Juanxer

Nice article about the evolution of ILM's animatics process and its role in The Phantom Menace (by the way, the website it appears on, beforesandafters.com, is a real treasure trove of VFX articles including old stuff like "Speed" or "The Mummy"). ‘IT COST ABOUT $65 TO HAVE A COLD PIZZA DELIVERED IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO SKYWALKER RANCH’ (I hope this is the appropriate subforum to post it in :)

Fantastic! Thanks again.

Hola, Tom :) This morning I've checked a bootable backup from some days ago in which EIAS still worked and have restored it fairly quickly, so for the time being there's no longer any urgency. That said, it probably would be best to post somewhere how we ought to deal with those last updates from Apple. In any case, thank you so much for your prompt offer to assist me. You are a lifesaver!

Tomas, might it be that the private messaging isn't working? I sent a couple of messages already. As it is 2:00am here, I'm going to go to sleep :) . As I told you, this is not really urgent, and I wouldn't want to ruin your weekend, so we can leave it for monday or later. And, anyway, if there's any permissions settings recipe you might care to point me to, possibly I could take care of it.

Hi, Tomas. As far as I've checked, I'm still on macOS Sierra 10.12.6 (I've been there for several months), and the last significant change done was Security Update 2018-005, which I ran last Thursday, so whatever happened between saturday morning and the following afternoon hasn't been an OS change. I'm grateful for your offer for immediate help, but it's not that terribly urgent (I can run EIAS in a PC of mine instead, in the meantime) and I would rather read about those permission problems you mention, if you can point me to some article about them.

I've been working with EIAS on my Mac today normally, and suddenly Animator is failing to launch, showing this message: Assertion failed on line 24 of file Dbg_InitCounter.cpp: Failed to call Dbg_InitCounter::ShouldCleanUp() enough times to balance Dbg_InitCounter::ShouldInit() then it crashes and produces a standard macOS app crash error dialog. As I had shoved the USB key a little while repositioning a side screen, I tried putting it in another USB socket, to no avail (unplugging it produces the usual alert in such cases, so it doesn't seem to be that). Then I tried installing a fresh copy. Upon entering my activation code, Animator shows one of its own alert messages saying: Cannot allocate needed 3D icon "IconBody_Camera" from EIResource folder Those folder and file are there, fresh from the disk image file. This message doesn't appear when I launch the non-fresh Animator (or possibly it goes out too fast to be seen). I've restarted the Mac, without results. Before I try more drastic steps, is this something that sounds familiar to anyone and suggests how to solve it? I'm on an old hexacore Mac Pro, running macOS Sierra 10.12.6

Sorry, I had to go leave. There you are :) https://we.tl/t-dlasLlLwKb Something I just noticed now is that those normal maps lack information in the blue channel. It seems that was deliberate, though. I wonder if that's tripping EIAS.

Looks like Photoshop's Overlay transfer mode does exactly what's needed: when applied to the layer on top it mixes both Normal Maps' blueish textures perfectly, as if both were a single thing. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to combine my textures there. Might it be that EIAS' texture blend modes are disabled for Normal Maps?

For a human head model, I have a Normal Map for its facial features (facial muscles, wrinkles, etc.) and another for a clawed skin scar. Each map works well by itself, but If I stack both of them, the one on top prevails, the one below showing no effect whatsoever. Is there any way, any blend mode or any other method, that will mix them as if both features were in a single map? I've been playing with the blend mode of the Normal Map on top, to no avail: No matter which blend mode I choose, the result is exactly the same.

To my surprise, I found out that mac OS' Quicklook feature (the one that lets the Finder preview a file's content by tapping the spacebar when it is highlighted) works for a few 3D formats such as .obj. Finder's Column view's previews work, too. You can use a few mouse and keyboard combos to move and rotate the camera. Windows 10 has some 3D preview abilities too. Is there anything like that for .FAC files, any Quick Look generator plugin for FACTs?

Yus we can! :) I wonder what can be done to make it a viable contender. The competition is rather fierce

That would be super-nice! Hexagon was a lovely modeler.

I wouldn't count on the GPUs or the CPU being officially upgradeable, given that they are mated to the central heatsink via thermal paste. That makes them as upgradeable as the old tower's processors (doable but messy, so unsupported).

Oh, I meant an uprezzed 3D CGI-based final composite. Elements to deliver for further compositing, specially camera-originated, everything you say applies.

What about uprezzing for now? After all, that's what's going to happen with most movies and series aired in 4K, for a long while.