Eric2575

Take a look at this render to file on the right - the sub is scaled way up in size compared to the water grid. The smaller pane on the left shows the top view in the chor that I rendered to file. Nothing was changed, yet the rendered results are way out of whack.

I tried another render with the sub and got the same artifacts. Notice the water is dark again??? And yes, I am not changing anything but the models in the same scene. Will try a render from the top. The render from the top is also very strange - the orientation from the view in the chor has changed from the model's diagonal position to a vertical position and zoomed in very close. This is really weird. From left to right, the pic shows the render to file with the sub, the chor as seen in AM top down, and a render from the top down.

Ok, the submarine must be the problem, because the basketball rendered fine

V.11.1 I shut down the computer and restarted everything. Took out the sub and rendered to file the water; below is the result. Now the water doesn't look as dark as it did nefore and the background lightened up too. As I am writing this, I am rendering the water again, but this time I added a basketball. I'll post that as soon as it's done.

The left pic is a quick render with the sub above the water - the right pic is the same scene with a render to file. I have no clue why the render to file is not working. Sorry guys, I did not update the page and did not see your posts. Yes, the ground plane is deleted from the chor. The chor is composed of the Babbage water plane, which seems to render fine mostly, the camera, key and fill light, rim, the sub model, and another light that is supposed to simulate the sun reflecting off the water. As you can see in the attached pic, quick render shows both the water plane and the sub, but when I render to file, I get either the garbage in the pic above, or the latest version of pretty much nothing as seen in the right panel below.

I created some water ala Chuck Babbage and wanted to place my submarine in the middle to simulate the sub on the surface. When I render the water by itself, it looks great. When I render the sub by itself, that also looks pretty cool. When I combine both in the chor, I get this: see attached. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening? I can't attach the file due to high cp count. p.s. I just did a render again in case this was a fluke, but I got the same results. Multipass is off, fog is off, the scene is in camera view, targa sequence is on, and the render takes about an hour - certainly long enough to also render the missing sub. Oh yeah, resolution is set very high at 1920 x 1200 so I can put the finished pic on my 23" monitor - if I ever get a pic out of this. p.s.p.s. Just did another render, this time in vga with same results.

Ross, first off, thanks for the reply.... Second, you're doing pretty good for someone who doesn't know (according to you )what you are talking about. When I get a chance, I'll play around with everything you mentioned. I'll let ya know what comes out of my experiment - hopefully not Frankenstein, lol. Thanks again... Eric

When you say animate the material in the Chor, what do you mean by that? You made some minor changes to the translate settings, is that what I need to do? Will uses -20 for the Y translate over 5 sec and 40 for the Z translate. Your settings are -0.4 for the Y and 0.79 for the Z. That's a whole lot of difference between yours and Will's, what accounts for the differences? If I knew what these settings did and how they are affected by the scale of the grid being used, then I might get a better understanding of the whole process. You also included a bumpWater material with an octave setting of 4. What does the bumpWater material do and what does the octave setting do? I tried to render the chor of your file and was amazed at the length of time it took to render just a few frames. After leaving the computer to render and coming back 15 min later, it had only done about 2%. Is there any way to change the parameters, maybe the density of the mesh or anything else to speed the render time? The model I want to use with this water simulation is already a time hog and I am beginning to think that together the two may take weeks to render. Stian, how do I embed the water map object?

I have gotten to the point of animating the water map as per tut, but only get a couple of seconds of choppy movement on the displacement map, not the smooth rolling motion in the tutorial clip. The tut is written with v.10 in mind and does not translate exactly into v.11. I am missing something, somewhere and can't figure out what. Can someone please help me figure this out? I was able to do it once, but am unable to repeat it. Help. I'm going to upload what I have in the WIP section. If anyone can look at my file and get it to work, I'd be ecstatic. Eric Water_Tut.prj

John: You are a master at putting rough ideas into quick presentations. Your mind must always be going 100 Mph. I'll check out your file and try to apply if it's the look I am trying to achieve. Will post a little later.

If I wanted to make a sphere about 6 feet in diameter and wanted it to radiate a light or glow for several feet in all directions (like a giant lightbulb with volumetrics turned on) how would I do it? I want the falloff to be further out than "glow" can provide. Any ideas? In the pic, you'll notice that the light projection is coming from slightly in front of the dome (klieg) I want the light projection to come from all around the dome.

This is a 9x multipass render. The focus is set correctly, but the results are out of focus and jittery. What am I doing wrong besides everything?

