Thomo

Hi Vic, Ok I have downloaded. "Collect files" is a good way to do this out of EIAS. I'll have a look re: my comments and get back to you. All the best.

Sorry Tomas. Ok so if you want to replace a texture on a group / object. If you already have the texture applied eg: 'brick 01.img.' It would be nice to edit that texture brick 01.img (in PSD or whatever) then save it as different file as 'brick 02.img.' Then when back in EIAS hit replace texture it would go straight to that existing texture. So basically it is the same as right clicking and using "show in finder / explorer"...that does go to the existing texture path! As it is now replace defaults to the last save / render path. Ok 2.7 didn't have 'replace' but it did always default the same texture path. So when working through a project and experimenting with textures, hitting replace texture takes you directly to that texture. Therefore an obvious place for the revised texture is in the same folder as the existing texture or close to that folder. As it is now my last render file path would be the default path when i try to replace a texture and in turn I have to navigate to the texture I want. Perhaps there is an EIAS preference setting I'm not seeing or my workflow is incorrect. Thanks again,

Hi Vic, Did you try to keep your HDR image as your skymap? I saw no need to change this to straight colour. Tomas is right, tolerance will help. There is another way to light it (a scene like that). Well two ways I have used / found. Firstly though, what is your Adaptive map for GI skylight? Please show us this. That would be a start. And yes there is a way to get nice shadows, we need more info for the project though! Best regards,

Hi Vic, Did you try to keep your HDR image as your skymap? I saw no need to change this to straight colour. Tomas is right, tolerance will help. There is another way to light it (a scene like that). Well two ways I have used / found. Firstly though, what is your Adaptive map for GI skylight? Please show us this. That would be a start. And yes there is a way to get nice shadows, we need more info for the project though! Best regards,

Ahh. ok thanks Tomas.

Ok so I have a lot of materials that I have setup for EIAS. Now I have new machine. It seems that the materials need the same "path" if they have textures (.img .jpg etc) included. That path has changed. What are my options? Open all my materials and re-create? I'm really not sure how to approach this.

When replacing a texture go straight to the file location. Not the last folder accessed from EIAS. Used to be able to do this in V 2.7.

How was it solved? Please let us / everyone know.

Good to hear you sorted it out. How did you go with the shadow problem? I see you still have GI sampling on in shadows. Did you try unchecking it?

BTW. Yes it is probably a material. A shader. Process of elimination will find it. Please let's know if you have success. Cheers

Hi Vic. Ok lets try to get what is happening. Tomas is flat out trying to make us famous I suspect! ;-) Can you dropbox the collected project? I can check if it renders on mine. What is your system setup and how are you rendering? Rama or just straight to camera? OSX. Win 7 ??. Happy to help if I can. pretty sure we can eliminate your problem quick smart. All good,

Turning off GI sampling engine in the shadows dialogue may fix the shadows. Using 2 in the Accuracy of reverse illumination will probably let you drop the primary rays down as well which would reduce render time.

Hi, I don't know what your problem would be but I too have just changed to 2 x GeForce cards on PC. From Mac. I was getting lots of crashes and jpegs displaying black. I have just updated to the latest driver, they seem to write a new driver every few weeks lately! The main problem I think is Open GL. My system seems a lot more stable after the new driver and adjusting settings specifically for EIAS within the GeForce display control. That is I had to add EIAS to the list and then "play" with different settings, the main one's being whether the app (EIAS) or the card handled the various settings. I am probably not making much sense or being much help as I don't know the ins and outs or actual reasons, but it has made a difference. That's all I know right now but if I discover anything I'll post. All the best.

Would this work from PC to Mac as well if I have plugins and shaders in the project? Would I have to replace the plugin and shaders in the collected folders with the appropriate OS version that Rama is running on? Thanks

Hello Vic, I use FormZ V7. Have used FromZ V5 for years but V7 is great. Takes getting used to but it is fast. Fac export can be tricky, I always have to triangulate the whole model before export, even if it is set to triangulate upon export. Exporting from FormZ as .obj works everytime though so I use that mostly now. What OS are you on? I do a lot of Archi work too and get sent Revit models a lot, I think it is only Win though. They seem to export well as .obj to EIAS as well. Good luck.

Yes that's true, and thanks. My issue sits where I would like to move pallets away from the camera view on my main monitor and have them "pop" up or remain open on another monitor. It does not help of course that I am using 3 monitors, 2 of which are at a lower res than my main monitor. So dragging the "working area" across doesn't really work very well and then having the third monitor vertically above the second doesn't help either. My point is the ability to move pallets away, onto another monitor. The issue I have is that even if I do that with the working area stretched across, having a different res second monito for this causes EIAS to not allow the ability to adjust the "window pane" size of any pallet. I also use FormZ and it has the same issue however they have addressed the pallets being able to be moved away from the working window. It is obviously quite a big thing to change or difference in OS of which I know nothing about to be honest. Yes EIAS is very usable under Win7, just not as flexible as under OSX. I really don't know what is involved with running, let alone producing a piece of software such as EIAS and also have it work on both OS's. It seems it is very difficult. So in essence Tomas answered my question and thanks for your input as well. I just can't justify the price tag on a new Mac Pro. So after 23 years on Mac I am now on Win7! A major change but I have just put together what I need for hardware and walked away with proper money to spend elsewhere. So far so good. We'll see. Thanks again

I have found the new Rama to be exceptionally robust. I use it over Amazon elastic computing with many numbers of slaves on a regular basis and it just works! Ans that to me is a huge test. Local farm works easily as well. What is your setup supernovax? MAc to Mac slaves? Mac to PC slaves, PC to PC slaves?? Input as to how you solve your own problems is always appreciated. If you have to rename your slaves, what are those numbers? Ports or names. IMHO if your network is setup right rama just works. Before the changeover ( to V9.0) Rama was a nightmare. It is not now. I find. And yes they did post it!! Even if it is not worth sharing...

Sorry wrong post

Ok thanks very much, I'll test it out.

If I collect the files for a project, how do I then ensure the new project looks for the new folder named textures? At the moment if I collect the files, opening the new project still uses the original texture location(s). I can think of a few ways to work around it but is there a quick ''proper'' way to do this? Thanks,

Can EIAS export objects with textures attached in .obj. OR can I export it with textures in .fac and convert it with something to another format such as .obj. Thanks

I think what you are trying to do is easily done. When you move a selection up or down you must hover right over the little ball. It should then let you put it above or below. So for eg. Select 7 then move it up but hover right over the little ball of 8. That should put 7 above 8. So on and so forth. It can be a bit tricky to get it right, otherwise it will become a sibling. Hope that helps.

All good. I'll send some more links if you like, when I find them again!

Hi Michael, Sorry I missed that topic on grass! I use 3D models (their is heaps on the web). Basically they are either a square or circle of actual modelled grass. I then proxy that around. It does increase render time for sure so you have to be a bit choosy how you do it. You can put higher poly stuff close to the camera and I use either polytrans or mesh lab to generate lower poly models for using further away from the camera. Or you can do displacement mapping further away from the camera. Sometimes I combine both model and displacement. I have also tried using random strips that are curved. They look good but EIAS has difficulty sometimes with overlapping clip maps that then produce black ''spots'' everywhere so you have to up the raytrace recursion and it kills render time. This would be really good to do if it worked well as it can make it really easy to make really good looking grass. I am yet to use placer for grass and I suspect it may be even better. I'll let you know soon as i am going to do that for a project I'm working on now. Hope that helps.

Yep me t00! Thanks for sharing.