interstellar

Hi Everyone, Five clips from my "library" will be appearing in the latest episode of "Underwater Universe" on the History Channel. The clips show asteroids approaching and smashing into Earth; it's part of their explanation of psunamis. I don't know when the show will air . . . Except for my ZBrush asteroids, everything else in the clips is EIAS. Two of the clips feature the fiery/smokey magic of Dante (rendered with EIAS v6.5) Joe T

Hi David, I have a work-around which will save your rendered project even when it results in an Image file that is over 2 Gb. My work-around always worked with EIAS v6.5; I haven't had to use it yet in EIAS v8 with my Mac Pro but if Renderama v8 operates like v6.5, this will work. After Renderama stitches a file that is over 2Gb, it still saves the sequence of individual "img" files in the Renderama Jobs Output folder (the Renderama Jobs folder is in the EIAS8 folder). Let's assume Renderama has produced a 2.5 Gb Image file. First, you quit Renderama, throw the 2.5Gb Image file into the trash and delete it. When you restart Renderama, you'll see that your project is still in the queue in "Waiting" mode. Hitting Renderama's "Go" button will start the stitching process again. Let the re-stitching process begin but carefully watch the size of your Image file. When it approaches a size of 2Gb, quit Renderama. Actually, you start quitting Renderama when your Image file gets to about 1.7 Gb because Renderama reacts VERY slowly to commands when it is stitching! After Renderama has fully quit, rename the resulting file; open this file in After Effects and see how many frames it contains. For example, let's say it has 300 frames. You should now go to "EIAS8/Renderama Jobs" folders, open both the "Output" and "Control" folders and delete the first 300 files in each of these two folders. When you restart Renderama again, it will once again show your project in "Waiting" mode. Click the "Go" button in Renderama and it will once again start stitching your project but this time it will start stitching at frame 301. When Renderama has finished this second re-stitch, you'll have two Image files that are both under the 2Gb limit; these can be pulled into After Effects and set back-to-back in the Timeline. It is crucial that you rename your first re-stitched file; otherwise Renderama will simply copy over it during the second re-stitching process! This is a great way to rescue a big project that may have taken days to render and your client wants immediately! Joe T

Hi Paul, My trusty old G4 refuses to die; my mother-in-law still uses it for email! Until a few months ago, my renderfarm consisted of three G5's. That's when I bought a used octo-core Intel Mac for half its original price from my local Apple dealer. The render-speed of my Intel Mac is fantastic. It also occupies less space than my three G5's and it produces a lot less heat, which is a bonus if, like me, you work in a small room in a hot climate. In addition, fewer computers and less air-conditioning mean I am saving electricity. Still, I am keeping a G5 handy when I need to render with Dante. On the Intel Mac, Dante ceases rendering large numbers of textured particles because Camera runs out of memory. Once Dante is corrected I'll be able to fully retire from G5's! Joe T

Dear Tomas and Dave, It worked, and it was as easy as falling off of a log! Thanks again for your help. Joe T

Hi Dave, I haven't had the chance to break up my rock yet, so I tried your suggestion on a simple alternative. I exported and then re-imported an Uber-Shape cube into my project and applied the Fractal Shader to it. Then, I imported another copy of this cube and scaled it to half the dimensions of the first cube. I then made seven copies of this small cube and moved the eight small cubes so that they completely filled the first, big cube. Finally, I performed the "save/load" material procedure that you suggested. This did copy the Fractal Shader onto each of the small cubes but the shader did not have the same scale as it did on the first, big cube. Instead, when the scene was rendered each small cube looked like a small version of the big cube. In other words, I got the same result that I would have if I had applied the Fractal Shader straight from the "Shaders" folder onto each of the eight small cubes. Did I miss a step in the procedure? Thanks again in advance for your help! Sincerely, Joe T

Hi Everyone, I've "paged" through the manual but cannot find an answer to a question, so I thought I would post my question to the collective wisdom of our group. Using FormZ, I plan to "break" up a rock that has EI's Fractal Shader on it. Is there a way for the individual pieces to retain their section of the shader? Thank you in advance, Joe T

