ddustin

Very interesting that a mechanical designer can create such life-like humans. Bravo indeed!! David

John, I need something like that, could you email the project to me at ddustin@dustinproductions.com? Thanks, David

How do I make the edges of the clouds translucent? with a spherical gradient material? My clouds are basically stretched spheres with a cellturb applied and displacement set to about 700. Is there a way to make just the outer edges of the cloud translucent? Please tell more. I plan to experiment with ambient light - maybe that will make the image less flat? I do have a blue sky sun light that is off in these images. I use the new normal map ability of v12.0 to put the rocks and wear patterns on the canyon walls. I used Gimp to draw wear patterns on a transparent background and the Nvidia Gimp plugin to convert it to a normal map. I used hair for the trees. Hair in V12.0 recieves fog so distant trees fade away. I used a Satellite DEM file to create my mesh of Mount Sinawava. I also use two procedural materials: one for the color and one for bump. That is why I make a transparent background normal map - so it won't obsure the procedural bump map. I have been influenced and inspired by the work of Brian Prince and hopefully it shows in the image - I am just trying to use the newest technical wizzardry of the latest versions of A:M. I Eric, I'm very impressed. Could you make a short tute on how you used the DEM file to make the mesh? I've struggled to get that to work. Thanks, David

Thanks, I'm pretty sure it was dust or mist (rendering something in AE so computer is tied up). Just played with the swirl settings and had a volumetric light shining on the text. David

Here is what I came up with. I combined 2 volumetric effects. The total clip is 30 seconds long, because I couldn't get the effects to loop well. David just_text_example.mpg

I'd like to have a volumetric effect light shine on my business text, but have the shadow from the text appear as black shofts behind the text. The current setup looks like this. The shadows are repeatd in the vouletric effect too many times. Thanks, David

I wondered if someone was going to pick up on that. Since it's unlikely this prop will ever occupy this much screen space, I increased my personal tolerance to dimensional accuracy and cheated by reducing the crimp count from the standard 21 to 20 to ease the copy/paste/rotate process. Certainly that would help with the shadows but at this time I'm not ready for the render hit. As it was, this one took 23 hrs. No doubt about it, transparency is expensive. I actually figured out how to model bubbles that rendered correctly but I didn't use them since that's the way this prop (and for that matter 99% of my props) will eventually be used. That's not a bad idea Vern! Do you go when it's busy so the staff is so over-worked that they don't notice you or early in the morning when the staff isn't awake? Absolutely. I've also used a rotary dial phone; a slide rule; recorded music (in analog!) on reels of tape that had to be manually threaded and have actually had to get out of my chair and cross the room to change the television channels. Oh gawd, it was sheer torture. Roger, Here is a wood image. I have more. You could make a material out of it with bitmap plus. Have you ever played PONG?? huh.... David

I'd consider a light list as well. It gives you more control, and we NEED control lol Good work Nos! David

Then perhaps it's time to expand into indie-film special effects? When I say Special Effects I mean parts flying, smoke, water and some fire......... hmmm maybe you're right. David

Mark, Are the red globs blobbies or a modeled object? Looks interesting to say the least. David

Vern, Yes that's a problem I have, knowing when it's good enough. I'll spend days tweaking something only to have 90% of the people watching it, never notice (it's usually the forum peeps that see them). The lawyer I do most of my work for has gotten spoiled with the theatrics I put in his animations. And has come to expect this level. I had shown him some images and animations from some other software used specifically for accident recreation, and he commented right away how poor the graphics were. Thanks, for the compliment David

Rhett, I'll experiment with your suggestion. Thanks Nos, I do the same thing with the tires (in fact they're all below the surface). The sunlight position will change just a little, I still have to calculate it exactly. It's Georgia on an August afternoon/early evening so it's not going to change much. Road textures........ ah the pain of it all. I have an image I use with the bitmap plus plugin that creates that look. The dirt on the road is a diffuse map made in PS. The road surface image is made tile-able in PS than applied to the road group as a material. I think I have a normal map in there too if I remember right. Thanks, Luckbat, I'll try it to experiment with your suggestions. I have played with Z-buffered lighting mainly for lights with volumetric effects. There are already a bunch of list lights in the scene to get the signs to appear lighted. Thanks, There are about 50 tree panels in the scene that look washed out when I use the light rig. the tree panels are targa's with tranparency. I don't understand why they wash out, because I like the look with the light rig. Thanks,

Here is a screen shot of one of my latest projects. It's going OK but lighting isn't one of my strong suits. The vehicles look like they're above the road........ David

Rodney, I would like to be considered for the free upgrade. My 15 year old son could use it a ton. Thanks for the opportunity. David

I agree this will be tough to use a bump map on. More that likely I would end up modeling the creases, you'll spend as much time messing with the maps to get it right as it would take to just add the splines. Just my 2 cents or pence or dinaro or rubles or won or yen or..............

Dan, Check out the materials forum. Daniel from Djoseph design had a brushed stainless steel looking material. If it's not there let me know and I can post it for you. David

John, Thanks for the images. They'll come in handy for a large outdoor scene I'm working on. David

John, Either of the ground panels on the first and second tabs of this thread. I love the texture (I love all your textures). Thanks. David Edit: John, I searched the Extra CD and there is no category for textures. Unless there is a later version than I have.

John, Very nice work. I would think you could capitalize on this ability. P.S. Any way to get my hands (or computer) on that grass mat/panel you used? Thanks, David

Shurely you're on that slippery slope to H. E. double-toothpicks as we watch this. Nice grass man..... David

I think it looks good, but would be better if it was slowed down a little. David

I have found that the key to texturing hardware is adding small bumps and defects to the surface. Perfection is not only over-rated but it's also unrealistic. It is unibody (see attached image) but the model is divided into two groups of patches with a tweaked material on the internal group. I assume its shadow would be more realistic if I turned on caustics but even I'm not that patient when it comes to render times (see below). I couldn't agree more; that's why I didn't post to Showcase. I have yet to see an image that when used this way doesn't look like a repeating tile. Would you be able to point me in the direction of suitable images? Ultimately my background landscapes will have meadow-like grasses but I didn't want to take the render hit in this case (see below). 10+ hours on an Athlon running at 1.5 GHz; 1024 X 683; 5X multi-pass; no soft reflections; no caustics; the sun is a klieg casting 2 shadows; there are 58 bulb skylights casting no shadows I tried turning on caustics and reduced most of its default values by a factor of 10 but the first pass wasn't done after 5 hrs so I gave up. I'm assuming for my purposes grass and radiosity won't be practical until CPUs all have four embedded processors and A:M code is written to use them all (I'm guessing by 2013 when I turn 60). Although I must admit the chances of a Coke bottle taking centre stage on my CG railroad are pretty slim; thank the gods locomotives are opaque. I pity the person who wants to render Wonder Woman's glass jet. Roger, I've attached the tileable image as well as the bitmap plus plugin. The image looks best if you use the plugin. Let me know if it works for you, even if you do a quick render without the coke bottle. David lawn512_tileable.zip

Roger, It looks very good.. The texture on the landscape behind is more of CG stand out than the models shadow. I've found that Bitmap-plus using a tileable image yields the best ground, background results. David

Michael, This might be an excellent application for dust effects. Like the one outlined in Exercise 15: Eat My Dust Rodney Use sprites, it'll work out much better. There are smoke particles on the AM CD. You can make the tires be emitters for the particles and add a force to blow the smoke around. David

Looks like an Excedrin (pain reliever) Commercial, but I can't think of what caused it. David