Fuchur

Hi Adam, I do not have a Mac, but it should not be different there. The master0.lic you received needs to go into the installation folder of your A:M installation and needs to fit that computer. Be sure to backup the existing master0.lic file! (for isntance rename it to bak_master0.secure) Netrender (server) needs to run on that computer. All the other computers with only the messengers/renderslaves running on them do not need a master0.lic-file. If they have some suited for them, that is fine too, but the licencing is done on the render server. Be aware, that netrenderer (server) should receive at least one core of your computer... that means you can run 3 messengers on the server itself too if the server is a 4 core system, etc.. Then get the ip-address of your netrender server computer. That one needs to be specified for the netrender messengers on the other computers to connect them. On windows there is a small icon in the task bar, where you can double-click on and specifiy the ip of the server. I do not know how this is handled on the other computers. Let me know how it works out and if you have any other "stupid" questions (there really are none especially in that matter, since it is not very well documented)... See you *Fuchur*

If this is gone in rendering-mode your normals are facing the wrong side. Depending on what you want to do with it (use Displacement-Maps, export it to 3d printing or a game engine) you can go to "Tools > Options > Rendering" and set first "Quality = Shaded" and below trhat "Show Back Facing Polys". OR you fix the back facing normals bye flipping them (which would be better). See you *Fuchur*

Or AntiVir (free edition) and many more free editions. BUT if you want it to be against more than just virus scanning, I would suggest a pro version of Bitdefender. Wins all the reviews: Review 2014 - Best AntiVirus Microsoft Security Essentials is not really good, if you believe these reviews... there are many free scanners which are considered to be better than that one. But I am not sure, if this is marketing or really that way... I can think of reasons in both directions here... No, Nvidias are good. I prefer AMDs since they are better suited for gaming at a lower price tag, but they are consuming much more power. I think Steffen got a R9 to see what OpenCL can do and it will just be faster than the gtx660. I think that is the reason for him. We just had a bug, which seems to be a problem with a Nvidia card, but it should not be a bigger problem. Nvidias have a slower OpenCL-calculation but have CUDA for that. IF A:M will get an optimisation, it is very likely that it will be for OpenCL (because this is available for any brand while CUDA is only available for Nvidias). But again: Nvidia has good graphiccards and as long as you do not use something emulated or one from Intel itself, everything will be fine. See you *Fuchur*

Sounds like a very save workflow to me . See you *Fuchur*

Are you doing Paypal afterwards again? See you *Fuchur*

You are missing AMD graphiccard to have an equal system like Steffen does since he recently got a R9 290x, if I am not wrong . (I am not sure how many computers he has at home... maybe more than one) That is currently a little bit of a problem since Nvidia does some things a little different but should not be too troublesome. (many other people have Nvidia cards too and seem to run okay with it . ) 1.) You can try it, but it is always wise to start new to get a good running system. Anyway: If you need to do it, try it and if you run into trouble with some of the software, Windows 7 has a XP-compatibility mode which works astonishing well. (right-click on the exe-file you are starting and choose "Properties > Compatibility" and choose the compatibility mode you wish.) I see a little bit of a problem, since the registery structure in Windows 7 is most certainly at least a little different than the one from XP, but who knows? Maybe they got it running very well... 2.) In general, Wacom still has the best graphic tablets out there... 256 level is that low today, that you will very likely not find any tablet that will do that... I would have a look for an Intuos Pen (formerly Bamboo) from Wacom. They are not too expensive but should do what you want from them. If they are too small for you, look out for a used Bamboo in the right size... they are still out there, work well (with 64bit) and are available in I think 3 different sizes including Din A4, which would be aproximatly what you are looking for. Or you get an Intuos Pro, but those are more expensive. "3) Partitioning? Ghosting software? - Currently I have most of my A:M resource libraries on drive D, but projects are spread between C, D. I am most concerned with relinking of old A:M projects. On new system, I would like to keep a partition C, for programs/software only, and put all data on partition D...am I creating problems (for relinking A:M projects)? Is this necessary? IE, If I partition and keep things the same as old system (a random mishmash), can I selectively ghost certain things (like programs only) - or will it do the whole partition?" I am not too familiar with that... In general I would assume it will use the whole partion, but do not really know... I would too try to make it simple: If you are using the same drive letters it should not be a problem with loading A:M programs. But it is not wise to put anything other than software on your System-partition (in general C:). If you did that till now, you should really think about getting rid of that. Two things I could think of: Use something different than C: as a driveletter for your software (this is not recommended since there are some older software programs, which may not be familiar with that) or put everything onto D: and use something like "Replace Some Bytes (small but powerful freeware... I use it all the time) to replace the pathes in the A:M files to the right once. (test it with a test case before you go for the whole project folders) Hope it helps a little. Windows 7 itself will be a little different but with very few exceptions, it will be much better than Windows XP and you will very likely do not want to miss it. (I never tried such things like transfering software... I hope you are not running into new problems with that, noone else has experienced till now...) See you *Fuchur*

