Thomo

Yes I get this as well. Below are my export settings which work. https://www.dropbox.com/s/lfo0t5lni9ed60b/FormZ%20export.JPG?dl=0 Failing that you can try running object doctor on all your objects prior to export. Failing that I find .obj export solves the problem.

Wow that's awesome, well done! Love to see it sometime.

Ahh Ok. I was reading TIP as another anagram. :blush: Thanks for clearing that up.

I gotta admit I reckon you have baffled me on each of those anagrams. Ok EIZ is easy enough. But....? Is this a question or an answer? Geez I'd hate to be a neewbie on this topic!?

Terragen. Makes HDRI lighting maps as well as everything else Worth looking at.

Ok so what is the DOF shader used for? The graph doesn't make any sense. Or does it? Yes we do have DOF from camera to subject to background. What about foreground, to selected mid-field focus to background. So "fog" is THE answer? Another render pass yes? You've got me stumped.

Depends on the models you need (people, cars, accessories, trees etc etc?). Some are free some you pay for. OBJ import to EIAS works fairly well. (beware of the ambient map and dissolved geometry). Seems EIAS skips bump maps though. I don't know, maybe original export!?!. Not my area of understanding. Cars: Humster3d.com. No maps (unless high quality choice for some) but excellent quality. Furniture Modern: Designconnected.com. Mapped but can be flukey. Mostly very good. People: Humanalloy. (just wish there were more). XYZ. seem expensive Trees: Xfrog I use because they have Aussie. Heaps others out there. http://archive3d.net/: heaps here but 3ds. Can keeps UV's through polytrans. Deeper you go, older and lesser quality. turbosquid.com: on the improve. Negotiate on price. Staff / team really good, suppliers / providers.. all walks of life. OBJ. import. hierarchy: merge all separate by: material swap YZ? depends Best regards,

Yep it is completely different than FMZ 6. FMZ 7/8 is easily faster than SKp as a design development tool once you get used to the new workflow commands. Quite honestly there is no benefit to using SKp above the current FMZ, once you use it correctly. It's a bit (a lot) different than FMZ 6. Then on top of all that you have many more tools and much, much more flexibility. I have used FMZ since V2.? so I was a stickler for it up until V5. Took me ages to take the drop to FMZ 7. I was using SKp for fast design development, push/pull, and FMZ V5 for scene development like you. FMZ 7 does all that but better than SKp now, IMHO. Took me 2 weeks in the "deep end" of FMZ 7 and now no looking back to SKp. All the SKp tools and many many more options. Just my 2 cents worth. :-)

BTW Burney, FormZ techs say that Collada .DAE is the best conversion between SKP and FMZ. You have to use 32bit FMZ for the export because 64 bit doesn't have DAE export. You can model in 64bit then open your FMZ file in 32bit for export to .DAE. It worked well from FormZ for me, no where near as well as Polytrans. The model looked good in SKP but was really slow regen etc. Not a "true" SKP model. But it was editable and clean. Robert at Polytrans thought this was not a real solution though. Might help.

Hi Tomas, Yes I will export some stuff later tonight. I have an architectural model in SKP at the moment. I'll repeat, Robert at Okino has some very interesting insight into Sketchup. Basically it was never intended to be a modeller, as the name implies. But it took off, then Google bought it and has now sold to Trimble so looks like it is here to stay. They do admit themselves it has misgivings as a "real" modeller. FormZ has taken the philosophy and made it real. My opinion. I'll pink a lost later. Cheers.

Polytrans runs on Parallels no problem. Might be worth considering. It may even be worth reading the information regarding Sketchup export / import on the Okino website, good information. It seems Sketchup has it's nuances the way it models. IE no vertices. I think a lot of people have problems exporting and importing unless via a specific plugin.

Thanks Tom. I mean that having the validated fact to simply swap out textured models after making changes to them in FormZ was very useful. Some of those models had lots of groups so not having to re-texture them after making changes made the work flow so much faster. Invaluable means extremely useful; indispensable. Sorry for any confusion. Happy days.

Hi, Thought I would post a couple of recent renders for any comments. These were for a furniture retailer's brochure. Pretty basic office furniture in terms of the desks and cabinets. All modelled in FormZ along with the chairs, scene clutter sourced from various places but tweaked for .fact export to EIAS. Validated fact file replacement invaluable. All very fast to render with photons and HDRI outdoor reflections and lighting. Fake iges lights with spot light gobos. Thanks in advance for any feedback. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3sv4jaq5vcuakwz/AAAG5UU37JY-Eku1UW4GCzlGa?dl=0

Hi Michael, You could try Meshlabs (Mac and PC) as a go between from Rhino to .obj into formZ. I've had some surprising success with this, especially keeping UV's intact. Its free. Polytrans (PC only) seems by far the best but it costs. If you want to know anything contact support at Okino and I'm sure Robert would be straight onto it. Polytrans has got me out of all sorts of problems. Even with Max files. That way you could still use Rhino and get it into EIAS as you like.

