rusty
-
Posts
1,851 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Posts posted by rusty
-
-
hey rusty----welcome on your return (can relate well to that). The model is first off super . I feel odd giving any comments to someone who is well above my skills here but i guess i know what I might like even if cannot make it yet .
To me the skin has a certain rubber like look and maybe if the lips had a little more pink/red/purple etc that might be good. But gosh ---as it is right now ----mighty nice !!
Rich
The rubber like look of the skin has always been a problem for me. Hopefully a little SSS and specularity adjustments may help. Also I may have over done the 'softing' bump maps... maybe you don't need this in AM????
Thanks,
Rusty
-
Hi, Rusty. Nice model!
I think the ears are a little too flat. Perhaps the tops could be pulled out just slightly. I don't know. Look in the mirror.
The frown lines look a bit too wide, as Robcat mentioned, and the speculars could be toned down. Looks great already though.
what do you mean by 'frown lines'?
Rusty
-
More good feedback!!
Thanks!
Rusty
-
Hey Rusty,
Most any head model looks good to me because I have not attempted them yet. Yours is better than most.
I always seem to see completely different things than most of the others. What sticks out to me, is how the shirt looks painted on. It's following every contour of the neck muscles.
Have you played with cloth yet?
There is a CD on How to Model a face (or really, a head)--can't for the life of me remember the Hash artist who put it out. Without that I too could never model a head or face. Adopting this construction means you can have a flattening template (adjusted for each face) which means you can have standardized decals and haircaps. If that makes sense. Agree with dicky t-shirt (it goes under other wardrobe).
Cloth? If you want to call over a thousand manhours 'playing'. :-)
Rusty
-
Hi,
I assembled all the footage (you know what I mean) done for the Spiral Slayer Book Trailer--mostly screen or concept tests--and put all three musical scores behind it. Also added credits--the 5 or 6 Hash artists who helped with the designs, modeling, texturing, etc. In truth it's long and boring, LOL, but perhaps not so much to other Hash animators.
Remember, play it full screen and have your sound on. Also, very few scenes are finished product and no story is really told.
Cheers,
Rusty
-
Everyone!
Thanks for all the awesome suggestions! All everyone of them sounds like great ideas. These will take some time.
One thing I forgot to mention was that I'm still back on version 14--I definitely want to upgrade but... can't give up my render farm; too much $$ invested in the PCs. Fortunately, I believe all of your suggestions are possible in v14 however, if you know of anything I might encounter in v14 let me know.
Also I have no experience with SSS or AO--tried both out back in the day but I imagine they'll take some playing around with. BTW, are both 'animation' features? I've seen them used in stills but can't recall ever seeing them used in an animation.
Really great hearing from all of you!!
Cheers,
Rusty
-
Hi,
I hope everyone is well and happy. I'm too close to and involved with the model in the attached image to be a good judge anymore. I'm looking for feedback on what will make it look more realistic.
Thanks for any help you can give!
Rusty
-
Hi,
I have not read all of the posts here so if this is a duplication, please ignore it. If it already exists(!!) please let me know!
Copy group properties, paste group properties
This would copy any surface properties, any images, any materials and/or anything else (except the actual geometry and associated bones and decals) and then paste these onto another group.
Why when you can just take the target group and add it to the source group? It's more a case of having multiple groups needed for other for other reasons (mainly animation or decal stamping) and for saving time.
Rusty
-
"What is the 'problem' back log?"
There is one programmer working on A:M. That's Steffen. He's gotten lots done. The 2X speed up in V16 is a fantastic achievement that I would say outweighs any individual feature request. On top of that he's gotten lots of debugging done. And he's also added quite a few features.
He's aware of the whole AMReports log. I expect he has to decide "what will get the most improvement for the most reasonable amount of effort?"
I'd guess his priorities are like this
1 crashes
2 errant behavior
3 new features
Martin is mostly off the field now. If you have a question about A:M ask here, ask Jason@hash, or put it into AMReports.
Been there, done that. Was a programmer back in the day.