I was asked to give an image with the book I received for the last It Can't Be Done!-Episode and me. Here we go . The book is really great. So many very funny and interesting insides in there. Laughed several times and am grinning foolishly all the time while reading it. Thanks for all the cool stories and that great prize for letting Robert do all the hard work here . See you *Fuchur*

No biggie. See you *Fuchur*

yes it did. i could not answer it faster. hope it is still usefull. for me that request came somewhere around very early in the morning (living in europe) and jason did not have the time as it seems. sorry for the delay. still i do not quite get the forumtime here. if you answered at 9pm here and my answer is really 12:30 am i would have slept about more than 15h which just is not true(about 8h would be right...). and i checked the request before i have gone to sleep and right after i woke up (a couple of mins ago).... see u *Fuchur*

If it will not take too long till the request gets in it will be taken care of. See you *Fuchur*

Correct. You may want to try to save your TGA-file without RTE-compression and see if the sizes match (so I am not sure if they necessarily need to match exactly...) A:M shows the size of the uncompressed data simple because it is using it in that fashion in the cache. To work with, this is faster than using a compressed image, decompress it, get the pixel-matrix and work with that. It just holdes the pixel-matrix in the cache and can work from there. This is true for most image manipulation software too... in Photoshop you can see the compressed filesize and the uncompressed one as it is in the RAM at the bottom of the image / window of photoshop. See you *Fuchur*

...OR if you have a codec that is available in 64bit too. See you *Fuchur*

You are talking about DressMe, right? See you *Fuchur*

Loved him and love him . Very well done . See you *Fuchur*

It is or at least close to. I had a freeze again after installing v18c over v18b, but I think it is gone after I reinstalled A:M then. You can try it: Create a lath-object (for instance a half of sphere) and stitch a spline to one of the point inbetween (not at the end of the spline and not the spline itself but a CP = create a dead end). See you *Fuchur*

Hi Nancy, may it be that the normals are facing the other way for the eye that does not receive any ssao? See you *Fuchur*

Have had that too and tried to get rid of this with Steffen... For me it occured mainly wih Shift-Add not with Add... See you *Fuchur*

Really funny and cool . May as well result in a movie if you ask me. See you *Fuchur*

Not yet. Rendered ok for me till now... v18c will come out pretty soon now... you may want to test it there again and if it does the same, you may file a bugreport. See you *Fuchur*

Damn I am jealous... See you *Fuchur*

Same here... what does your master.log say? Which operation system are you using? See you *Fuchur*

I'm not sure what you mean by this. NetRender will be able to render anything that A:M can render, you shouldn't need extra A:M licenses unless, of course you want to work in A:M on those other computers. Well, I never use netrender before and tried that it crashes every time, don't have the time to find out what when wrong because I don't know enough about computer, my work schedule don't allow me to learn on the fly but most of all, the production team is new to 3D and require me to check or edit the prj before rendering at different location. Also intern can learn using the additional PC when it is not rendering. From my past experience, heavy rendering shortens the life span of the computer, so we use older computer to do it. Is this because of the problem you had with a v13-file in another thread? For me, Netrenderer works well. Just test it with a few frames here and it worked as it should. See you *Fuchur* PS: It certainly makes sense that heavy rendering (better to say the long running time when rendering and the higher strain on the hardware may result in problems faster... have you some kind of comparision possibilties between two equal computers or something?

