gyroo

I confirm the screen blacking out when you move any window/control panel. Otherwise seems to work. The blacking out thing is 'broken' to me - I couldn't work long with it doing that all the time. (edit) I should add that I keep an old "snow leopard" system on a separate partition which I use for running EI on, so functionally no loss.

Went through this change a while back... I would recommend getting Modo. It's a sub-d modeller, as opposed to the nurbs one that you are used to but that actually makes it far more flexible and able to tackle a far wider range of modelling subjects. Just a superb bit of software, I do all my modelling for EI in there now. obj file exchange works well both ways. It's actually far easier to UV and texture in modo then import into EI. The only danger with modo is that as it's a good animator and renderer too - you might think of just doing the whole project there...

Cool, thanks for that. In my opinion it was the change to UB which started the decline of EI as so many plugins and shaders were lost then. Another round of that would not be good. DaveW

Yup, cross platform has always been an issue with EIAS. Pc and mac renders used to come out slightly different, maybe fixed now, not done it for a while. I've got a V1.0 colorphium for PC. email me at dave.woolard (at) me.com and I will send it. Can't help with noise factory. DaveW

Please be clear here as this is a deal breaker for me - Will current plugins and shaders work in V9? Most shader/plugin developers are long gone so there will be no updates made to them. DaveW

Hi Modo is my weapon of choice - I really like it. Also use silo some. For more techie nurbie stuff I use solid works, but it can be a pain transferring models. Rarely now use FormZ - mostly when EI is wheeled out. :) Dave

I'm in glasgow. Used to run a company using EI, now freelance and using EI less and less... but always good to know there's another pair of hands around if needed. Nothing atm. DaveW

If you are familiar with setting up multiple slaves on a single machine then doing so on multiple machines is only a small step further... The machines must be connected through an ethernet. It can be through a hub/switch/router for multiple machines or using a crossover cable for just one additional machine. The additional machines will have a different IP address on the network. Set up the slaves on the additional machines with their own IP addresses. Use different port numbers for multiple slaves in the usual way. On the master machine just add these different IP adresses to the renderama list and they will be picked up in the same way as the same machine slaves. Thats it. Good luck. I've run 16 machine renderama networks (the max number of connections on the ethernet hub. Data transfer retes became a bit of a bottleneck though. DaveW

The only way you will get a wireframe render different to the actual models wires is to fake it... If you have the model UV'ed then texturing the model with an image of the UV wires can be made to look like a proper wireframe if you play around with the material (maybe using the texture as a luminance map on black). Has the advantage that you can erase any lines you like in photoshop though. DaveW

Agree about gradient shader, but isn't it the 'nth light' option that would be better to align the falloff with the lights direction? Or maybe i'm reading this wrong and its actually coloured (not grey) shadows you are after then If you use buffered shadows for the light there is an option to pick the shadow colour directly. If you want to stick to ray traced shadows you could use a coloured ambient to fill the dark shadow with colour. DaveW

I think this was the older thread you were looking for.... http://www.eias3d.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=483

Nothing to turn on - my 6-core just works like a 12-core. The slow down was tested by timing a test animations total time to complete vs number of cores. Looking forward to the MP camera.... When can I have one :) Cheers Dave

Yup, i've got a new 6-core and I usually run 11 slaves when rendering. It could be 12, but i like leaving a little slack to leave the computer useable for other stuff too. I did some tests when i first tried this and the "extra" hyperthreaded cameras work at about 70%'ish of the speed of "proper" ones. Still worthwhile though. DaveW

Good links Richard, thanks. Rustboy one's good, may be a way of doing this. Met him a few years back, nice guy. Woody one seems quite primitive - a retrograde step from onyx, even tho thats many years old. Cheers DaveW

Got a windy tree to do, got an old treestorm plugin... Only works on V6.5 on an old G4 tho. Any suggestions on how to get a movement into V8? Range export doesn't work as the plugin only updates frame to frame when rendering. I could export each frames model manually (prob as seperate leaves/wood) and reimport as a model sequence, but that would be V time consuming. Suggestions welcome... Cheers DaveW