Sometimes one programmer is by far the most efficient way to go. Less meetings anyway.
r
-
Hi,
I've seen and worked with all versions of A:M (NetRender Unlimited to be precise) since V8.5... except for Version 15. Up until 2009 I think (the release of version 15--I know time by AM versions better than years!), I purchased everything that was made for A:M. Plug-ins, 3rd party programs, training videos and books, a t-shirt and... my Hash coat! I'm a good customer.
Holding up a great big peace sign and waring 'I love AM' buttons pinned to my shirt, I would ask "What is the 'problem' back log?"
If you are caught up!!!!!!! Lets rock!
If not, catching up on that would be my only humble request.
Thanks!
Rusty
PS: I wrote to Martin three weeks ago (didn't know he was off in the bush) asking a question which is vital to me. I wouldn't think that this query would be against any forum rules (if it is I apologize! I'm not here to make waves) and, this info use to be available to me and others. The question is (drum roll):
What 'fixes' are being put off until the next version (version 16 I believe)? If there is any information I can get on this, I'd greatly appreciate it. I would change my current project to skip around any known problems.
-
Sorry, I will get a bit technical but that is a technical issue.
If your on-screen details (geometry or texture) are smaller than your render sampling resolution then you will get that sort of shimmering.
Sampling resolution: Say you multipass with 9 passes, then you have a 3 x 3 sampling per pixels. Then if your details are smaller than 1/3 pixel square, you will get shimmer.
For geometry size issues, there are no other solutions to this shimmering than sample at higher resolution. This mean increasing the number of passes.
For image textures, one other solution is to use an image of lower resolution or do a blur pass on your image. You would need different versions of the same image with different resolutions or different level of blur to match the closeup-ness of your shots.
For procedural texture, you got to be an expert in that sort of thing. Basically, you need to remove the tiny details in the texture generators. Looking at the octave is a good hint but there is much more to it. Unfortunately, you can't blur procedural textures. But usually, you can replace a procedural by an image texture. Procedurals are very prone to shimering. I'd recommend replacing all the procedural with images. One way of doing that is to render the procedural from your geometry at the highest resolution and then remap the resulting image.
Yves,
Thanks for the info! I'm working on replacing the materials with images now. After that I'll have to get all my slaves up and running to do more passes.
-
Denoise is a camera post effect.
Right click on the post effect folder and choose new post effect. Right click on the post effect and choose denoise. Drag the post effect onto the camera in the chor. Make sure you set the camera to render post effects in the render option.
Exactly what I did just guessing... except for the last step, however I can see the effect so its working (render is 50% done).
Thanks!
r
-
Ha! How do you use the AM de-noise?? Sat down to try it but chores call and I see no easy 'add denoise'... bummer. I'll have time later... rendering to final (the way I do it) reduced the shimmering by at least 50%. Not much for the strobing.
r
-
yup, you got tons of small fine details there.
That rusty texture on the rocket nozzles... that's got a noise component, what are the "octaves' set to?
Had to look... that model is old... circa 2006 maybe, with some upgrades a couple of years ago. That is a SimbiontAM material called metalScratchSteel. I'm not a 'material' person. Although I know what can be done with them (from Mastering Materials CDs watched) if I use them at all I just drag and drop and sometimes scale. As far as swapping images for materials, I've been working on several newer models and haven't even considered making changes to that one... in fact, I'll do my best to avoid it.
But the question is, why do you ask?
Rusty
-
Hi!
Well, first thank all of you for the time and effort you've put into helping me.
If you find that article Rodney, let me know... sounds counter-intuitive which is why it might just work LOL. And 'good eye' on the shimmering and 'strobing' problem ids.
I will try what you've suggested as well as a few ideas I have and will keep you posted. I think simply creating an avi or mov will make the problem vanish! I have a lot going on and haven't even tried this yet! If not, beyond de-noise and blur there's possibilities with over-sampling and even just lighting and staging. I'm already in the process of replacing materials with images. This will help. For many years I just never used materials then... I got lazy... the upshot is; I don't have a lot of experience with them.
