Thomo

Depth Pass! Where is that in layers shader. Am I missing the key ingredient to true DOF in EIAS? Please let me know about this one! Thanks in advance.

I started typing and realised this was an old topic but here goes. I have used Turbo Squid for years and I find their models expensive and unreliable. Unless you pay top dollar. The support is more helpful nowadays but I have had 3 refunds in the last month or so. Satisfying but doesn't get the job done. Plus most of the models on there are available elsewhere. For furniture (top notch). http://www.designconnected.com/ For fittings this one is great (there are others but you being Aussie!): http://www.yepsketch.com/ For everything (not so reliable always and only 3DS) http://archive3d.net/ For Cars (really good and affordable. They custom as well.) http://humster3d.com/ Always obj. UV's etc are all good into EIAS V9. V8 EIAS. The only way I could get 3DS UV mapped models into EIAS was via Polytrans. Make sure you check the 1 to 1 scale on export. Then set UV space in EIAS. That's in 8. 9 does it fine :-) You could also use Mesh Lab. But free EIAS 9.1 would be the go. Mesh Lab is really good for poly reduction. It's free and works well. Keeps UV's in tact as well. Imported mapped models like trees etc., reduce the polys and still export with UV's in tact. Polytrans does it too and is pretty bullet proof if you can check all the correct boxes!!

Hi Michael, These look really good. Pretty cool to do it in your ''spare'' time! Are you using HDRI maps on the sphere and / or raytrace tab? sIBL's? I can see you are getting that ''dirty'' effect under the eaves, is that a map.? That is difficult to control if it is not. I have had some success with using the sphere just as luminance and any diffuse map. Not as an object light! Still get the parallel light bounce etc and it renders much faster (and handles more polys). Same set up but different balance between sphere and para light. (without the calcs of the area plane lights for the sphere) of which there can be a lot. Granted it is a ''cheat'' but setting layer shader for masking gives you back what you lose! Especially in PS or AE. With much faster output. I am still a believer in Ambient Occlusion pass as well but that's me. I hate to say it but you do need 3D grass. One way or another. Proxy or placer make a huge difference for this. Nice transmission on the trees though, looks good. Now we need some shadow colour control on the para lights. :-) Very nice work though I must say. I must have missed this post while on a break.

Hey Steve, I find it a lot more responsive with lots of polygons. Moving around the scene with lots of trees etc. Before I was switching on and off a lot anything that was high poly. now I don't seem to have to. Working on windows is a bit of a change though in EIAS! Multiple monitors is a pain, same with FormZ 7. Still really testing things out though.

I too was looking at a major upgrade to the Mac Pro. I've been waiting since the first announcement that the release would be later this year (2013). Turned out to be December. (that's the end of the year!) Only to find that March 2014 would be the soonest I could possibly even consider owning a Mac Pro. Right at that point I was confused or if I was disappointed, just peed off. Then it turns out it is going to cost.. a lot! There is a fair bit of speculation as to what can be done on the upgrade side of the Mac Pro. It would stand to reason that it should be easily upgraded. But is it? I don't think anyone knows since not too many people have their hands on one. I think at this point only ram is interchangeable. I have read and researched this to the best of my knowledge. I've bought quite a lot of Mac Hardware for my work over a period of years. But I'd say I have to see it before I would pay out between $6000 - $9000 before I'd own it. I was stuck at a turning point where my software had out grown my hardware. It happens visa versa from time to time. After 25 years on Mac I thought I'd give Windows 7 a try. I went out and set up a box with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX760 GPU (that, ironically, works in the old Mac Pro!) And wow! Now EIAS is responsive. $285. New, Cuda (a bit) etc. I'm yet to team that up with a CPU of my choice. I've attached a link to an interesting article below re Mac Pro. The highlight of interest for me I have also inserted below. These are just my thoughts so far. Frankly I hate Windows but when it comes to bang for buck I'm not sure apple Mac Pro is it. Yet? Who knows, no one has one!! http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/reviews/creative-hardware/apple-mac-pro-2013-review-with-benchmarks/ Nvidia graphics cards as AE’s ray-traced renderer (which delivers the best results for 3D elements) is only accelerated by graphics card through CUDA. Those with AMD graphics are at an immediate disadvantage, as the ray-traced renderer has to join all of the other tasks being worked on by the GPU. "This meant that the Mac Pro took over four hours to render a scene that a top-spec MacBook Pro (with an Nvidia GeForce GT 750M graphics chip) chomped through in just over an hour. The same scene without the Cinema 4D content took over an hour (versus just seven and a half minutes on the MacBook Pro). Adobe says that it can't create a version of its ray-traced renderer that’s not tied to Nvidia hardware, as it's been created in scratch using CUDA. However, the company says that "the ray-traced 3D renderer has a rather limited feature set compared with the 3D capabilities of Cinema 4D (now included with After Effects), which does not depend on any specific GPU technology at all". Though as we mentioned, Cinema 4D is only tapping one of the cards."