Hi Everyone, Here is part of a note I just sent to Tomas: *********** Success! I imported my asteroid model into ZBrush4 and, following your suggestion, I disabled "Triangle" in the "Geometry" Tab before I exported it. After converting it in OBJ2FACT, I imported it into EI. When it was imported with "Recalculate Normals" disabled, I saw the bad polygons. However, I imported it a second time with "Recalculate Normals" enabled and "Smooth Shading" set to 40. I did not see any bad polygons on it at all! I rotated it a dozen different ways and still I saw no bad polygons anywhere. *********** Tomas spent valuable time to help me with this. He bent over backward to look at my problem and he found the solution. Apparently, a procedure I had used successfully for years with ZBrush2 had to be changed slightly for use with ZBrush4. Thank you Tomas! Sincerely, Joe Tucciarone

Hi Everyone, I just did a simple test on my Mac Pro(OS 10.6.4; EIAS v8, ZBrush4): I made a 3D sphere in ZBrush4, applied a circular mask and subdivided the masked area (my ZBrush asteroids always start as spheres where crater rims get a higher density of polygons). Then, I used OBJ2FACT to convert the ZBrush ".obj" file into a ".fac" file. When I imported (with "Recalculate Normals" enabled) this sphere into EI, I saw "bad polygons": http://www.joetucciarone.com/a-problem2.tiff The EI Camera view on the right shows the circular area that was subdivided in ZBrush. The "bad polygons" (seen in the picture on the left) are triangles caused by the ZBrush "Geometry/Divide" tool. Inexplicably, not all of the triangles are bad. I used this procedure many times over the years with ZBrush2 on my G5. I wonder if something has changed in ZBrush4? I spent an hour looking on the ZBrush forums but there are thousands of posts and I could easily spend weeks searching for an answer there! Joe T

Hi Everyone, I just wanted everyone to know that the importer Tomas is developing for EIAS9 works beautifully! I sent him my asteroid "object" model and he emailed an image to me after he had run it through his importer. There wasn't a bad polygon on it. That feature alone will make EIAS v9 worth it for me! Joe T

Hi Alonzo, I appreciate your detailed response! Fortunately, I always export my models (from within ZBrush) with the "quads" option selected. Onward to your suggestion of importing/exporting in EI: Of all the years I've imported models into EI, I have never selected options in the Import Window. In fact, I forgot there were options! This time, when I imported my FACT file, I selected "Recalculate Normals" (leaving the "Smooth Shading" at the default value of 40). That fixed 90% of the polygons. There are now just a handful of "bad" polygons left behind. I wonder if a different value for "Smooth Shading" would fix those? Tomas, my asteroid model is a bit under 6 megabytes; would you still like to look at the "raw" object file? If so, how can I send it to you; it might work as an email attachment . . . Sincerely, Joe Tucciarone

Hi Tomas, In OBJ2FACT I used several "Calculate Normals" Angle values from 0 to 90 degrees and the strange polygons did not go away. My version of OBJ2FACT does not have a "Fix Rotated Normals" option; could that fix my odd polygons? This is the first model I have made with ZBrush4; could this new version of ZBrush have produced a defective "object" file? Joe T

Thank you very much, Tomas, for your quick reply! I'll do what you have suggested. Joe T

Hi Everyone, Can anyone help me figure out what I'm doing wrong? I created an asteroid with ZBrush4 and used OBJ2FACT to convert the "Object" file into a "Fact" file. When I rendered the asteroid with "Smooth Across Faces" disabled, I got the image on the top left corner of this picture: http://www.joetucciarone.com/a-problem.jpg With "Smooth Across Faces" enabled, I got the image on the upper right. If you look carefully you can see some dark and white spots on the asteroid. The bottom two images are closeup images of the same place on the asteroid; "Smooth Across Faces" is disabled in the bottom left image and it is enabled in the bottom right image. The dark and white artifacts turn out to be triangular polygons that are not rendering correctly with "Smooth Across Faces" enabled. Any help would be very welcome! Thanks, Joe T

Hi S, I'm sorry but I don't know why the workaround didn't work for you. All I did after Camera quit was rename the rendered file, double-click the .ccn file and Camera immediately started rendering another file. Camera seemed to pick right up where it was when it quit, because when the clips were assembled in After Effects, there was no stutter in the animation. Joe T