Hi, I have been down this path very recently. The very best way is through Polytrans. It has a sketchup file format import and export. Robert at Okino was very helpful with this. So you could open your sketchup file in Polytrans and save out as a fact file directly. Everything remains intact. You can even rearrange your hierarchy with Polytrans to suit your needs. Okino have been on board with Sketchup from early days and their import and export is flawless. I've recently been working on a very large project that had to end up as a sketchup file. I worked in another modelling program and exported as VRML2 or Lightwave into Polytrans. Exported to Sketchup and the model was perfect. As Robert at Okino stated, the sketchup forums are loaded with false info regarding import export. Hope that helps

Brilliant!

Yes looks really interesting. How do we get a look at the film or part of? The link to Atom comes up 0 with his name search. Did you find any reference or see other than the stills Tom? Thanks

Taken me this long to come back to this. Where is "fog" in the layers shader. I can't see it. Sorry but is there something I'm missing? Can I get the "sweet spot" with this? ie: out of focus in foreground and background, middle ground in focus? Any help appreciated. Thanks

http://www.hdrlabs.com/news/index.php I found this to also be a very informative site. Buy the book, it covers everything. Michael, IBL sets or sIBL's are a collection of; environment map, reflection / refraction map, and backplate. All derived from the .HDR image. The HDR is a "layered" single file containing a range of exposures. From white to black. (but not as we know white and black on paper).. We can capture more and the human eye can see more expose range than can be put on paper. So if you download the hdrlabs free software, you can put an hdr image into it and it will produce the collection of images as stated above. (environment map, reflection / refraction map, and backplate). Plus if you want, it will produce a colour correct sun. That's your sIBL file. You can adjust maps so no sun is needed, but they must be really good maps. You can't really just use the same HDRI for all the slots, they need to be altered to suit (lot's of explaining why to be inserted here). The hdrlabs software does it for you. The software only runs on WIN but of course the maps it produces are fine for MAC as well. So then you bring the sIBL (through environment) into EIAS and you have everything in the correct "slots". .env in the HDR slot, .ref in the raytrace global slot, backplate (,jpg or ,tiff or ,tga.. up to you) in the rotoscope tab and a colour correct sun as well. These are all linked automatically. Go to the texture tab of any of the maps and rotate to you desired position. Most good maps will have the sun orientated correctly. Go to a top view and rotate, the line points to the sun. You'll see the map rotate in the camera view, and all other maps will follow. That's the basics of it. "Tuning" maps can be done in the "special tab" of the texture window for any map. I don't do this very often, I prefer to "tune" in photoshop, but it can be handy. Once you have a few sIBL sets in place you can chop and change your lighting in seconds. Literally a couple of clicks. All HDR has it's nuances so be prepared for some varying results initially. Personally I don't use the GI HDR slot as it does not bounce the HDR light. It looks pretty good though. There are other ways to use the HDRs to light other than the HDRI slot in GI. It is a journey but well worth the effort to get it working right. In my opinion EIAS does it well. And by the way, it flippin fast! To render. And yes it can be animated. And dare I say it. Working in Gamma 2.2 makes it a whole lot easier. hdrlabs website and book explains why. All the best. Just extending on all that. Another way to light with an HDRI is to map it to a sphere and use that as the light source. Instead of the GI HDRI slot, turn it off. So the sphere is a light source with a light "attached" but the map applied to it does the lighting. (keep the segments of the sphere / dome low as each is a single light source) Add a parallel sun to taste. Especially for shadows. (you can "tune" the HDR in photoshop to produce shadows very well but that is a lot of info to put in here. But.. it makes rendering very fast as there is no virtual light source. That is the "real" way to get HDRI lighting, bounced as well! Looks great when balanced correctly.

Ok so if I turn off "use photon maps" in the transparency tab that solves the problem. I set it to "never" for each problem group with a clip map. Is this the right thing to do? How will that affect the speed of using photon maps as opposed to not using them? I have a feeling I have been down this path before so I apologise Tom if I am repeating myself. Thanks,

Hi Tom, I have sent the file via email. Thanks for your help. Greg

I've got a tree, clip map for the leaves. End up with semi transparent "halo" of what the plane is. Does anyone have any success with this? I end up with "halos" of the plane sort of half transparent. If I turn off photons it is fine. Is there a work around or it just can't be done in EIAS?

Use 64bit Win OS too if you can.

Been meaning to respond to this for a while so here goes. Placer looks like the tool but it is not working under Win 7 only Mac. Spoken to Blair, tried his quick fix, no avail. Since I've changed to Win I couldn't tell you how it goes speed for rendering, speed wise opposed to proxy plugin. I have been using proxy. A 1m x 1m square of grass, 3D modelled. Has 4 different materials / groups for variation. Basically I have been stamping that around with proxy plugin, works well, kills rendering time though. Recently though I have been doing the same thing but just setting the grass to render as phong, much quicker rendering. Looks pretty good from a distance. But then for close up the other thing is I set it to be a mask and then lay in Photoshop or whatever a real grass field in perspective, on top, blend via adjustments to taste. Much quicker and in some ways easier to control. Haven't done it animated though.

Yes no problem. You could just use it as a rendering slave too.