like him . What are you planing to do with him? First flight into space in US history? See you *Fuchur*

Hi John, in general it might be one of those libraries missing: - https://www.microsoft.com/de-de/download/details.aspx?id=30653 => .Net Framework from Microsoft - https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=40784 => Visual Studio Redistributables I am not exaclty sure, but that could be the problem. See you *Fuchur*

Hi Elm, can be done here: http://www.hash.com/reports You may need to sign up for a new account, if you do not have one already. It is not the same as on the forums. See you *Fuchur*

Thank you all, it was quite much fun creating him and I might find another good option for him... or I'll just put him into the v20 contest . See you *Fuchur*

You should not use a 3d-layer for that... keep in mind that A:M needs to calculate that as a "3d-object" all the time, while having it as a mask for the light will very likely result in lower rendertimes... (I never tested it... this is just a guess...) See you *Fuchur*

Hi everybody, as I said before I wanted to show what I was working on but did not get it into the voting because it just recently was finished... But I promised to show it anyway, so here it is... Hope you like it . See you *Fuchur*

I played with it a little and got it to export a lightmap or better to say several files... But I am not sure how to use that afterwards... The process is like that: 1.) Create a Chor, put some things into it and a light. For tests I would start with a simple object and one light. 2.) Right-Click on the Chor in the PWS and choose "Export > LightMaps". 3.) In the Export Lighting Maps-dialog you can choose a directory where to export to, if you want to export a polygon or a patch-model. (that is only necessary for polygones per patch-settings) 4.) Scale the Map... just use 100% for now and put a min- and max-size per patch/poly in which makes sense to you. 5.) Render-Method... I am not sure what that is... I think it is about that mapping style like for IBLs, but I am not sure. 6.) Map Intensity Scale is just how intense the lights should be, as far as I think. 7.) Choose if you want to have shadows in the map or not. (would only use that for static objects) 8.) And then choose the Fileformat you want and export it. 9.) Now for each object (in a folder with the name of the object) A:M will export for each patch/polygone a image file. That seems to work, since the files are reasonable looking. (you can easily test that, if you have a look at the ground-model-files...) The problem is: I do not know what to do next with it... how to put it back on my models (without doing it by hand) or how to import that in another software or whatever... I think it would need an Import-Lightmaps-Feature for the chor or the models and that would need to map the images to the different patches so that we could use for instance bakesurface to bake it and use it externally. So what is needed there is an importer, which can assign the images as patch-images or something like that. I do not think, that is very hard to do, but I am just not sure about it... See you *Fuchur*

I'd say it is the delta to the "normal" tangent of the curve at that point, but someone else with more math skills than mine needs to shine in to confirm that...