ddustin

Ken, I only saw one skip during the last segment. The m1v files don't play well with real player. I've seen it before. The final frame rate was 30 fps. David

I had problems with the crowd function in V12. Yoda64 has a plugin to randomly distribute objects on a surface, but if I remember right it works best on a flat surface then create your terrain. David EDIT: here is the link for the plugin http://www.sgross.com/plugins/plugin5/index.html

TL, Very nice detail! Perhaps you could allow the uses to mix and match sections of the low rez and high rez versions, that way they could only use the high patch count portions where the extra detail was needed? 50k patches is going to choke most systems isn't it? Just a thought, but it looks great. David

Phil, I'll probably avoid V13 for a while as I just upgraded my render farm to V12. It looks like there are lots of cool things coming in the near future. Ya'll are the adventurous types playing with the new versions, I can't risk my production work, in fact I'm a very slow adopter of the new versions. There is no environment map on these. I thought about it, but figured no one in the target audience would appreciate it anyway. How's business in your end of the country? David

Steve, Thanks for the compliments. Most of what I've seen has been just that level. Is there a way to get access to claims adjusters to present this type of recreation? You could earn a commision ($ cha-ching $) Thanks for the link too. David

TL, That worked perfect thanks! David

I have a different type of problem. I have a tire I want to decal with a tread pattern. When I select cylindrical application, it always applies it 90 degrees off, even if I save the image rotated 90 degrees to compensate. The model is located at 0,0,0 The same thing happens regardless of the application perspective. Image is attached. Thanks, David

Here is the latest version (fixed the link). http://www.dustinproductions.com/files/Dustin-3-views-b.m1v Also attached is the real image of the road. The angle of the sun is different, but I still need to calculate the correct angle when I'm done. Most of the issues have been addressed. The most obvious one to me now is the perspective on the last segment. I can't seem to get it right. The vehicles look much smaller than they would actually be in this position. The focal length in the scene is set to that of my camera. Robcat, you asked why I sped it up in AE. The scene played too slow, but the wheel rotations were right so it was easiest to just speed it up (run more frames per second) in AE. 1. Does anyone know if AE can handle open EXR images? 2. Any suggestions on how to "dirty the vehicles" ? 3. I think there is a frame missing in the last segment where the vehicles jerk, not a big thing now, but I'll need to check in the future. Thanks, David

Actually I'm finding that this type of approach is way above what is common now. I found a few places where the path deviated some causing the truck to look like it was slipping. Actually the shadows are still a little darker than the first example (other photo's I have from same scene and tripod location). I have Yves' light rig in here as well as 1 sun. How do you do a fuzzy klieg? Is that anything like fuzzy dice (sorry couldn't resist). Thanks for helping out. David

Mark, There is only one path and both vehicles are constrained to it, so any imperfection and it shows. Thanks for the compliments. I laughed pretty hard at your comment, yes they are quite the air-heads aren't they Does the lighting look right? It was a slightly overcast day, so that's the look I was going for. The final accident scene is going to be a hum dinger. The green car gets slammed head on and spins 1-1/2 revs then goes in the ditch. The pink spot in the middle segment is the POI (point of impact). David Ken, Yes I agree with you, the vehicles are too clean, I have to think about what I can do to dirty them up some. I also agree about the darker shadows, I have images of vehicles traveling down the road and the shadows are darker. There is motion blur on already, I actually sped this up to 90 frames a second (in after effects as otherwise they traveled very slowly), so I may not have seen as much benefit of the MB. Thanks for the crits!!!! David

Hey, Here is a 3 segment shot I just rendered out. (about 5Mb) http://www.dustinproductions.com/files/Dustin-3-views.m1v It shows the same virtual scene from 3 different angles (actually this is the first time I have been able to get more than one camera in a live action environment to work). Of course after is been rendered I see all kinds of flaws, but knowing the keen eye here on the forum, I thought ya'll could tear it apart for me and point out the things to fix. Things I know are wrong. 1. Truck is too large 2. Car is too small. 3. Too much lean on the car going through the corner. 4. Seems to be on small deviation in the path (horizontal) about 3/4 down the segment 5. Seems to be a dip in the path close to the end of each segment, even though the road doen't dip there. 6. There is a place where the road geometry is exposed and looks out of place (Last segment where the vehicles are coming toward the camera. Feel free to be direct with your crits, that's what I want. Thanks, David

