Juanxer

Hi, Tomas, thank you for your suggestions. Those AA 16x16 renders I am rendering will quite probably be overkill, but it will be interesting to see what comes out of it. I usually render 50 fps to derive 25i in AE and have some extra leeway if I have to retime the footage, but lately I've found After Effects' pixel flow retiming quite capable: actually, I ought to test what AE makes of those jaggies when retiming: would it smooth them out? I'll post any further findings.

I have things set up so that pixel ratios fit: the final comp is a D1/DV type one, so squared pixel-type layers are scaled accordingly by using the checkbox in the scale values dialog box. Anyway, I am learning about some things that contribute to my problems. For one, I was applying some Levels and things to RPF-isolared elements direclty instead of applying them to layers masked via those very RPFs. The problem with layering an RPF-derived element directly into the comp, I am finding out, is that it accentuates and so damages its borders (at least given how those elements were generated, backgrounds or alphas-wise). By using it as masks for the original material, I seem to avoid the problem. Also, I guess I ought to go antialias-crazy when rendering oversized elements to reduce and reframe into the relatively low-rezziness of a PAL frame: scaling down the image sharpens it so the AA becomes reduced. On an interlaced PAL frame, given its relatively low resolution, it gets quite troublesome. I've re-rendered things closer to or at the final size required, using Oversample 0-255 and upping the AA to 8x8; comped things using RPFs just as mask sources, and it seems to have eliminated most problems. Tonight I'll render a batch of AA 16x16 passes to compare with the last one. It is obvious I must learn more about these things.

In order to be able to reframe EIAS-rendered footage into a PAL-sized comp (720x576 interlaced), sometimes I render at, say, 1024x768 and scale and move things while in After Effects. The problem is: I get severe staircase effects even if I render it field-less (flicker is easier to correct, though). Does anybody have any recipe or suggestion to deal with that?

Does the project use any Xpressionist script?

Hyperthreading is a way of taking advantage of the idle sections of a core for executing a second thread: it adds extra circuitry to eliminate the cost of repeatedly switching between threads, and shows it all that as if it was a second core. You can't get a 100% gain, of course, but I think up to 30% is plausible.

Wasn't there a conflict between Xpressionist and EIAS 8's Area Lights?

I know this is a silly suggestion, but… If those apps let you do painting in a per frame basis, give it a try: airbrushing phaser emitters' muzzle flash, embellishing shield impacts, etc. Doing it by hand is laborious, but it is great fun, too, and gives things an old optical printer-era spacebattles feel. When I got my first copy of EI, I did my first little spacebattle sequence by exporting the 3D footage in filmstrip format (a single image containing all frames sorted into a single column), opening it in Photoshop and doing all the beams, glows, electric arcs, flares and such there. It had lots of energy. Nowadays' tools should make it far easier.

(As a way to stabilize changes in app-extension relationships, you can set them up via this Preference Panel-type utility: RCDefaultApp)

But then DiskCopy's .img is a legacy format right now: there is a fair chance that a new Mac user is never going to meet such disk image files ever. Switching app-extension relationships seems quite reasonable in that light.

Autodesk recently announced Maya 64 for OS X. They seem to have ported their UI code to Nokia's Qt (which is able to use Cocoa to support 64bitness in Macs), the same framework Tesla is to be based on. My guess is the Igors and co. are contemplating some similar approach. Which surely is an enormous issue to solve.

Yes, it does too. :( I think AE is a bit troublesome regarding RPFs. Some months ago I had enormous problems relinking a RPF set in a project to a new folder of rerendered RPFs (it would link them if I substituted the footage and reopened the project, but I wouldn't be able to do it via the Replace Footage file dialog). I guess I could send some sample files to Adobe. I have no idea how fast they will answer.

That's the same error message the original EIAS 6.x RPF_Saver shader would produce. Later, a revised version of that shader would correct that. A month ago, the Igors released a new version that corrects a bug in the Normals channel of RPFs. I tried dragging and dropping your RPFs folder into AE CS3 and CS4: both get stuck into an endless beachball as a result. Rerendering with that last version of RPF_Saver, the resulting RPFs work OK on both AE CS3 and CS4 :). You can get it here: http://www.eias3d.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=125

I've found some Function Curve Editor display problems when running EIAS 8 on an old PowerMac G5 with OS X Tiger 10.4.11. Before promoting it into a bug tracker item, I wanted to know whether EIAS 8 officially requires OS X 10.5 or is supposed to be fully compatible with such an old setup. (what I observe is the FCE not fully fitting the curves into the window whan asked so, and other strange things. If that's not supposed to happen, I'll write a bug tracker entry)

Absolutely thrilling!!!

Thank you. And good suggestions: I loved that flare-fest a lot, and it would be fun to play with smokers, compositing and things. A question: has anyone got a good recipe for uploading Quicktime-originated footage to Youtube without gamma issues? I've tried several codecs, including h.264 (which seems to have additional gamma problems of its own), always getting too contrasty results.

(gulp) :D (I think I know what you mean. Vallejo, cover artist extraordinaire that he is, is a bit primitive when it comes to spaceship design) But seriously, it is a compliment, really: your image has a certain painterly feel that I like a lot, and also it is very evocative, with that gloomy sky and the way the ship's skin reflects the environment. (Plus nowadays, with every concept artist filling his portfolio with pod racer clones, your vehicle has this bit of Myst-series character crossed with Sherstobitoff's sensibilities that sets it apart)

Quicktime Player with the Quicktime Pro license ought to be able to export to numbered frames in several formats including JPEGs.

It reminds me of the retro feel one gets when Boris Vallejo does a scifi book cover with spaceships.

This is an old short cyberspace test in the style of the Johnny Mnemonic movie. Done in 1997, it was meant to be part of an intro to a CD-ROM-based catalog of products. The floating "buildings" were done by drawing some silly randomish profiles and paths in Form•Z and sweeping them to get tech-looking shapes. The balls of light are Photoshop ones, animated as short looping movies in After Effects (or Premiere, perhaps) to texture Standard Shapes with (by the way, there is a combination of transparency settings that gives you the equivalent of Photoshop's Screen transfer mode. No need for alpha or luma masks). The CD-ROM project was cancelled, anyway. I unearthed this today and had to download a Media100 codec to be able to play it. I'd wish to resurrect the project, but it is full of Standard Shape elements, so I'll have to see about installing an old EIAS 2.x somewhere and reexport, I guess. (Youtube has messed with the gamma again, tsk :dodgy:. I'm testing using other formats to upload)

Everything seems to work OK now. Thank you! :)

OK, I'll ready one :)

If you remember that thread about a free AE relighting filter using Normals passes at the CGTalk forums, we discovered there that RPF_Saver's Normals pass was broken. I would hope that it's being taken care of.

I think it is more about describing exactly how do you think it should work: the mechanics of the user interface, what files would result from that, naming conventions, etc, in a bulletpoints sort of way.

I think such a forum section could be quite interesting. There are a few obvious ideas that can be implemented for free, actually. (I don't know if it would get more users right away, but it surely would bring some attention: when you think you are ready, what about letting the 3D-specialized websites and magazines know about recent developments and your view of EIAS' future? Places such as Architosh.com, the very CGsociety.org, etc. would welcome a press note, at the very least, and perhaps they could be interested in doing a short interview. Even some Mac magazines could take note of EIAS' evolution, given its heritage.)

Of those, it would be interesting to turn Value into a Photoshop-style Levels set of parameters, to be able to apply finer control and avoid crushing white and black levels. I am intrigued by the idea of using distance, angle and such as modifiers.