Eric2575

Ken, the light is actually on the back wall of the shield model inside the fireplace. The shield model is completely separate from the fireplace and from the wall model. Good thought though. You are right about the set lighting being daytime too, but as you said it would be nice to get it right - not going to expend much energy on this. Scale wasn't a big consideration at this point either, Mr. Eagleeye, er, I mean Ken Luckbat, I believe I am using 2 raytraced shadows. Would that make a difference?

I actually like the lumpy look, they add some character to the model, but that's personal preference I guess. Overall, this type of modeling keeps me inspired to keep bettering myself in CG. I could see the owner of that airship coming back from a cross country trip, landing and driving off in his Tempo Gigante Rock on!

In this test, I put two light sources on the side of the fireplace simulating candles. The light from the candle sources is going throught the fireplace and the double walled shield inside. Wow, is there any way to keep light from going through models?

You guys are all right. I assumed the shadow setting was on , but it wasn't. Once applied, the shadow worked fine, even inside the fireplace with my double walls. Yes, the rocks were done with a displacement map in V.13Alpha. After rendering with shadows, however, I noticed a booboo (tha'd be a mistake) about how I made the map. Never having made a map before, I added shadows to the bottom of every rock on the color map, thinking it would give a better depth illusion. In retrospect, this was not necessary, since the displacement worked so well. The contours created actually added shadows from the light above. These shadows and the shadows I drew on the color map gave too much depth on the bottom side of the rock, making it seem as if they were drooping down. This has really been a good learning experience for me. Ken, you have a good eye. I'll fix that. Geez, can't even get away with a little cheat once in a while I'll play around with some lighting and post one more shot later. Time to learn some particle emitter stuff. Now if I could just learn how to simulate a fire like Colin, I'd be set. Eric

I moved this from http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=17591&st=40 because it started to take on a life of it's own. Here is the latest render of this WIP. I read a post a while back that mentioned double patches between a light source and an object you want shielded from the light. I did this on the inside of the fireplace, but it still seems to let the light through. Can someone refresh my memory on how to block light to the inside of the chimmney? Comments and critique welcome.

That's great to hear. Be sure to let us and Hash know what program caused the conflict. Good for you

This probably has nothing to do with your particular problem, but older plugins can make AM crash very quickly. How far do you get as far as opening AM before it crashes? Is it always the same project that makes it crash? It could be a corrupt file. Just throwing out some ideas.

Holy Icegrip, Batman! Mr. Freeze put you in a static pose again. Get a grip on yourself and articulate the animate. We're in the eigth inning, down in the count, and you're up at B..!

Here is the link: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...43&hl=propeller I've used it and it works great. One issue I have with your project is the way you have the focus set up. This might be the way you want it, but it seems a bit unnatural to me. The only item that is in focus is the middle plane. Like I said, that might be correct, but it was the first thing that drew my attention. This is just nitpicking. I really thing you are doing a great job and have a bright future in CG. Keep up the good work.

Let us know if Jodie's suggestion works. The lightbulb question has been asked before and not really answered.

In situations where you are talking about specific, repeatable visual distortions, it's always a good idea to post a rendering of the issue and a wireframe of the affected area. It's hard to diagnose with a written description only.

Beautiful!

Just curious, is this going to be a set for Batman, or is Batman totally out of this project?

Very nice and very appealing characters. What is the project? These guys could go a long way in my humble opinion. The rat, er, sorry, Boris, reminds me of the "Ice Age" characters. How'd you come up with those guys? Btw, I'm just learning about lighting, would you share your lighting setup? I like the way the characters are displayed. Did you use a skylight? Anyways, enough of my babble. Great job, can't wait to see them in action.

Thanks for the quick and dirty on raytraced shadows, Dan. Now that you point out the shadow irregularity, I'll have to see what that's all about. If it's not one thing, it's another.

My girlfriend always says I have bionic eyes and ears, but now, that you guys aren't seeing what I am seeing, I think I might be losing it Colin, maybe you're on to something with the shadow thing. I haven't really done anything with renders other than the default and or Yves skylight setup, so I don't know what zbuffers or raytraced shadows are. Could you give me the short and sweet of those and where are the settings for them? Sorry to be such a noob. Thanks

Sorry, this should be posted after Martin's reply: I don't know what ABuffer is, I'm just referring to multipasses. The renders are either with 16x multipass or no multipass (multipass set to "off".) I can see the difference in the two renders above what the soft setting does in multipass, but even with multipass "off", there is still the soft look in the wave detail in the top of the cabinet. And, the render looks really soft with skylights and no multipass. I'm probably just being anal here, but I haven't noticed this in previous renders, at least not like this.