What does EIAS use for normal maps. DirectX style or OpenGL style? I'm trying out filter forge and it is asking me the question. Help appreciated.

When collecting a project did there used to be a choice for "yes to all" if a duplicated file was found? I don't remember having to choose to overwrite duplicated files every time. Some big projects I have lots of repeated files, especially textures. I don't know if this is the right spot for this topic. Thanks

Hmm I see. That I did not know. Probably should be something that is mentioned somewhere though. mac V PC etc. Thanks Tomas.

Hi, I'm new to using EIAS on a windows machine. I have 3 monitors and would like to spread the palettes etc. onto different monitors. I can't seem to do this as I was able to with OSX. EIAS seems to be "locked" to its own window. I can drag the whole of the EIAS window across monitors but this does not work due to my monitor config. Am I missing something? Thanks,

Hi Tomas, I can't delete the duplicated, they select together. I select 1 world or any duplicated group and it auto selects the other. All I can do is duplicate the selection (which selects both of them at the same time) then it produces only one copy and then delete the two "old" ones. I'll try what you suggest as well, it will take time as my project also has lots of proxies. I will get back to you about this as I understand you need to find the bug. Thanks again,

This just happened to me today. I did nothing to cause it. Quit out of the project as usual, came back to it 2 hours later and opened it and there was 2 worlds! It does have an effect BTW. 2 suns, 2 lighting spheres, two raytrace reflection/refraction maps makes for big problems! You can't turn one off either as they seem to be linked together somehow. It is also a big problem when you have to export a lot of models into a new project and start again. I can't reproduce it, it just happens for no apparent reason.

Looks really good Steve, big improvement! Without seeming picky. I think the "timber" laminate texture is not tiling well and with a high quality map on it would look great. The translucent screens also need to cast a bit of shadow as well. Thanks for sharing.

Do you have the correct Rama open? If you EIAS out in V9 it wont show up in 9.1 Rama. Only in V9 Rama. Vise versa as well I think. Just a thought, maybe that is the problem.

Thanks very much for the positive feedback. My apologies for not responding. I am in Thailand currently and we just got hit by a massive storm the night before last. Big clean up and only just got the power back on 2 hours ago! Yep there a quite a few more Tomas! I'll get hem together and send them up asap. Couldn't have done any of these without your help my friend! EIAS is a rock solid tool now. I am really enjoying learning (and understanding) new methods. It's great. Thanks very much also Richard and Alberto. I'm humbled coming from yourselves. Best regards and I'll be back in touch after a day or two of drying out.

Hi, A few recent projects with EIAS. I'd be happy to hear any comments and views on these. Many thanks. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ql0nuc163dz4ylv/EaDjA7VNUL

Plugins for EIAS. Northern Lights. Proxy is another company, Plugins EIAS, can't remember right now. Someone else here will know. All the best with it all.

