Eric2575

Stian: this must be a bug in V.13 because it took 12:14 minutes for the first pass to complete, and to top it off, the artifacts were as bad as ever. This is the project file you had no problems with in V.15. I know, I know, upgrade. Well, when it comes to making our house payment or upgrading, I pick the house payment and groceries. Thanks for testing the file Stian Eric

Pixel, your stamps look fine, but I am talking about a decal that is a map of rivets, not one single rivet decal stamped several times. This subamrine has over 3000 rivets, and I 'd like to avoid stamping those in AM. Making complete maps of large plates in Photoshop and then applying them in AM is much better. Now if Stain can only figure out what's going on with my maps???

Thanks for helping me out Stian Rivets.zip

Well, if anyone can repeat a simple test using a displacement decal with AO that doesn't cause any artifacts, I'd sure like to see it. The project file with included decal would be nice.

I'm at a loss right now. No difference when using tga. I also tried it on a simple one patch plane and it was the same. Normals are pointing out as they should.

My edit post function doesn't work, that's why all the new posts. Here is the partial bump render. The rivets are just a bit too small, but this will suffice for the test. Next up the displacement render with the TGA.

It's gonna take a bit because I am rendering with bump right now and it's looking pretty good. I already took the bump map and converted it to a tga file. That will be the next render as a displacement.

I'll give that a try Stian

Bump mapping is an option I will consider, but I would still like to know if displacement maps and AO don't mix. I even tried a plain 128,128,128 gray jpg as a displacement map - it should not have done anything to the mesh - and it came out the same as all the other tests, major artifacts.

First of all, thank you for all the great comments, it makes it all worthwhile. In short, yes, the pipes are just as they are supposed to be according to all the Disney plans, straight and hexagonal. That's good tip though on working with sweeper and a nice diagram to boot I've started on a revised rivet pattern and am having a bit of trouble. When I do a quick render in the modeling window, the displacement map for the rivets comes out great. When I do an actual render with AO, the part that has the displacement map has grainy artifacts all over it. Before I post the problem, I'm going to experiment a bit and try to figure this out. Probably something to do with the jpg. Eric

Some more details as I refine things

Another great reference. Thank you.

Great work Josh. I gave it a 5 star rating. Thanks for posting the links to your work on the Ocean challenge page.

Thank you Mike

How big is the little fellow? Looks great!!! Which outfit did you use?

Don't worry about having me fill any holes.

William: you are still doing the 3D milling? I posted not too long ago to see if anyone who had submitted models to you has gotten any back in exchange for letting you use them in your portfolio. Al said he submitted his Star Wars walker but doesn't have the model yet. I'm sure he's too modest to ask, so I will: When can he expect the milled model? Many of use here at the forum would love to see the finished product. I hope you weren't just teasing??? Regards Eric

Looks like it's been underwater for a while. Nice model, but the color map is a bit dark. Is the original paint black? If so, add some specular for the paints shininess.

I'll experiment and see. Thank you for looking into this.

The problem is not being too dark, the problem is being too bright, even with the light turned to 0%. Ok, I created a material with a Perlin modifier to look similar to water caustics. Next I created a scene with only one spot light shining straight down at the ground. To that light I added the material and now we have a nice caustic effect on the ground. The problem is that I cannot reduce the brightness of the effect, no matter what I've tried. Well, I've found a work around: Since I cannot control the light's caustic effect, I found that increasing the ground's diffuse falloff will tone down the effect. The downside is that every model in the scene has to have the falloff turned down.

When I apply the material to a light, it has a nice caustic effect, but I cannot control the intensity of the caustic effect anymore. Whether I set it to 100% or 0%, the caustic light effects always lokk like they are at 100%. Is there any way to turn them down?

I'm happy to leave you with a bit more mundane imagery than you are leaving for me, Al

The patch count is actually 14530. Once I started the render, I noticed some artifacts and re-examined the model. There were some duplicate splines that I missed when I did a copy paste operation of the lower hull details. The total time to render with 16 pass AO at 30% with one key light at a size of 1920 x 1200 is 51 minutes. Again, I'm not worried about time or patch count since I am trying to get a very accurate and detailed version of the Nautilus. Note the working Skiff (lifeboat) covers.

This is somewhat unusual, but the total patch count right now is exactly 17,000 - no kidding. I'm surprised by the even number. I'll re-render the larger view of the Nautilus since I have made several changes and then I'll see what the time to render will be. I am using 30% AO with 16 passes and one key light. Will post once completed.

I'll get both for you, but remember I am modeling to make this a real object, so I am not too worried about patch count.