I guess I should have said one render with no multipass instead of 0 multipass. In other words, one render that also came out soft or blurry had no multipass at all. If there was no multipass, there shouldn't have been the softening effect, right? The last render I did only had reflections and shadows on, but still came out soft and fuzzy. The render below is in a default chor, no skylights, multipass set at 16x with soft set to on and depth of field set to off. This render is better than the first one, but still has issues. I'm going to repeat it with soft set to off, but doubt that will fix it. I don't believe the soft setting in multipass is the culprit here since one of the first renders had no multipass at all. In the first renders, I'm leaning more toward something I'm not doing right with the skylights. Gotta experiment some more. Heya Dan: Been good man, just havin to take care of some stuff I've been neglectin. Good to be back. Last I heard, you were going to do an interior for your car? Was that tongue in cheek or have you done that? The last render has no multipass but is virtually the same as the previous render. Both have an issue with the soft render of the wave detail in the top of the cabinet. Again, depth of field is set to off. Compare this to the first render with the skylights and really see what I mean. The settings, other than the fact that one has skylights and the other is a default chor, are identical. What could cause the render with the skylights to come out so soft looking? Yves? P.S. Martin, just read your post while editing mine. I don't know what ABuffer is, I'm just referring to multipasses. The renders are either with 16x multipass or no multipass (multipass set to "off".)

I just rendered this cupboard twice, once with 0 multipass and once with 9x multi. Both renders came out somewhat blurry. Of course I checked the usual such as depth of field (off), reflections soft (off), fog (off), etc. In the options, I checked "use settings from this dialog" and only have shadows and reflections on in the rendering options. I'm using nothing other than Yves 20 light skylight. Got me stumped.

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I'm having an issue with my AM V.12p modeling window. Seems like I may or may not have pressed a button that may or may not have changed something in regards to the way the screen responds. Before today, the modeling window was fun and easy to work in, the model turned with relative ease when I used the manipulators on it. Today, after some quick key strokes, something changed. The modeling window is now noticeably less responsive, the model sorta jerks into position when I turn it and the view sometimes doesn't update. Very strange. I changed from DirectX to OpenGl and back but no change. Which one is the better performer anyway, DirectX, right? After shutting down AM and restarting, shutting down Windows and restarting, I saw no change, still sluggish display. I didn't want to waste a lot of time with tinkering, so I uninstalled and reinstalled both my video drivers and AM. After that I thought the problem was surely solved, but it persisted. Now that's really weird. I hope my video card to the tune of $360 isn't bad? Anyways, that's where I'm at now. One more thing, The modeling window responds better in OpenGL. What are the differences between the two display methods?

Stian, you never cease to amaze me. Very smooth, nice job.

Thanks for your reply guys. There were two problems and both were correctly identified - Jody, you got the fact that the decal I used (from the Web) wasn't seamless and Ken, you pointed out the fact that that particular decal had white edges that needed to be cropped. So, I made a decal from scratch that is seamless and cropped without any white edges. Chris, I also thought about doing that, but I'm still mystified by flattening, duh. Here is the very satisfying result. Again, thank you for your input - this is what this forum is for and all about Eric

I don't know what the heck I'm doing wrong. It's getting worse the second time around, see pic. I had the model on xyz-0, decal with horizontal and vertical scale the same, and the repeat left as is. I see by both pics that your UVeditor reveals no space between the decal. In my UVeditor there are huge gaps. This is the problem, but what is causing the gaps?

This is pretty straight forward. Apply a decal in cylindrical fashion to a model centered on the xyz/0 axis. When checking the model, I find it doesn't close in back. I tried changing the repeat, but that doesn't do the trick. Searched the forum in vain. Tried scaling the decal wider and then reapplying with no luck. Turned the "Seamless" option on in the decal properties with no luck. What the heck does "seamless" do anyway? Ok, what else is there?