robcat2075
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Posts posted by robcat2075
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I forgot to mention that AM can also do the compositing...
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A one-pass solution is to use two lights, one Diffuse-only with the shadow darkness set as desired, and another that is Specular only with Darkness set to 100%.
For some reason the Specular light must be ray-traced and have more than one ray.
In this sample PRJ I constrained the Spec light to the Diffuse light so that only one needs to be manipulated in the Chor.
I also gave the Spec light Expressions to take intensity, cone width and width softness from the Diffuse light so those parameters only need to be set in the Diffuse Light.
Diffuse-only light...
Specular-only light...
Both lights ON...
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No, I haven't seen that happen before.
Try this...
On the first machine, save the chor out as a separate .cho file.
Then save the PRJ as a new PRJ with a new name.
Take both to the new computer.
Open the PRJ and import the .cho file into it
Do Embed All and save the PRJ with a new name.
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My limited understanding of how Shadow Darkness works is that it renders the shadow as if object were less than 100% opaque. So with 80% Darkness, 20% of the light is still passing through the object and you get 20% of whatever the specular effect would be with no shadowing object at all.
I'm doubtful there is a simple fix.
The easiest work-around is to model and light and test as you normally do, then at render time ...
Make one pass with your intended Darkness setting, but with the light's Specular Property OFF....
Then a second pass with Darkness set to 100% and the Specular ON...
Then in Photoshop or other image editing app that does Layers and composite modes, composite the two together with the top Layer set to "Lighten" (sometimes known as "Maximum"). "Lighten" chooses the brightest version of each pixel in making the final image...
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Steffen has marked this as "resolved" on the next update.
Thanks for pointing this out.
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Hurray!
As long as the Action got baked on every frame the interpolation differences between Quat and Euler shouldn't be a big issue.
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HI Charles,
That Option setting seems to be broken and broken back to v17 at least.
So, what to do?
First, If you just want three channels and no more, you want Euler, because Vector has X, Y, Z and Roll.
But either way, do this:
- Start a new Action with your character.
- Set the Key Skeletal Rotations filter and Key Model filter
- Do Shift-Force Keyframe, this brings up an option window. Choose "In all filtered channels" and press OK. This creates rotation keys on all the bone without needing to do it manually. Those rotation keys will be all Quat.
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Select the first bone in the Action, then in its Properties>Object's Properties,
on Rotate and choose Convert Driver To > Euler (or Vector if you really want that)....
5. Repeat step 4 for all the other bones
6. Animate your bones. They will continue with the interpolation that has been set.
If you plan to make many Actions with this character, save this Action out before you animate further. You can re-use it as a starter action that has your desired interpolation method already established.
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13 hours ago, robcat2075 said:
The horizontal axis is the lifetime of the particle.
The vertical axis is the property being controlled, in this case the opacity.
That percentage for "lifetime of the particle" refers to a percentage of the life that is set in the "Life" parameter a few lines up , "00:01:00" in the image above.
A keyframe that happens at 50% will happen at 0.5 seconds in the particle's life.
If you changed the particle's Life to 3 seconds, the keyframe at 50% will now happen at 1.5 seconds.
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The horizontal axis is the lifetime of the particle.
The vertical axis is the property being controlled, in this case the opacity.
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Try this...
1 make sure Curve View is selected
2 Use the magnify tool to squeeze the top scale so that 100% is visible
3 put values into "Over Life"
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Is this something all the sprites will do... be born at 100% and fade over time?
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HI Tom,
Eliminate the Keyframes for Opacity in "Sprite Test 1" and try keyframing 100% --> 0% for Opacity in "Sprite System"
The value in the Sprite Image ("Sprite Test 1") parameters changes the opacity of sprites currently being emmitted
The value in the System changes the opacity for all the particles at once.
Note that if you want each particle to have a fade or change over its own life regardless of when it was emitted, that needs to be key framed in the original material.
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You're not missing anything.
You can't keyframe volume level changes in an A:M Chor. It has been a requested feature but it hasn't happened yet.
