Juanxer

Something I'd like to have available in Animator is a camera without the reference widget, as sometimes it really gets in the way. Say, you are navigating via key shortcuts in the camera view window and suddenly, because you have overshoot the reference widget, the camera points backwards. And, simply, sometimes you don't need to play with the reference at all. The typical solution is to "mount" the camera into an Effector, but then you find that an effector's arrow widget is firmly planted in the middle of the camera view window. Could a "Turn camera reference off" checkbox be added to the Camera Info window?

I think I've discovered another bug: Ambient-type lights aren't aware of their Illumination Lists. Even if Animator reflects their use in the viewports, Camera doesn't. I'll post a sample in the bug list. (argh, I thought I was posting this in the Bugs subforum. Sorry :()

After Effects is what Photoshop would look like if turned into an animation app, mostly, so I don't think it is worth the cost if one has Photoshop already, as there is an enormous feature overlap (unless one sees a real killer plugin filter that only exists for AE). (AE's basics are quite easy, really. It's just that its user interface is very compacted to make room for the movie frame, and so it looks a bit scary)

I still have the Interactivity magazine's review of EIAS (one point something), plus their interview to the guys behind The Journeyman Project 2 (they did all the 3D with Form•Z and EI) around.

Their progress bar is around the 60% mark right now.

Is the new Camera very dependent on OS X and Windows' APIs? The idea of Camera on Unix seems fairly advantageous on paper, as it would substract the OS' costs from a render farm. Although I guess most EIAS users don't go beyond one or two non-server multiprocessor Macs or PCs. (Would it work on WINE ;)?)

Ha, I rediscovered that YESTERDAY :D. I really have to re-read the keyboard shorcuts list in the manual more often, as I forget them too easily.

I just did today a bit of EIM modeling. Oh how I wish ViaCAD and the like were as carefree and easy as EIM in several respects. And that EITG would have managed to update it (at that, any news about Brad and company? How are they faring lately?)

Booting in 64bit kernel mode would be required for Macs loaded with more than 32 GB of RAM at once (see PAE). Below that, it isn't that needed. It would surprise me that your Mac is starting up in 64bit mode motu proprio, but then I've heard of people discovering their new Mac Pros doing so (the new hexacore I use at work didn't, anyway). There is this little utility for checking and setting that up: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/32252/32--or-64-bit-kernel-startup-mode-selector (Our hexacore setup is even a bit more complicated :P: two SSDs as a RAID 0, one in the lower optical bay and another in one of the hard disk trays via an adapter box. I've backed it up and restored with CCCloner a couple of times (OS X 10.6.5 crippled Photoshop's landscape mode printing, so…), and EIAS never complained of anything :-/)

That's strange: I have a similar setup and no troubles at all regarding EIAS (and I cloned an installed Snow Leopard into the SSD, too). Could you check that your Mac isn't starting up in 64bit mode? I don't think it's that, but…

I've just received notice that Silo 2.2 is out. It seems Necercenter has been taking care of their Mac version's issues. It's a free update. New in this version: - Snapping Manipulator - Export Scene - Snow Leopard Support for OSX - Bug Fixes and Stability http://nevercenter.com/silo/download/ Also, Luxology released Modo 5.0.1. It adds, among other things, Pixar-style SDSs (they licensed it some time ago) that look like simplifying SDS hard surface modeling a lot via creasing techniques (at that, would Encage be compatible with these?). Now, as a very strange move: the Daz guys are considering open-sourcing Hexagon: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=153642&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=f22ac5bab4d508c88268fde484793132

Up until recently, my 3D work for TV was all field-based PAL video formatted, so I was rendering things as 50fps, and Motion Vector blur was more than enough. Now I am having to deal with progressive PAL anamorphic output, and Motion Vector doesn't seem to be enough anymore. I did a few tries with Multi-Frame, but I don't think I'm doing it right. I remember some recipe was posted in the defunct EITG forum. I wonder if any of you could suggest any good settings. (they would be applied to rather sedate camera flights around cosmetics products sets) About the anamorphic PAL thing: lately I've been rendering and comping 1024x576 footage, squeezing it down to 720x576 for editing it to tape or file. I find that doing so in After Effects will accentuate any jaggies into very obvious stairstepping (oh how I wish Adobe would provide with per-layer scaling algorithm selection. Photoshop has a few ones for full image scaling, at the very least). Do you think it would be better to render things straight into a 720x576 format with the relevant pixel aspect ratio (1.45?)? My guess is that doing so would keep EIAS' antialias intact.

