robcat2075

Don't I want to see a uniform gray scale? Here's a render I get if I set the gamma to 2.2 The step up from black is zero to 80. How could this possibly be used as part of a linear workflow when it's not recording linear values? Shouldn't an image used in a linear workflow have a 16 there? On my monitor with the video card control set to 1.0 the step from black looks way too big. If I set the card control to 2.2 it's even worse. It's impossibly bright. But that image looks normal on everyone else's monitor? With my video card set to 1.0 I get 2.2 for the left bar, about 1.9 for the middle and I can't tell on the right. With my Video card set to 2.2 I get about 1.0 on the left and middle bar and can't tell on the right.

After some more fiddling, I'm finding that the brightness and contrast settings of the monitor have a lot to do with what gamma setting works At low brightness and contrast settings it was possible to have a gamma setting of 1.0 and see all 17 shades and have them appear even, but the gray bar and stripes gamma test chart isn't right at that configuration. If I adjusted the monitor gamma to be "correct" then the shades looked wrong. To much jump from black to near black. With brightness and contrast turned way up I can get to a place where all the bars are visible if I crank the monitor gamma up to 1.8. The gamma test chart also looks "right" at that point. The jump from black to near black still seem a bit big but not as bad as before. But if this is correct, I'd say there isn't much on the web that was made to be seen with a gamma corrected monitor. The forum is very pale shades of blue. Photos on websites have obvious noise in the dark areas that doesn't seem intended. There don't seem to be muck black at all in photos Even the A:M interface doesn't seem made for this. The difference between the white "play range" area and the gray at the top of the PWS is very slight now. I feel like I need sunglasses to look at my screen now. I'm sure it would be blinding if I ever got it to the point where 2.2 gamma was working.

That's not bad. I'd say slow them down and it will seem "bigger".

Tell me at which step I've gone wrong... - I decide to make a scene that appears to have 17 linearly stepped shades in it from black to white. - I make a scene with 16 lights, each set to 1/16 of full intensity, (the above scene, the one you suggested but with 16 lights instead of 4) - I render the scene to a file with A:M's Gamma set to 1 - The image looks right in A:M's render window. All the shades are visible and they appear linearly stepped; not crowded or stretched at either end. - I load the image into Photoshop (Color Management is off) and it looks the same as it did in A:M and sampling the image shows the numerical values are indeed linearly stepped from black to white. At this point I get out my jump suit and say "Mission Accomplished!". I created a scene with linear tools and expectations and it came out with both linear numbers in the file and linear appearance on the screen. ?? But based on what you said above I shouldn't get this result unless I set A:M's render gamma to 2.2. Or something other than 1. (If I use the "current Gamma" tool in A:M, that says my monitor has a gamma of 1.6. If I put 1.6 into the "desired gamma" box and do a preview render the result is obviously not right and over bright in the gray tones.)

Was this quicktime made on a Mac? When I try to play it it says "This file can not be found"

That was wonderful!

You didn't search on "clouds"? Here was my effort http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=322946

hmmm... When I render that test scene in A:M ( with the A:M gamma at the default 1) and sample those grays in Photoshop and they come out with the "right" numbers... is that not what is really stored in the image file? I turned off the Adobe Gamma Utility and then used my video card control panel to calibrate my CRT monitor. This brings me to a setting of ~ 2.2 If I then render the test scene in A:M with gamma set to 2.2 the result is WAY too bright with all the light grays crowded together. And the values for the grays in the image are not "right" anymore. What is the relationship between "desired gamma" and "current gamma" under "Preview renders" in the Options window?

That's the way it works for simple splines we make with the path tool. I don't know how splines A:M creates( like after you lathe or extrude another spline) identify that except that it probably copies the arrangement of the original spline.

The "Ease" property in the path constraint tells the object where to be on the path. If you leave it unset it automatically goes from 0 to 100%. You may want to key it to go from 100% to 0.

Very impressive stuff! Will you do the little seams between the skull plates?

That's a pretty good first pass. Food turns out to be hard to do. Fuddrucker's bankrupt? With a name like that?

Try holding the SHIFT key when you do the picking.

Four lights looked right , so to torture test the idea I did it with 16 sun lights set to 6.25% intensity. i also set the ground to 0 diffuse falloff so the light angle wouldn't be a factor. When I sample the numbers in photoshop, every gray has the right value. On my Cintiq, which is an LCD, I can see all 17 shades and they look about right. (My second monitor is a CRT, on that the black and near black look the same.) Here's where I get confused... This monitor ( the Cintiq) is not calibrated, not according to any gamma calibration chart i've ever tried on it. If I try to calibrate it with the Adobe Gamma utility, the setting that makes the chart look right makes the three darkest shades all look black. If I try to calibrate with the gamma utility in my video card control panel, it makes the image brighter and although I can still see all the shades, the jump from black to near black seems pretty big. My best viewing result is when I leave those at the "wrong" settings. The same story, with slight variations, if I try to calibrate the CRT monitor. So something must be wrong in my process somewhere. My monitors, A:M, Photoshop, the Adobe gamma control and/or my video card control. That's too many variables.

That looks nice!

