Mark3D

Thanks again everyone! Sweet KR logo, I will try mine with those render settings.

I am using 1 to 5 passes they seem to have comparable render times. I will just make a decal and see if this solves my problem.

Thanks guys, I'll try that. Just one more thing before I try the single frame AO... is there a way to render JUST the logo and not the white background that I applied. Like am I able to render the logo and have an alpha channel behind it? Is this possible and will it help with render time? Even the first frame on animation with a completely white background and no logo took over 40 minutes...

So AO isn't the right way to render then? Below is a shaded clip of the animation I want to render and the image below is a screen grab of the final render I am trying to perform now... Should I just abort this and try to figure out what is going on or is this normal? denny.mov

So this is the final I think I am going to go with... still took 30 minutes to render which I'm not too happy about but I will have to deal with that later when I animate it. Thanks to everyone for help. More questions to come later...

The reason I ask about the rendering time is because I want to animated this and even a few seconds of video would take over a day to render at this speed. Not mention when I render it in HD... maybe it is just my machine? Macbook Core2Duo 2ghz with 4gb of ram.

So this is what I am going to settle with... I think it look alright but I need more experience with rendering before I come back to it. So this one VGA frame took over 20 minutes to render, could someone let me know if I have something selected on my settings that I shouldn't? I assume that this is a fairly basic model...

Wow! I really like the look of your logo! I am going to ask a stupid question... how did you do the red text with a white border? I used an ugly decal that isn't lined up properly but your looks great! What is your secret? Another question is how did you pick colour values? I used a small decal and tiled my outside rim and inside yellow base. I searched all throughout the surface attribute but couldn't find a place to insert your own RGB values. Thanks again everyone for your help, I will post my final here in a few minutes.

Thanks again Nancy, I have the ambiance set to the default 30% in the render settings and at 100% in my chor. Also, my passes are set to one but maybe it is the fact that I have my resolution set to HD 720p. I will take a screen grab because I must something selected by mistake.

Nancy, you're amazing! Thanks for looking into this for me. I like your first sample, I will try to mimic that one. The only problem I am having now is keeping the outer edge a darker yellow... I will just need to do some tweaking. My other question is that it is taking about an hour for me to render these images... is this normal or should I be adjusting something? Mark.

Here is my latest render... I like this one better than my last render but still isn't quite what I am looking for. I have since added some lights until I get the desired brightness but I can't get the inside yellow to be bright enough without blowing out the outside edge. If anyone thinks I am missing something then please let me know! I am looking for even lighting on this logo. I do however like the dull shadow like effect the Ambiance Global setting provides.

That took forever! haha. So this is the render with the settings you suggested. I like the look of it, closer to what I am going for. The only problem is the the inner part of the logo is too dark. Should I put a light on this as well or is there a way to lighten the picture through the Global Ambiance settings? Thanks Again!

Thanks Guys! I am going to give it a go and see what happens, I'll be back soon with the results!

Hello All, I am trying to recreate the Denny's logo from their new commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5qmBawyifg Now I have completed the logo already but that is as far as I have gotten. What I am wondering is if anyone had tutorials on the different surface attributes I could apply to the logo to give it that "dull", low reflective look it has in the commercial. Almost like the 3d renders people do of white/grey models when their project is a WIP. Hopefully someone can understand what I am trying to say... haha. If not, I can try and clarify. Thanks! Here is the logo as of now....

Yea, I guess it just must be my connection. I get a 404 error. I will try again tomorrow and see if I still have an issue. Thanks!

Hello All, I am just trying how to figure out basic light placement and adjustments. I tried downloading the tech ref manual but I can't seem to download it from its current location. Is there another place where I can download the tech ref manual from? Also, does anyone know of any basic lighting tutorials? Mark.

Interesting.... I had actually made two intentional markers on my project at the very beginning and there were no problems. Somewhere during the project I had acquired three black vertical lines on my model window and had no idea what they were... maybe that had something to do with it. Thanks again for your help today... I was almost going to give up on A:M again, haha.

Darn cat! Haha. What is the make marker button or shortcut... just so I don't accidentally do this again.

I greatly appreciate your help; everything is running smoothly again. Does this issue happen often?

Here is the project file; hopefully I saved it correctly. fighterplaneupload.prj

Here is a screen shot... do I have something selected that I shouldn't? I checked and I'm not in mirror mode. I am at 208 for patches... so I assume that is normal? Also, does anyone have a similar 13" macbook and doesn't have issues like this?

What's mirror mode? Also, where do I turn it on and off?

Hello All, I was just attempting to complete the fighter plane tutorial and had a few questions about A:M performance issues. Basically, A:M has been running very smooth with every tutorial until the fighter one. I am having terrible performance issues making A:M completely unusable. Here are some of the issues and steps I've taken to resolve them: - When loading the fighter project that I have been working on it takes over a minute to load. - Once the project loads I am trying to put the back fin on and when I click a node there is a delay of over 30 seconds for it to select. (spinning colour wheel of doom entertains me while I wait) - Once the node finally selects and I try to move it, I again get the spinning colour wheel of doom for over 30 seconds before the node or object will jerk to the position I want. - I have looked at the activity monitor on my mac and it says I have 90% of my CPU unused and that I have 300mb of RAM unused. So I know I am not maxing out my system. Here are my specs: Macbook 13.3" 2.0 ghz dualcore with 1 gb of ram running Snow Leopard ... I realize this computer isn't anything spectacular but this performance is absolutely ridiculous for such a simple model. Now here are my questions: - I have read on previous post that some users have issues with A:M on a mac... should I ditch the mac and run A:M on my older pc? - Are there settings I can adjust within A:M or on my mac to boost my performance? Sorry for the long post but this has been bugging me and is preventing me from continuing with A:M on this computer. Thanks, Mark.

Thanks everyone for you help! I really appreciate the quick and friendly responses. You all rock!

Hello all, I have been following the video tutorials but a few things haven't been going so smoothly. I will list the two problems I have below: - I am doing the car exercise and the tutorials car has perfectly round tires. The tires on my model are like a octagon. Also I made my flower with another exercise and the ends of the petals wore round... when I closed A:M and opened it the next day the end of the petals were a sharp point. Did I click some feature that I'm not supposed to? I compared my screen to the video tutorials screen and every feature selected is the same. - As I mentioned earlier I completed the Flower exercise. One "problem" I have is that ever since I duplicated the petals the are always all selected. Even if I click another group like the "stem", then the petals are are still selected with green nodes. Any help you can provide me would be greatly appreciated.