robcat2075

To pursue the modeling angle a bit... Materials aside...there shouldn't be any reason that your proposed separate renderer couldn't work with A:M spline models directly instead of them having to be converted into polygon model files first, right?

Thanks, Yves. "Physically based" is not something I'm familiar with. What are parameters someone would need to be setting that don't exist in our conventional materials? Would you have to model anything differently? The shapes in your sample pics all look like things that could be made in A:M so that wouldn't be true, would it?

$995! Ouch. Well, I'm still on Windows 7 so I'm out of the loop anyway. Is that a piece of hardware? If it has "firmware" it must be hardware, right?

I forgot to mention that after you apply the decal, you need to set its Type in the PWS from "Color" to "Transparency" The effect of a Transparency map will only be visible in Final renders, not shaded mode.

MS Paint doesn't support alpha channels, the others I don't know about. To do it without alpha channels a transparency map can work: -Make your "window", set a surface color for it that you want for your letters, then set its Transparency to 100% -Make a decal like this with black background and white letters Apply that to where you want your text to appear. The white part of the decal will override the Transparency setting of the window and allow the surface color appear.

John, what paint program do you have to create decals in?

That would be wireframe mode. You don't have to switch individual lights. Make the one Pose for the set. One pose switch ... is all it takes. You're going to be switching something. Either the render method or the lights. Either way, there's going to be a button somewhere you have to switch.

Yes, I have seen rigger demo reels where they show the motions and controls they have built into to a model. As the basics of rigging bipeds become more automated I suspect the rigger skills in demand are the ability to deal with things that don't have generalized solutions like faces and unusual props and creatures. I believe riggers fall under the job description of TD (technical director) Forum member from times past, Barry Zundell, who went from a game company in Utah (Sapphire?) to Pixar and then to somewhere else would be an example. You might take a look at his blog for his insider info. It's unlikely a professional rigger has only rigging skills. I imagine they need to be competent modelers and functional animators to have built up a body of their own work to show. It's possible someone could fake a reel by pulling stuff off the internet but that would fall apart after the first audition assignment in an interview. Maya is a ghastly horror, but it's the ghastly horror most studios below the Pixar level are built upon so one would have to become proficient at it to pursue jobs that use it.

I thought I was ready to model a realistic insect but there were many details of this struggled with and wish i had done better on. This is actually a combination of a cicada that I had a specimen of to study, a Brazilian Tree Hopper which is known for the elaborate structures that grow on its head and a firefly. One of my aims was to texture it with materials rather than bitmaps.. On my Cicada I noticed that the wings have a cellular pattern that is bunched up where the wing joins the body, then expands to follow the curve of the front edge of the wing and ends perpendicular to the trailing edge of the wing. There is no material that will do that right out of the box but I figured i could apply a cellular material to a rectangular shape and then morph that rectangle with a pose into the wing shape and that woudl morph the material pattern with it. This clip show the Pose going from 0 to 100% I also used Render as Line on the front and back edges to make those more visible. WingMorph.mov I used a similar ploy to apply a cylindrical gradient to the not-cylindrical abdomen structure... AbdomenMorph.mov Here's a full HD with some additional development. The text is a screen capture from the online 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica. I stamped that as a color map and a blurred version of it as a bump map to give the appearance that the typeset letters are slightly impressed into soft paper. I also added a bump material to roughen the surface up overall. That is just barely visible in this HD render. (click thru to see full size) Here is a cross-eye 3D version with some DOF... And lastly, here is a final-to-wireframe clip that you can scrub back-and-forth on to examine the modeling. InsectFinalToWire.mov

I believe this may be a limitation of the shaded rendering process that tries to present a compromise exposure of all the light in the scene. The lights are so much brighter than everything else that the compromise exposure leaves everything else down at the bottom of the scale. For an easy work around, make a pose that will toggle all those lights ON/OFF. In the Chor set it to "Constant" rather than "Time Based" so you can switch it on or off on any frame you want and not be creating keyframes that you have to erase later.

Wonderful idea!

Note that it is Shift-6 that toggles Show Backfaces, not F6

SO- by global ambiance, that simply means the choreography setting where you select a global color or HDRI image... if I select a color and add a value, the scene becomes less dependent on lights but does NOT become more realistic... It's not simply choosing it... you have to use it right and for the right reasons.

"Radiosity" seems to be for cases where you need the color bounce from adjacent surfaces. For most situations that's not a major factor.. Global ambiance and ambient occlusion should be able to do most of your realistic shading needs.

I'm glad you're asking questions instead of leaving disappointed! Come back if there's more trouble.

Once again, we said your name three times and you appeared! Thanks for the answers, Yves! Can you think of anyone, any likely suspects, who might be engaged to implement this new, preferred method in A:M?

Heres' my look at it... clip3844JohnsBottle.mov

If they are still empty when it renders then it isn't just a problem of Show Backfaces OFF (shift-6) You're sure all the latitude and longitude lines are attached together, I suppose. If you want to PM it to me I'll take a look at it.

I can't think of any display problems I'm having anywhere, work book or not, except occasionally I will do a Turn and only a portion of the display moves. Usually Spacebar will fix that.

Yves' Cornell Box thread that discusses process and settings. https://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9803&hl=radiosity For a list of "radiosity" threads in which Yves has mostly appeared to answer specific questions do a search on... Find Words: radiosity Find Author: ypoissant

Yves has a radiosity primer thread on the forum. (Oh I see you mentioned that. I'm sure ti's still there.) I haven't used it in a long time but i recall being able to get good results by following his general process. I think it is more suitable for stills rather than animation.

Since it's still there after Reset Settings go ahead a submit a bug report. You could always cancel it if the problem disappears in v18n.

Welcome back to A:M, Ken!

In A:M... Help>Reset Settings There doesn't seem to be such a menu item in NR

Wait until v18n comes out and try that before you do a report. I have the beta of that and it doesn't appear to have the problem here. In NetRender it is possible to drag the dividing line between "Description" and "Time" to change the space allotted to each column but A:M doesn't have that. Does Reset all Settings change anything?