Hi Vic, I use a lot of Xfrog trees. I haven't used any speedtree. Although I have used also a lot of Archmodels grasses and trees. I can say there is a difference between these two models. IT seems that as things develop the old models on the providers sites do not get up dated. That is to say that the mapping is "better" on the newer models. The ones you get for free are often older. Xfrog have tried to be specific about the species and regions of trees, for me in Australia the Oceania packs are good mostly. I don't see much updating though so I'm not really sure where they are at for the future. Speedtree I believe you can make your own, as you can with Xfrog. It really depends on how you are using the tree models. They do add to render time for sure. However proxy plugin I use a lot to place trees around, seems I can use a lot and not crash EIAS with that plugin. I'm about to try placer deposit which I bought but I am not sure how it will match up yet. I am assured it is a "proxy" on steriods! So if you are using any of those models you will need one of those plugins to be able to repeat (stamp) the tree model around. Rendering a scene with lots and lots of trees would probably be wise to use some "billboard" trees along with models. I got a tip here on the forum which works too. Put some trees in a selection set with just phong lighting / shadows and render the ones you need with GI. Takes planning but it makes a difference to render time. There are also other applications out there like Terragen which can set up your scene (with imported trees like Xfrog) which you can then render within and use as you backdrop / reflection / lighting etc. I haven't done it yet but I know you can produce HDRI from this. Let me know how you go. I must be honest, the Archmodels grass and trees just seem to work everytime. Even fine grass etc. Good UV's simple when imported as .obj to EIAS. Hope that helps

I just downloaded the Colt. Illegal here. Don't tell anyone!

99% of what I do is still images, however right at this point I'm trying to get an animation rendered with 3D trees. It is new to me with animation. Plant factory looks good. I really think we need a share library with EIAS. Making trees I don't want to, but I'll buy 'em or trade 'em! Can you do that? Buy a tool like Plant Factory and sell trees? Or is it still; you buy the tool and everything you make is yours! Only yours. Ala Onyx. I just can't grasp that concept. buy a tool, not cheap, make something. Can't sell it!! Xfrog trees have a selection of particular species throughout the world. They are good to a point, but same thing, support response was; buy it ,if you don't like it I'll give your money back. Maybe they have moved on, fair enough. I used Xfrog trees for this current project; still images and animation. In hind sight Onyx, which I put aside because it was polygon intense would have been a better solution. Clip map Vs polygon, seems polygon wins! Particularly for render speed and hence animation. Saul

Ok that's good to hear. With the clip map trees (such as Xfrog) you will see the shapes of the actual polys against a background or rotoscope map. The alpha channel will also be the shape of the polys so it is of no use. So you need to render another pass just as phong to get the correct alpha channel. Seems like a pain to do but is quite easy. You literally turn off any rotoscope in the camera and change the render window setting to phong. You are only after the alpha channel out of that phong render. Then use that as your alpha mask. Clips the trees perfectly! So usually with clip map trees I would render one image as full RT and GI, one as phong and one of the background image. I use a lot of HDR sIBL so matching the background to lighting, reflections, etc. is important. Hence the rendering of the correct background. You could put any background in you like of course. Thought that might help as well if you are getting into trees. best regards

Yep. I have three different still images split into 2 strips each, on 6 different computers. No idea which is which. I can tell which are pairs because of geometry count but no way of knowing which of the three images is which. I'm sure Rama used to do it years ago; Job name and file name. Rama master does!

Am I missing something or does the camera progress window not show you what file it is rendering? In Rama master it tells you the file name you have given the render but in the slave camera window it gives you none of this information. I have 3 different renderings going over Rama to 6 different slaves and I cannot tell which is which! Would it be difficult to add this? many thanks

I know that if you use clip maps with raytrace you have to up the recursion sometimes if they are overlapping planes. Clip map leaves on trees I get a lot of this problem, they just have black artifacts around them unless I step up the recursion. For clip maps I always set the transparency tab to raytrace and then in transparency settings use irradiance instead of layers. This speeds up clipping a lot. All that is from the Igors and Tomas. Thanks! Don't know if that really answers your question though.

Ok I've g0t this working fine now thanks to formZ support. Export from EIAS keeping transformation etc., as fact file. Import into formZ with texture maps; keeps the UV's. You will end up with a basic material on everything. Change this to a textured material, change to the correct map (doesn't load it auto). All set. Export back to fact, import into EIAS. Copy paste maps and materials. (I'm sure 'validate fact' would do this last part auto). I even reduced the mesh of an XFrog tree, quite a lot in formZ and the UV's stayed intact back into EIAS. Works well for what I need. Thanks,

I just got this back from formZ support. (Which is good news for me as I don't have renderzone. But am using V7.3 classic.). I'll let you know how I go. Hi Greg, With formZ 7 you shouldn't need RenderZone. (That is true with v6 and earlier.) Perhaps you should send us a small part of one of your files so we can take a look?