Albee, Once you apply your emitter material, you'll be able to see it in the chor portion of the project work space. (you will have to click the show more drivers thing that has a red X through it). Drill down through the items in the more drivers area properties thing and locate the (I'm assuming you would create a group in your model for the emitter) emitter group. You should see the material properties there. At the begining of the animation, turn the rate of emittion to zero (make sure the animate button is on). At the point you want the spray to start, set the emittion to %100 or whatever give you the desired results. Also make sure you have particles/hair enabled in the options for AM or you won't see anything. In dealing with particles you can scroll forward in the time line easy enough, but backwards takse a long time for each frame. Hope this helps. David

Make an emitter shaped like half an egg, and place this inside the nozzle of your extinguisher with the open end facing out. Make sure it is assigned to the same bones as the nozzle will be using. You can make the emitter invisible if you want too, and make sure the normals are facing in to the cone. Apply your sprite emitter material to the cone. You can control the spray pattern by reducing the output size. David

What if you made "mitts" to go around his hands and fore-arms? I think you'll need to do something like this regardless, as I had very limited success with using modeled/grouped areas of the model as emitters. It usually creates unexpected results, where as using a separate emitter always seems to work. Good luck on your project. David

Is this a bug? Should I report it? arkaos. I usually create a separate model for the emitter, usually a transparent object close in shape to what I want to have emition. Then I constrain the emitter to the model and turn it on in the chor when I need it. that way you don't worry about 5 pointers etc, and keeps it pretty simple. Hope this helps. David

Thank's Oakchas, you're right! I didn't notice it till you mentioned it. I had a couple cp's out of place, musta hit something on the roa...er uh bumped them while modelling. I'll be getting the roof tied in soon. Just got a couple of pieces to model in to complete that area then finish the rear of the car and tweak it in for the final copyflip. The engine prolly wont be as detailed as the pics but it shouldn't be too bad.....Should it? LOL Scott, Something to remember... It's not what you see, it's what you think you see. David

CSIguy, PM me with an email and we can start some dialog. We've used AM extensively for Forensic Animation. My site doesn't show much of our latest work. Looking forward to talking with you. David Dustin

Nixie, If you are going to mix with live action, my experience is you can have heavy splinage in your models (unless you intend to have 100 of the same model). Live action renders out quite quickly. The animation in this tread http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=20071 only took about 2.5 hours on one machine, on my render farm it would have probably taken about 20 minutes. David

Thanks Nixie Yes I plan to build the chassis and suspension and rig it so that the suspension appears to be working should the front tires leave the ground ( wheelstand etc.) and to be able to turn the front wheels for still shots of it turning with the body tilting with gravity. Not too sure as to animating it. Most of my ability is in the modelling window but you never know. Very nice looking ride. Are you going to model the 327, 396, 402 or 427 for this ride. I'd love to see that engine!! (I had an Impala SS growing up) David

Actually the crash happened as a truck (pickup not this flatbed) was coming from the opposite direction and collided with a small car travleing in the same direction as the truck in the vid example. The small car spun around 1.5 times coming to rest to the right of the scene, about where the yellow sign is in the animation. The driver of the truck, was looking away at a liter bottle of soda when he crossed the centerline. Should be pretty cool when it's done. I may have parts flying off as the car spins but that may get tricky as the vehicle is rotating the parts would rotate at the same speed (if I use the explode plugin) as the car, making it not too realistic. The Lawyer wants me to "get real creative". Yeah baby!! There will be live actions from 3 views. David

hey, Here is a link to a new project. http://www.dustinproductions.com/files/d-light-test.m1v it's primarily a lighting test. The truck is not to scale, the wheels don't rotate etc. I made the shadow catcher environment using a satellite shot and the sweeper plugin. David

Tim, Import the bump image into the project. Select the decal in the model folder (in Project work space), there should be plus signs you can drill down to the images used. Under the decal there will be "images" right click and add image, select the bump map you just imported and it will palce it right on top of the exising decal. You'll need to change the latest image to a bump map then make sure the number of repeats are the same. Remember... bump maps only show up when you render. David

Yeah, I'm done with them. I now have a private group running much better servers. BTW, your images get oddly cropped in Firefox on my Mac PC. So this group is something you started or you are a re-seller for? I don't have a Mac or firefox so I can't trouble-shoot it, but thanks for the info. David

I removed this content because Daniel didn't deserve the flame. Sorry Daniel. David

Very nice effect.