Thomo

Thanks ATV. this is exactly what I was after, very much appreciated!

If this is still a supported plugin for EIAS then, which seems it is, then the whole scenario is a joke! Are you waiting for another unsuspecting customer to come your way and buy Placer Deposit? By posting here I am trying to ensure you don't take people's money and run! Of course you can stay silent. But I wont! Give me my money back!

Hi, I will post a video Tomas, still working on a few things to get this "workflow" friendly. I did just realise I didn't mention another post on this forum that relates to running rama on another machine. I can't find it right now, it was based on a Mac but same principal. That is a key element in getting the rama file up onto the virtual machine and running it from there. Because you can't launch Animator on the virtual machine to render to rama. Nice and easy if you could! :-) Hi Adam, yes it is. I recently had to do an animation but did it through Studio max and Re-Bus renderfarm. Jesus wept was that an expensive exercise! Looks like a renderfarm is actually a money tree in truth! I have done, but not finished, some cinebench testing on Amazon and comparing it with some other people's data as well. Amazon rates very, very high. Higher than anything rebus offers outside of premium rates. (which I haven't tested, thankfully). I am still testing this of course but so far so good. Rama master is perfectly fine running from a basic virtual machine on Amazon and networking out to High end CPU slaves. One other good thing is that everything is off my machine in terms of file sending, receiving. I seem to get power cuts more often nowadays and having rama master running on a virtual machine alleviates any problems with an unintentional shutdown. Having said that I could run it from a laptop and rely on battery power but uploads via rama from my network is slow. Much quicker to FTP or Dropbox etc. all the related files in one hit. BTW, any Remote Desktop (Windows RDC) dropouts I have had in the past are gone now I am on Win 10. You need to use RDC to control Amazon EC instances. I know you're a Win user too. Hope that helps a bit and I'll keep posting when I have more to post!

Very, very nice. Was there much post work in that or is that pretty much straight out of EIAS? Thanks for sharing,

Hi Tomas, Thanks. That is what I have been using. Like I said I am new to this. I have downloaded the rigged model, walking for 24 frames. I now want to move the whole model and keep it walking for another 24 frames etc. etc. Just keep the same loop going but moving on a path. I know this sounds really simple and I'm sure it is but I don't seem to be able to do this.

Hi, I'm very new to this but I have had a look at Dave's tutorial but he doesn't explain how to animate a looping motion data set. it is an old tutorial. He uses an aXYZ mocap and rigged human model. I have a simple walking figure that runs for 24 frames, 1 sec. I want to set this on a path to basically walk around but it seems it is not as easy as it seems. I am sure someone hear has a very simple explanation and it would be appreciated. Thanks,

Hi, Been testing this for a long time now and it works very well. The setup described (above) is a bit outdated but a big thanks, only because Amazon has vastly updated their interface since this post. It's really quite easy to setup. Also monitoring and clarity of what is going on has vastly improved. Basically I keep an "image" (AMI) of a complete computer setup with EIAS rama and slave up on Amazon. This does cost. Around $1.22 per month. Depending on your storage (GB) amount. I can launch that image of that setup onto any machine that they offer at any time. As I type this I am running 4 x 62 cores at $1.55 USD each. (4 x 1.55). Once they finish, I terminate them and the cost stops. "Alarms" can be set to impose as well. The upload via rama from my desktop is the pain though. Fast transfer through rama via internet connection I am yet to find. Hence my other post to be able to collect files from EIAS, render to rama on a virtual disk and upload the disk image, run rama from another (free) virtual machine to the more powerful slaves (all on Amazon) and it is a complete virtual renderfarm. It does work, just organising EIAS to look for the correct "collected" files is the trick. I think I will just re-name my hard drive each time. Bit nerve wracking though! The speed up in transfer being by uploading to the virtual machine via dropbox or FTp etc. and downloading then running from the virtual machine. Thought I would post this for the reason that it may be a useful tip. BTW the way, a tip and tricks section on the forum would be handy! Best regards,

Thanks AVT. I understand. No it is definitely not low poly count. I'll setup an example project and re-look at it.

Thanks Tomas.

Yes I am aware of that thanks, but that is not easy and not a viable solution. I have textures and materials, thousands of them in varying directories according to their type. It would also mean zipping or renaming the sockets folder etc.. etc. Everytime time I render a project! Well not everytime but every project. Besides that a manual solution to a simple computer operation, that used to be available, is simply bad usage of time and resources. Once again thanks for the response.