I can't think of anything else to do. Going 10.6.5 is probably a good idea: I'm doing quite well with that OS version myself. Just remember to tell the installer to put both Rosetta and Quicktime 7 in that Mac (it can be done later, anyway), and check that the Mac starts up in 32bit kernel mode or the EIAS hardware key won't work (Apple is defaulting it to 64bit for certain configurations. This affects device drivers only: 64bit apps DO work in 32bit kernel mode). You can check and set that with this small app: http://www.ahatfullofsky.comuv.com/English/Programs/SMS/SMS.html Good luck :)

Mmm.:( I'm not quite sure about that. The old Master/Slave dichotomy in ATA/IDE disks isn't applicable to SATA ones (so no "jumpers" needed for that, since the Powermac G5 era). If anything, disk ID ought to be dictated on startup by the SATA port each disk is connected to. The only typical use of jumpers in SATA disks that I know of is setting older models for 1.5 Gb/s or 3 Gb/s speeds (the G5 towers were limited to 1.5 Gb/s). Also, it is perfectly possible to put several OS X systems in several hard disks in the same machine. I do it all the time (a main system, a small maintenance system, another resulting from doing backups, etc.). Now, what I think could really screw things up is using your 12-core OS X system into your 8-core Mac. The OS X that comes with each Mac (be it preinstalled or on DVD) is customized for that Mac (the retail box versions cover all models, but even so the installation process reduces them to a custom fit). I don't think a newer Mac's OS X install will work on an older Mac. You'd need to reinstall. One question: when you moved that hard disk from the 12-core to the 8-core, did you move just the disk or both the disk and the metal tray it was screwed into? It's just that the Mac Pro seems to recognize the tray's number (it shows it in Disk Utility). Could you have two Trays Number One in the same computer? I don't believe it should produce any problem (if it does, Apple did design this quite idiotically) but…

Hola, Diego. Sin problemas con que tengas el sistema en español :). Me extrañaría que fuera un tema de Permisos (que salgan avisos no es necesariamente malo). Estaba pensando más en lanzar una Verificación de Disco, pero también sería raro que se hubieran estropeado las cosas justo cuando instalabas el otro disco. Sigo en inglés para que no se despisten los demás. Another maintenance procedure is to do a file system check on startup. It goes like this: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214-es Restart the Mac while keeping the keys Command (Apple) and S: this forces the Mac to start in Single User Mode. You'll see the screen go black and lots of Unix text until it stops and gives you a command line symbol: # then you type: fsck -y (Enter) This does sort of a Disk Utility's Repair Disk pass without needing to boot from the OS X DVD: if it says that the disk appears to be OK, then it's not a filesystem fault. If it says "file system was modified", type fsck -y (Enter) as many times as it takes until it says that the disk appears to be OK. Then type: reboot (Enter) to continue booting up OS X, or force a restart with the power key.

Juan here. Wow. Adding a hard disk to a Mac Pro shouldn't produce any ill effects. Is there any other application failing you there? Or is it EIAS only? You could try creating a new user account (via System Preferences - Accounts) and see if EIAS works OK from there. Does Disk Utility give any disk error warnings when doing a disk verification? Given that you have that new hard disk available, an extreme measure (but then perhaps the fastest one) would be for you to put the disk back inside, install a new OS X system and EIAS on it and see if it works. If it does, perhaps you could set things so that you can do that meeting tomorrow and solve this problem later on. I have subscribed to this thread, so I get warned everytime there is a reply. I hope I can help you in some way.