Very cool! I suppose the green strip is the bumper?

That would be fabulous! If something appears on my wishlist, then i don't have it yet. You can change the thread title, if you edit the first post.

I did some more experimenting. I made a set of gray bars in Photoshop It has five bars filled with gray values from top to bottom of 255, 192,128,64 and 0. On the right side I added small intermediate bars. The red numbers are the value you'd get if you sampled the original image with the eyedropper in Photoshop. On my (uncalibrated) monitor the grays bars seem evenly distributed in brightness from white to black. The image also has a stripe of 50% transparency down the middle in the alpha channel. I exported that in five formats and applied them to white and black surfaces in A:M. The TGA decals render exactly as I would expect. The grays appear exactly as they did in photoshop and the alpha is handled as I would expect. If I take this render back into PS and sample the grays they are exactly the numbers I would expect. So far, so good? The JPGs also show correct grays. JPG doesn't handle alpha channels so the transparent stripe is gone. The PNG is much brighter in A:M than it was in PS. I've read that PNGs have a gamma change of 2.2 applied to them. PS seems to compensate for this when I reload the PNG into PS, but A:M seems to take the saved values literally and doesn't compensate. PS doesn't translate alpha channel transparency properly when writing PNGs so that is gone in the A:M decal. When I save an EXR image from PS it presents me with a dialog box saying it will apply the inverse of the gamma setting to the image. The default is 2.2. The decal with that inverse of 2.2 on it loads and displays much darker in A:M than the way it appears in Photoshop. If I save my image to EXR with that gamma setting changed to 1.0, the resulting decal displays with correct grays in A:M, matching the result of the TGA and the JPG. However, notice the 50% transparent stripe down the middle isn't correct on either of the EXR decals. I don't know if this is a problem with the way PS writes the alpha channel or if it is a problem with the way A:M interprets the alpha channel.

Yes. This is what you are supposed to see. So when I create a decal in Photoshop ( with my "Color Management Off") I'm working in linear workflow, right? And when I use that in A:M, A:M is working in linear color space, right? And when I render in A:M... I should leave Gamma>Value set to 1? To me that sounds like linear color space and this is what I've been doing all along and the results have looked right.

A spherical material might work well too.

Almost everything in A:M has "properties" Make a new model and it has many default properties you can see by selecting the model in the "Objects " folder and then looking in the Properties window. You an change those default props. ForEx, you can change the surface color from white to red or the surface transparency from 0 to 50% If you make a group in that model it gets default props too, but most will be "not Set". Group props overide Object Props but if they are "not set" they let the Object prop for that thing pass thru. If my Object surface color is set to red and a group on that model has surface color "not set" then the surface in that group will still appear red. But if the group's surfColor is set to green then the part of that model in that group will be green, everything not in that group will still be red. If I had dropped a Material on that object that set "surface color" to yellow, that would override the Object's red surface color but not the Group's green surface color. Any parameter set at the group level will override a parameter set at the object level, even in if it was a Material at the object level that was controlling the parameter. However, If I had instead dropped that Yellow Material on the Group, that would override the group's Green setting with the Material's Yellow setting. The part o the Object not in that group would still be its original Red color. That Yellow Material has properties too. If I go up to the Materials folder and edit that color setting from yellow to purple, the Group that has that material on it will change to Purple as will any other models or groups that have that Material working on them. if I click on the Material where it appears under the Group (really a "shortcut to") I will see properties in the Properties window that look just like the Properties I saw when i was editing the Material in the Material folder. If I edit the Yellow to Purple here it will only change the one instance of the material on this group. The original material in the Materials folder still has its original Yellow setting and anywhere else it is used it still makes Yellow. When we put that Object in a chor we get yet another layer of ability to over ride. When you "Show More than Drivers" you can see all the groups and materials the object has and you can fool with the parameters again in yet anothe set of property windows that initially look just like the property windows you saw at the group or object level. Why would you want to do this in the chor? Because in the chor you can change these settings over time. You could animate the material to change from Yellow to Purple to Green. You could animate a property that hadn't' been set at all in the object previously like the XYZ position of a material on a group So ... Objects have properties Materials have properties Materials properties override Object properties Group Properties overrides Material on Object properties Material on Group overrides Group properties You can change any of these in the chor, it won't change the original saved model or material. The different kinds of maps don't usually have priority over each other since they control different surface attributes. One exception is you can't have a displacement map and a bump map since displacement maps steal the bump map shading process.

Since there are no linear color space display devices ( not in wide use) doesn't this mean all your work looks "wrong" until you do that the last conversion? I have Photoshop set to "Color Management Off" which sets the "working space" to "sRGB". My 128,128,128 grays appear as proper middle grays in this set up. Is that not what I'm supposed to see?

Good looking lightning bolt! I agree that finding some way to make it pulse from the root to the tips is worth investigating.

If she has a prop it gives you natural reasons to not do symmetrical poses. And whatever the prop is it adds a hint of back-story to her. A cup of coffee, an ipod, a book, a microscope... any of them could be there and each of them would suggest something different about her and her monologue.

It's one of those benches they put at bus stops so you can't sleep on it. Looks cool, whatever it is.