Typically you will prepare your sound track in some dedicated editing program like Audacity and export a single file to use in A:M
When I've done a shot with several wavs that I had to move around to get them synced to my animation, I'll render that out to get the rough mix out of A:M, then plop that in Audacity and use it a model to make a version with the same wav parts but with the volume levels (and other effects) I really want.
I mute the original A:M wave, export my good mix from Audacity to a new Stereo wav and swap that into my A:M chor.
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Here is the same test, except that the EXR maps were rendered with 1 pass instead of 4.
One pass actually got a smoother progression of gradient values, even though the number of pixels in the decal is the same either way.
I can't imagine what math mishap would cause the difference. But there it is.
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This image compares seven different narrow grayscale gradients rendered to EXR and used as displacement maps.
These results roughly align with what I've read... the precision of floating point variables decreases as the value gets farther from zero.
From RGB 0 to RGB 1 the increments are so small that the stepping is nearly invisible, but from RGB 254 to RGB 255 the precision only allows a few steps.
I can't explain why these have uneven steps and don't match the previous examples. Possible difference... these were shot with an orthogonal camera instead of a perspective camera... ??
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This 16 bit floating point is turning out to be more complicated than I thought...
An EXR rendered with a gradient from RGB 64 to RGB 65 has 16 steps instead of 8.
If the gradient was 192-193, we get 2 big steps and 4 small ones...
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Edit: the side discussion of displacement effects has been split off into its own topic at...
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One of my false memories from childhood is the Ajax commercial with the White Knight who got your clothes "whiter than white".
But it never really said that! Ajax is just "stronger than dirt."
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If I render a map from the patch with a negative light on it, that creates data for blacker than black... negative numbers. Something the TGA version can't do.
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I just get a blank page.
Lets turn on the @Jason Simonds light!
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Now this is interesting...
I took the single-patch rectangle and lit it with one very bright Kleig light set to 100% width softness and rendered that with no other lights on it to a TGA and to an EXR.
If you load and view those images they look like the top frame, below. It looks like the light has very quickly clipped out to full white in the middle.
When I apply those as Displacement maps we get the result in the lower two frames.
The TGA version on the left shows that the gray values reach "white" and go no further. But the EXR version has recorded values that surpass white and create displacement above and beyond what the TGA map could do.
This shows that A:M displacement is able to interpret EXR values beyond 1.0. If we could make maps with those extra values we could probably have smoother displacement effects.
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[Edit: This side discussion has been split off from topic AMC Gremlin]
Investigating further...
Here is a comparison of displacement effects:
First with a Gradient Material set to transition from RGB 128 to RGB 129 and Displacement set to 100000%
Second is that gradient rendered to a TGA and used as a Displacement map
Third is that gradient rendered to an OpenEXR and used as a Displacement map
The Material is able to calculate an exact value for every pixel between the 128 and the 129 levels, creating a perfectly smooth slope.
The TGA map, as expected, has one stair step from 128 to 129
The EXR has 8 steps. EXR uses a 16 bit floating point format to store values, but it maps our 0-255 range for black to white to -1.0 to +1.0. From what I read about 16-bit floating point numbers, there 1024 possible values between 0 and 1 (and thus, 2048 between -1 and +1) which matches the result above , with 8 steps between our 128 and 129 gray values.
So it seems that A:M is capable of rendering finer displacements, but EXR doesn't store the finer values needed.
According to OpenEXR docs, EXR can have 32-bit floating point data. Maybe there is an easy way to get A:M to write those?
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Shadow darkness shouldn't pass specular
in Animation:Master
Posted
Yes, i think not using partial darkness at all is best. I avoid it for any "finished" work because it creates painfully flat shadows. It's really just a cheat left over from the stone age.
Ya know... you can animate that Global Ambience Intensity setting to be higher when the camera is in the train car.
But for these interior shots you are doing, even more satisfying results could be had with radiosity. I doubt the render times would be much more painful than the 100% AO times.