I am playing around with spotlights (klieg) and the source they come from. I made a box with a small translucent dome in the front of it. Inside the box I put a telephone - all for experimentation purposes only. In an action window I put a "bulb" light source in the dome and a klieg just in front of the dome. The klieg has volumetrics turned on to see a nice beam coming from the box. The illusion is to make the viewer believe the beam is eminating from the light source in the box through the dome to the outside. The dome has glow turned on. When I do a Q render in the action window, everything looks pretty good - the telephone can be seen throught the translucent dome, the bulb on the inside of the box is seen illuminating the telephone and insides, and the klieg is sending a beam away from the box. I thought, not bad, let's do a render in the chor. In the chor, I turned off all lights except the bulb and the klieg. When I render, the dome it is very dark and hardly shows any light coming from the inside. I then turned the transparency of the dome up to 100% - not diff. Then I cranked up the intensity of the inside light up to 800% with hardly a difference. Turning volumetrics on the bulb did not do the trick either. Zooming in on the dome gave the klieg beam some unwanted steps too, and the beam has lost the blue tint I gave it in the action window - see pic. What do I need to do to make the inside of the box come alive with light as seen through the clear dome. This is for my submarine model.

As my soul gets carried off into the great unknown....I ask myself....were there more shooters on the grassy knoll? Could a man really survive the radiation levels of the Van Allen Belt? ...Will the Babbage water tutorial legend ever be affirmed?..............Wait, I see a light.......I'll have the answers soon..........drifting out of sight and mind.

Thanks. The glass is actually a dome - I would like the effect of the light radiating out of the dome into the water. At this point I have a bulb right in front of the dome and a klieg just outside the dome. This is not giving me what I want. The bulb does a nice job, but the klieg can't follow the curve of the dome and looks just like what it is, a flat light source just outside the glass dome. Not what I am after. You were right about the weird beams being caused by the klieg inside the glass dome. I was hoping to eliminate the flatness of the klieg by putting it inside the dome. Still not getting it right. I spoke too soon. In the action window, the light renders pretty good, but in the chor, it has some more problems. The attached image shows what I mean. These are two separate images, the top being from the chor, the bottom from the action window. This should be easy, why am I having so many problems with a simple light????

Ok, if someone is not going to show me how to get the Babbage tutorial to work on V.11.1, then I am GOING TO HOLD MY BREATH TILL I TURN BLUE!!! I mean it.....I really will, you know......not one single breath.....it'll be all on your shoulders....blue I tell you! . . . . Ok, I'm starting to hold my breath now............... . . . Whimper, whimper.....please someone save me......I'm starting to see stars....it's getting so cold and dark....gasp.....choke....................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhhhhhhh!

I have a klieg shining out of the side of the sub that casts these wierd beams. I just want a smooth diffuse beam. Tried rendering with multi pass and without - both show same funky beams. Tried volumetrics on and off, no difference. Anyone? There is also a plain bulb in the wheelhouse which is not doing what I want. I want the bulb to dramatically illuminate the inside of the wheelhouse with a good amount of light shining through the bulb windows but not through the rest of the hull. Any suggestions?

Thanks for pointing that out. I was so happy to have gotten the spiral down, I didn't notice the direction of spin

Thanks guys, I got the spiral down with the duplicator.

I read somewhere that there is a way to make a spiral, kinda like a screw. Is there a plugin for that or an easy way to do it? See the pic for what I am trying to accomplish.

It makes sense, thanks Hoggy!

Switching to Open GL seemed to help. Thanks

Too much white.

Gerry: The pic is more of a sample to try and show the problem. My model is the Nautilus submarine of Disney's 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. I am trying to find the best way to decal the main hull. The rivit patterns are very unique and specific across every section of hull. I can't just take a decal that has steel plate material with rivits on it and stamp the whole sub. Sooo, I think the way I have to proceed is by selecting sections of hull, flattening the section, and then taking a screenshot to paste into photoshop. Once in photoshop, I have to increase the image resolution and paint what needs to be in that particular section of hull. Once that's done, I have to import the pic into AM and apply it as a decal. That's where the decal is supposed to be pinned, but it is never where it's supposed to be. I am just guessing on most of this and have no idea if this is really the way to go. Never done this before. Let me show you a sample of what I have and where I want to be.

Here is a screen capture of my decal when I hit recall position on the stamp under the decal heading. I've read posts that when I hit recall, the stamp is supposed to line up where I had stamped it. In this shot, they obviously don't line up, but when I render on the model, the decal is where it's supposed to be. Note: I did not create a pose when I applied the decal, I did everything in the eaction window per William Sutton. Second note: I did increase the image size in photoshop also as per William Sutton, although I don't know if that has any bearing. It also confuses me that when I increased the image size in photoshop and then imported the image into AM, once I replaced the blank image with the newly painted one from photoshop, it fits on the model in the original scale. Does AM scale it according to the stamp? I feel like I am close to figuring out this decal business, but I am not over the hump yet. Please give me some feedback.