Cheers,
Rusty
-
Hi!
Darn... I used AE to take the large TGA files from AM and crop out a small part... I am fairly sure I correctly set AE so 'no' processing took place but... I'm not 100% sure. Looks the same to me.
I could use PS to reduce the TGAs size but some of the artifacts might vanish.
But, the only thing that really makes sense (given that I'm lazy) is to just put the tga output from A:M (220 frames/30fps) on my site.
My AE reduction (see 1st paragraph) is already out there if you're interested or want a smaller download or don't want to wait for the above. The URLs for both are:
220 tga frames from AM (file size: 368,050KB)
http://www.virtualmediastudios.com/ShimmerTest_TGA.rar
Smaller cropped by AE (file size: 119,358KB)
http://www.virtualmediastudios.com/ShimmerTest_AE_TGA.rar
Please let me know if you encounter any problems with the downloads or compressed files.
In the full AM video (ShimmerTest_TGA.rar) you'll see this:
The geometry up close looks like this:
I'm going to render this same sequence in NetRender but I will probably take me a day to get it going again.
Thanks!
Rusty
-
Coplaner faces could cause that. I have had a similar issue a while back and it turned out I had hit "E" in the model window by mistake and I use 0 offset many times. moving a cp should reveal another cp in the same spot if this is the case.
Hi,
Thanks for all the replies! Lots of good ideas and I will post an example. Something is nagging me at the back of my mind with this problem... I'm almost sure I've hit this before and although I can not remember anything about that time something makes me think that a) it was an obvious problem and,
it had something to do with compression or encoding. That may all be horse s__t but that's what keeps coming to mind.Coplanar faces??!!??!!?? I often discover to my horror that a model is all messed up with cps and splines overlaying each other... I usually find it by accident or when trying to texture a model. It makes no sense the way these duplicate overlaying cps and splines are connected either... they are all part of the same model (all connected) but I don't think selecting the model and doing 'e' would produce the crazy stuff I see. Anyway, this really caught my eye as when I discover such a problem I must either delete it (the model) and rebuild and re-texture and re-rig and... (you know the drill), or... slowly and painfully find all 'coplanar' cps/splines and delete them (I know of no easier way to fix the problem I see). I have no idea how such a thing can happen. Oh, I'm pretty sure it's something I'm doing but what I don't know. Any additional information you have would be appreciated!!
Sadly, if this is the case, then every part of 4 large and complex models is messed up. I almost don't want to check! :-o
Rusty
-
Hi,
I'm a 'rusty' old 'old timer' but I'm back and trying to animate and get some video of a bunch of models (space ships for the most part) created for my last AM project (a book trailer for my sci-fi book). To give credit where due, some models were created by AM users from all around the world. I'm using V14 NetRender (I plan to upgrade shortly), however, so far, I've only tried rendering right out of AM.
I'm encountering a problem I've not seen before and it's happening on all three of the scenes I've tried to render (so that means 3 different sets of prj files, model files, etc). Things are 'shimmering' on finals renders (this best description I can come up with). As I said, I've just been rendering from AM (not NetRender). I see this 'shimmering' within complex geometry, materials and images used as decals.
What I've tried so far:
* The ships had to be scaled way up in the Chor so I tried rendering with no scaling but there was no difference.
* I tried both multipass off and with 9 passes, softness on.
* The render options 'Alpha Buffers' and 'Draw Particles / Hair' make no difference.
The target is YouTube, perhaps HD (though honestly I'm not sure what HD really means in technical terms). I've included the render settings below and my systems information is also below. The output is pretty large as is but I can post an example if needed (I'm hoping this is a simple problem everyone knows the answer to!!!).
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!
Rusty
Render Settings:
30fps
Uncompressed TGA
Resolution: 1280x720
Gamma: None
Buffers: Alpha
Quality: Final
Multi-Pass: *
Motion Blur: On (defaults)
Shadows: On (defaults)
Reflections: On (defaults)
Draw Particles / Hair: **
All else off.
