robcat2075

Here is a thread the covers some of the issues about making a decal with transparency. There are also several possibly useful tutorials about decaling in the tutorial link in my signature.

You might get a more convincing result if you made several variations of the decal and put them on individual planes close together. Also, particle hair can make pine needles. Roger made an animation a few years ago that did this...

Give this a try... clip4903ApplyCookieCut.mov Happy Thanksgiving, John!

Cookie Cutter mode is easiest for that. The alpha transparency in the decal will also control the transparency of the surface.

So close, but yet so far!

Are you sure you used the one I posted, not your original? Mine will have the alpha channel. That won't matter, 32-bit will run on your 64 bit computer. I was using Photoshop. Photoshop Elements is a very stripped-down version. If it has a "Windows" menu see if it has "Show Channels"

Photo Plus looks like it has what you need! It has Layers, it has Channels and it can load/save TGA, JPG and PSD Try loading that PineNeedles.tga file and see if you can see the separate channels in the Channels Tab like they show on pg. 103. It should look something like this...

Happy Thanksgiving, John!

Along with some snazzy entries, I've heard about some sudden family disruptions and gotten a few "the dog ate my dinosaur" messages so I'll keep the deadline window open for a few days more so that no one has to skip their Turkey dinner to get their entry done. Happy Thanksgiving!

Channels in paint programs are typically labeled Red, Green, Blue and sometimes Alpha. If it doesn't let you access those ,it probably doesn't have channels.

You want something that can do "channels" and Photoshop-style "layers". It needs to be able to save in TGA format "GIMP" is often suggested but it is unnecessarily complicated if you are new to paint programs.

What do you have for a paint program?

One way to get the decal exactly right is to model one clump of needles such as you have pictured there, render that with alpha channel, then use that render as your decal. I'll also note that very fine lines tend to render better with multipass.

Yes you can do that. That is a frequent strategy for Cg detail like leaves. It is tricky to do with something that has such thin lines. i gave it a try here... PineNeedles.tga Apply that to a patch and set it to Cookie-cut mode.

A pretty much straight quote of "Siegfried's Rhine Journey" from Götterdämmerung by Richard Wagner... clip4907SiegfriedsRhineJourney.mp4

I have a video on re-routing splines which may or may not have useful advice for your situation.

Here are the two tests I have used with my monitor. Warning: you can not use these in a browser. You have to load them into a paint program with no color management on and no scaling. I have the monitor contrast and brightness set so i can distinguish all the bars in colorbands.png Then i adjusted the monitor gamma so that vertical bands in gamma-test-2.png match each other at 2.2 the original directions can be read here http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/ but don't use the test images in a browser. After i make these adjustments, the graphics and photos i encounter on the web look generally appropriate and full-range. gamma-test-2.zip

These images look generally appropriate on my monitor but still a bit darkish. The earlier tiffs were so dark that I couldn't discern much in them and couldn't see a difference in the rendering.

Here is a histogram of one of the frames. Is it really intended to just use the darkest half of the range?

The circle within a square is pretty much the classic situation where you need five pointers. Five pointers are best when they are fat and flat. Relatively little surface curvature and as convex a perimeter as possible. The CP that dead ends on a spline below the nostril will be a problem. Hopefully you are planning to extend that on to somewhere else. 😊

I have had a first frame problem previously... https://reports.hash.com/view.php?id=6914 However, the two frames I downloaded for comparison from your post appear so dark that I can't see a difference between them. Are they really supposed to be that dark? This brings me to another issue: Are we sure your is monitor set right? Here is a photo of my monitor displaying two of your frames along side a standard test image I downloaded. I feel like my monitor is within normal bounds because the test image appears generally appropriate and i can distinguish all but the darkest two shades of gray in the test bars.

A week to go! There is still time to put your entry together!

I did a little experimenting and found that an expression in the form of... AtFrame(GetFrame(),..|..|Translate.X) ... does create a "Missing a Right Parenthesis" error even though they appear to match.

David has a page of tuts on expression that may be instructive...

It is easy to get it wrong because the paths are so complicated. Our resident expert on expressions is David Simmons (it'sjustme). Drop him a message see if you can get him to look in on this.