Hi Joseph, I am able to make a pretty decent flame with Dante from Northern Lights. Here's a thumbnail of an asteroid entering Earth's atmosphere: http://www.joetucciarone.com/tung4.mov This clip was created with EIAS v6.5 on my old G5. I can produce the same effect on my Mac Pro with Dante and EIAS v8, but at this time Camera runs out of memory and quits in the middle of a render. A temporary workaround for this problem is to rename the rendered file then restart Camera's CCN file by double-clicking on it (it is in the EIAS v8 folder). Continue this rename/restart procedure until the project is fully rendered. When the rendered files are strung together in After Effects, you'll have the animation you need. Blair Burtan at Northern Lights is aware of this Camera-memory problem so hopefully my workaround can someday be abandoned. Sincerely, Joe Tucciarone

Hi Everyone, I wanted to set the record straight about the two problems I reported earlier in this thread. It turns out that neither of them was a problem with Dante after all; they were both "operator error" problems caused by me. I can't address the Renderama issue raised by Brian. When I bought Dante seven years ago, I don't think it was modified to run on Renderama at that time so I have always run it on a single, "local" processor. I had always used Dante that way on my G5 and I'm using it that way now on my shiny, new Mac Pro. Except for Camera running out of memory (which Blair has recently referred to in the General Forum), Dante has produced a nice flamey smoke trail for a meteor project I'm producing on my Mac Pro with EIAS v8. Happy Thanksgiving! Joe T

Hi Tomas, I'd be happy to - where should I send the project? Joe T

Hi Dante Users, I set up a very simple project, using a single sphere attached to a single instance of Dante. The sphere was an ubershape sphere that I exported as a FACT object. I applied the Dante Cloud Shader to this sphere. I parented this sphere to Dante and, one-by-one, I began setting variables in Dante to simulate a plume of smoke. For example, I applied a "Billow Rotation" of 180 degrees per second to the particles. After each change was made in Dante, I rendered the project to verify that it did what I expected it to do. Finally, I checked the "Reactive Shader Compatible" box in the "Control Groups/General Settings" section of Dante. When the project was rendered, I saw that the Dante Cloud texture on the spheres ceased rotating with the spheres. When I clicked at various points in the Project Timeline, I could see the spheres rotating in the Camera Window, so Dante was rotating the spheres. The texture was simply not sticking to them once I checked the "Reactive Shader Compatible" box. Is this a bug or did I not select something properly? Thanks in advance, Joe T

hi, Guys, Thank you very much for your suggestions! I was wondering if Animator and ImagePlayer have changed from earlier versions? In EI v6.5, if I clicked on a rendered Image file, it would open the file in a primitive "player" window with a scrollbar on the bottom. Also, if I dropped the file on the ImagePlayer icon, it would immediately play the file. Thanks again, Joe T

Dear Fellow Mac users, I just upgraded my shiny new MacPro to SnowLeopard 10.6.4. Now, ImagePlayer doesn't work. When I drop a rendered Image file onto the ImagePlayer icon, I'm told I have to download Rosetta to view it. In addition, when I double-click on the Image file, nothing happens. I'm using EI v8.0.0. What did I do wrong? Thanks in advance, Joe T

Hi Brian, Thank you for your suggestion; where can I find Power Particles Pro? Richard, thank you for your nice comment on my work! I plan to push my new toy to its limits! Joe T

Thanks for your suggestions. I exported an ubershape sphere, imported it into the project, attached it to Dante and I didn't get an error message. I've been using Dante for years in EIAS v6 and I never had to export/import ubershapes like this. Oh well, it's a small price to pay for having Dante! Thanks again, Joe T

Hi Everyone, I finally bought a MacPro, installed EIAS v8 and installed the UB version of Dante. I made a project, attached a ubershape sphere to Dante and set Dante's parameters. When I hit the "Apply" button from within the Dante user interface, an error message appeared: Command Interface Error: "Plug-in could not allocate needed memory. The socket reported that the available memory . . ." Can anyone tell me what this means? Thanks in advance, Joe T

Hi Everyone, I found the producer of the clip on "fractalforums.com": http://www.fractalforums.com/movies-showcase-(rate-my-movie)/mandelbox-trip-with-new-camera-control/ And maybe this is the place to get the application: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mandelbulber/ Joe T