Hi, I do a "collect files" in EIAS V 9.1. I want to then re-open the new project file and have it use all the models, textures, sockets, photon maps etc. from the collected folders. As it is EIAS still uses the directory path to the original files. This is really annoying. This prevents Rama running on a virtual machine because it cant find the paths to the files. Basically I want to collect the project and run rama from a virtual disk on another machine. It works fine for a project with no maps etc. EIAS used to always access the collected files as a priority if launching the new project from the collected folder. The original project file would still point to the original files It seems since V9 it doesn't. I can't launch EIAS on the virtual machine and make it find the files on launch because I can't put my dongle in it. Is there anything I can do, besides the obvious one of going through my whole project and making everything point to the new folders and then setting up a rama output file? I have asked about this before in V 9.0 but it seems nothing has been done about it. One additional thing. When collecting a project, if you were doing this repeatedly you were asked if you wanted to overwrite the old collected project. EIAS doesn't do that anymore it just creates a new folder within the original collected file folder. It was also a case before, that the project file when collecting would be named as you chose. Now it creates another project of the same name. Really annoying when you go into EIAS and "open recent" you end up with several projects of the same name to somehow choose from! Any ideas anyone please?

I cannot get bump or normal maps to behave correctly, particularly with straight lines. They always produce jagged edges. For example I want to use a basic line bump or normal map to recess some grooves into a wall. They always produce jaggy results no matter what I do. Has anyone got any ideas what I can do? Thanks,

Well it has taken me this long to get placer to even launch. It isn't doing anything now though. Below is a link to a project. See if Blair can get this working, then after that maybe the clip map problem can be fixed. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/elz0fbessmrfs0l/AAB-RrV3X7C8JROoIoQq2amQa?dl=0

Thanks Steve, hadn't seen that before. That will work fine. Cheers,

This is most likely a very Newbie question but here goes! How do I make a light "look at" a null object? I used to know with a camera, for another reason but can I do it with a light? Area light or light object. Thanks for any help.

Ahh! well there it is, thanks Steve. I have never had a crop set for that but yes there is a "cropped size" selection. Thanks very much, you live and learn! Cheers, You don't happen to know the shortcut keys for crop on off and edit crop on off by any chance? Thanks again for the response.

When performing a selection area to render in the camera window (as a test) to be able to repeat the exact same selection area for the next "test" so to be able to compare changes made with the exact same selected area image. I think this would be very handy Tomas for new feature(s) in EIAS. Thanks my friend,

It is a fair point supernovavfx makes but I'd be confident that the shading system is around for a long while yet. That makes a material resource still perfectly useful.

I agree entirely! Give and take nowadays. I understand your reason and underlying frustration. What would be your starting point and structure to follow? Suggestion. Perhaps a category on the forum. Lot's of things to discuss. - materials / textures / shaders (setup and optimization) - Gamma 1.0 V 2.2 (whY) - Bumps and Normals - Clip maps - lighting (setup and optimization) - photons - import methods for models (various apps). How to - workflow - Tips and tricks!! - Modern rendering - Collaboration And an easy way to post / access would be pleasing. Keep on it Steve, good thought. Cheers

Hi Kpow. Can I speak with you about a current project I have? PFTrack looks ideal. Drone aerial camera matching (done correctly) I have footage delivered. Any chance we could speak about a current project? Arch Viz fly over. Payment for work of course! Thanks for anytime you may have. Sincerely.

G'Day Buggsy! I'm still pretty keen to have a look at your light setup for the bedroom. 'tis ok not to share the file but just a few tips as to your which approach you used may move EIAS along in Arch Viz. Render times, photons, hdri, whatever. Swap out the purchased models for whatever 'cause the materials "help" as well. Anyway, thanks for sharing once again. Best regards,

Aww that's ace! very very cool.

Yes you can drag a marquee over all the items in the Project List and hit [Command + Shift + H] and all will simultaneously hide. The Project list should scroll auto when you are marquee selecting.

Very handy great find, thanks for sharing. No problems yet for me using lwo

Hi Tomas, Yes it runs, sometimes, but it has soooo many bugs. It crashes more than it works. It should not. So it is a tool that is extremely unreliable, untested and still being sold. With no one willing to fix it! Especially those that are STILL selling it! I am not in favour of buying anything that does not work (except on the simplest of projects) and then being told to find the problem myself. You and I both know that I bought this because it said that it worked with EIAS 9.1. Windows platform. Following that I am still posting, with others, that it does not work as it should. I will happily test it and probably eventually find a solution that eventually gets fixed by someone one day. AND then I will pay for it. In the meantime I will repeat, don't sell it if it doesn't work. I feel like I am getting "dicked" around here. For well over a year. I bought it, it does not work, I want my money back!