I'm not sure what you mean by this. NetRender will be able to render anything that A:M can render, you shouldn't need extra A:M licenses unless, of course you want to work in A:M on those other computers. Sounds to me like working in A:M while rendering which would mean buying new A:M lics. I think he knows aboit rendernodes which can be bought without a full A:M. see u *Fuchur*

Not sharp? Very hard to tell... it really is about the default behaviour I think... I had a customer a half year ago who asked for a specific look I just could not get from A:M (very likely because of my lack of knowledge... a horror of any 3d artist: Customer shows you an image and says: "Excatly that look... do it like that." or even better: "I once saw an image I liked very much... it looked cooler and more sharp... do it that way...". In the end it was a scanline renderer (at least I think it was) with very nicely (and only in that specific situation suited) materials which made the image he was refering to. It looked bright and hard very sharp reflections and it was about a transparent, glass syringe with a glue-like liquid in it in a very bright environment (white) since the companie's CD needed it that way. Very hard to tell, very hard to create in the short timeframe they had and close to impossible without heavy post work... I will see if I can show off an image (at least a part of the image) so you can see what I am talking about but I have to be very careful since this is nothing allowed to be shown in the public (prescription medical background with a big customer...). In the end they took one part of my animation they liked very much (about a transparent plastic injector and the other part was produced by someone else (looking sharp and cool ). I understood what they wanted but I could not get it without changing the part they liked about it since I had to change the lightening of the scene for that and I doubt I could have created it that well as the other company did... I am quite sure it could have been done, but I just was not able to do it... See you *Fuchur*

I'm not saying that. Not at all. I'm genuinely currious, though, about the expectations of those, like you, who dream of using an external physically based renderer with A:M. How do you imagine your workflow? Say you build a scene with A:M, and then what? Can you explain how you imagine the link between the scene you did in A:M and the physically based render? What are the steps? What do you need to do to your scene so it can render in a physically based renderer? Have you ever rendered a scene with a physically based renderer before? How do you define the materials and the lights for example? Just to make it clear: I am quite pleased with the A:M Renderengine... I think it is quite a fast CPU renderer (and very likely one of the easierst to use). I know from a recently discontinued 3d software (Softimage), that they use special materials or light/light types directly in the software, which only work with the specific renderer they are built for... The best intigration I could imagine would be (I highly doubt, that this is possible in an easy way): - Create your models, textures, materials, chor with lightenting, etc. as before. - Click on "Render to file". - Get a question which renderer to use. "A:M Native, LuxRender GPU, Arnold" (or whatever). -> A:M converts the scene to be useable for the other renderer (not visible for the user). - The external renderer starts up and asks for which settings to use. (which would be MUCH more complicated if you ask me compared to the render dialog in A:M, which I find very easy to use and very well suited to work with. > I am not sure if this will really give a significant different result (at least not if the converter does not do anything very different with the scene) Another possible workflow I could imagine, with more control, but maybe even harder to do: - Go to the options and choose a renderer to be used in A:M. "A:M Native, LuxRender GPU, Arnold", etc. - (since most other rendering-engines are expensive (like Arnold or Maxwell) you would have to specific a path to the installation of them. - Create your models and textures as before and integrated some "external" materials and lights (for instance Arealights, etc) in A:M which could very likely only be renderer using Arnold. > All the rendering work would be done in the other renderer now, since you importated materials and lights which are not compatible with A:M anymore (due to different settings, etc.) Again: This is how I imagine it, but I am very aware of the disadvantages in workflow that may result in. ////////////////////////////////////////////// My opinion is: A:M's Renderer can do everything that I ever need to do and it very likely would be my lack of knowledge and/or experience that would prevent me from doing something... If you ask me, A:M's renderer would need some sort of GPU-optimisation (for instance OpenCL-based) and maybe some sort of area lights and maybe light-emitting surfaces (which very likely results in longer rendering times) and it could do anything I could imagine it to do... A comparision between renderers can be seen here: Compare renderer I am well aware, that all obviously visible differences in the renderings are all possible to overcome in the renderers... See you *Fuchur*