(I've found a workaround to the importing issue: in Adobe Bridge I can redefine the sequence of RPFs as a "Pile", and pass it as such to After Effects, which treats it as a file sequence item)

Strange: I do get AA in CS3 with that RPF file. Here there is a close-up of an object's border with and without "Use Coverage". (To add insult to injury, AE CS3 won't accept to import the RPF file sequence, even if it has no problem importing single RPF files. That has happened to me a few times. CS5 has no problem there, but it won't antialias, so it is unusable. Aaargh. I'll have to try importing via AE CS2 into a project (did AE CS2 have 3D Channel filters?) and importing such project into CS3)

Here you are. This RPF has Object ID, Coverage and Color channels. Thank you for offering to test it. While we are at it: is the RPF_Saver's Sub-Pixel Mask channel functional, and can it be taken advantage of in AE? I was wondering if Coverage is really the best way to antialias the Object ID-derived masks, as it alters their core solidity a bit, too (they stop being fully solid, becoming this bit textured). BASE_0130.rpf.zip

Could someone please check if the ID Matte filter in After Effects CS5 is broken? I was testing some RPF footage, not getting antialiasing at all when checking the "Use Coverage" box in the ID Matte filter. Then I tried it in AE CS3 and it worked perfectly.

Mmm, was Steamroller ever updated to be compatible with Mac Pro/EIAS 8? I purchased it years ago and I don't know how things ended up regarding that.

There aren't that many Pro cards for the Mac Pro, and they are always inferior offers to what's available for PCs, I'm afraid. My guess is that a PC would be a better EIAS workstation, price/performance-wise. That said, a Mac Pro is a formidable all-around workstation/render farm. But then perhaps a high-end iMac with integrated SSD (to get RAID 0-like speeds where needed) would be more than enough. Their GPUs are supossed to be rather decent nowadays. And perhaps you would be able to ask some Apple shop to let you test drive one of their machines in situ (by installing EIAS and playing with some projects of yours to see how it feels).

Which generation does your Octocore belong to? Latest models have SATA and power plugs right inside the optical drive bays. Older models need a standard internal SATA cable to be plugged into a socket in the motherboard and guide it into the optical bay. The oldest allow for two cables (so you could install both a hard drive and a SSD by using some adaptor bracket, or two SSDs for a RAID 0). I put two SATA cables in my first generation Mac Pro quadcore. A bit troublesome, as one needs to slide the frontal fan out to be able to access the sockets and move the cables, and mine was a bit hard to remove. Later models use a screw that makes it simpler, but allow one cable only (the other is for the SATA DVD drive. Older Macs have IDE ones). As I said, latest models have the cabling already in place (at work, we put one SSD in the optical bay and the second into an Icy Dock box that conforms to the Mac Pro's drive trays. You could take a look at Other World Computing's products: we were quite happy with their services, and they even have videoclips explaining how to install the products they distribute. - Their range of SSDs: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_storage/Mercury_Extreme_SSD_Sandforce We went for the OWCs basically because of reviews such as this one: http://macperformanceguide.com/index_topics.html#cat_ssd - Adapter brackets (including cables for older Mac Pros. Note that the Mac Pro's optical bay is not tall enough to fit two 3.5" HDs, but one 3.5" HD and a 2,5" SSD would fit OK): http://eshop.macsales.com/owcpages/multimount/multimount.html - And an Icy Dock for installing 2.5" drives in a Mac Pro drive tray, if one can't be bothered with fiddling with all that or wants to do a RAID 0: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/IcyDock/MB882SP1S2B/ There are other distributors specializing in this kind of products, such as Newertech and so. http://newertech.com/products/hddacc.php

I think a SSD could help there: a single unit usually goes beyond 200 MB/s., so getting a small sized one, say 64 GB, could be enough to hold 8 Camera Slaves running. You can install it inside the empty lower optical drive bay. At work we've got a new Mac Pro Hexacore for DTV in which we've RAIDed a couple SSDs from OWC (they have a RAID-oriented variant which sets aside a bigger portion of the drives for housekeeping tasks): they give us about 400-500 GB/s. You could RAID0 a couple of small ones to reach that (they would consume two drive bays, though). Could anyone lend you a SSD drive for you to do some testing?