* Original renders had multipass turned off. I tried rendering with 9 passes/softness=on but this made no difference.
** When needed. No difference.
-
Hi All!
Thanks for looking into it... maybe I forgot to click on the last whatever it says (Post?). It was sometime last week. Anyway I'll repost my query.
Thanks!
Rusty
-
My last post has seemingly vanished. If this is my fault (I never actually posted it versus a moderator removed it) please let me know and ignore the rest. If I said something not allowed, my apologies. If its because I'm still on Version 14, I should be upgrading next week so I'll wait before creating additional posts. In any event, kindly let me know something.
Rusty
-
Hi,
I just bought an Alienware Aurora and it was well worth the money... for myself anyway. Alienware to me is the Rolls Royce of computers. Download my review and unzip it then open it (if it won't open in your browser, open it in MS Word).
You can run AM with a lot less but it depends on what you're doing and with that system you can do anything! For games, well you know about that. Besides the bells and whistles mentioned in my review, I'm not sure I mentioned the upgradeable -- this system will last twice as long as a regular system.
Rusty
-
Hi!
Unquestionably ‘the’ book on one of our greatest achievements: ‘the standard model’! LOL to Lederman’s quick wit while the famous Nobel laureate spells out just how the atom & subatomic particles were discovered & explored through ingenious experimentation 100s of yrs before modern tech & right up to present efforts to find the fantastic Higgs boson!
It's a must read for any fan of quantum physics! 9 out of 10
Rusty
-
Hi!
I’ve been told by a half dozen folks on science forums that Kaku is more interested in selling books than ‘real’ science (I’ve actually been told to ignore him!). His book does seem to go into the realm of sci-fi at times. He talks about String/M Theory & about far out ways that humanity can save itself when the universe ends! However, it’s an interesting read. Recommended 7 out of 10.
Rusty
-
Hi I was just wondering the difference between Frames animation and time based - for instance what is the relationship between the two or how do I do timing, say for instance if I create a animation which is :
• animated over 30 frames
• with keyframes at every 10 frames
How will this be translated to time code ?
Meaning if the time code is 30fps then the sequence would yield only 1 second of animation in SMTP
So how do we convert or animate with frames keeping in time with actual errr. . . real time ?
What do we have to keep in mind for actual time / timing when animating with frames then outputting to SMTP ?
Say I wanted the frame animations to span over actual 24 fps SMTP, would I take this figure of 24 fps an keep it in mind and then animate as usual in frames and set key frames per 24 frames and in between keyframes as well for other motion, knowing that for every 24 frames of animation I am creating 1 second of actual animation in SMTP ?
Just getting my head around the conventions, everyone says use frames when animating - but no one says how it relates to video output . . . .
SMTP time code is HH:MM:SS;FF
Where:
HH = hours
MM= minutes
SS = seconds
FF = frames
The conversion is straight across:
frames = SMTP frames
30 frames is 29 = 00:00:01;00
(remember, counting starts at zero so, 0 through 29 is 30 frames)
or, put another way
a half second at 30 fps is:
frames = SMTP frames
14 = 00:00:00:14
a half second at 24 fps is:
frames = SMTP frames
11 = 00:00:00:11
A key frame every 10 frames is still a key frame every 10 frames regardless.
I hope that answers your question.
BTW, I usually render tga sequences from AM then I master (compress) in Cleaner.
In Cleaner, the recommended key frame interval for Quicktime Sorrenson (n) is every 5 times fps
(i.e. 30 fps -- kf every 150) -- I don't recall for other codec. Also, if you leave it unselected then
the codec decides the interval.
I'd guess that it's the same in AM but am not certain.
Codec settings is a complex topic and varies with content. AM's default is usually good to go with.
Cheers,
Rusty
Hi Everyone! Old user back from the dead.
in Work In Progress / Sweatbox
Posted
Hi Zaryin!
Thanks for the suggestions.
"...but this is all for stills. I don't know what I would do for animations."
Is there any particular reason you said this? I appriciate and support forum rules so use rusty@znet.com if needed.
Cheers,
Rusty