[Separating non connected items]

You could export it as an obj, and use another program to separate them. And import back into EI as obj.  Blender, which is free, can do that.

[Reduce polygon count]

You could import the model into Blender and use the Decimate modifier, apply then export, using .obj

https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/modifiers/generate/decimate.html

 

[Computer Lite Glow]

If you check the use photon map box, then you can hide the light objects.  Then you need to turn on photons.

[Computer Lite Glow]

If you use an area light, you can assign any geometry to be light emitting.

Do you have a sample of what you like to achieve?

 

[camera - memory]

12 gig is not much.  I was running out of memory with 16 gig with large scenes.  For very large scenes, 32 or even more is needed.

[Contortionist -- FormZ]

See the screenshot.

Basically add an effector, give it a unique name, turn on its animation channel.  Move its position at different points in time.  And you will have a path.

In Contortionist, set Path Type to Use Effector, and enter the name of that path.

 

[Contortionist -- FormZ]

Used contortionist with v9 quite a bit.  I usually use effectors to create my path, so you can change it anytime within EI.  Works okay for me.

[Model fails to import into EI]

Hi, I always use obj format for models I buy from places like turbosquid and rarely have problems importing with the new 9.0/9.1 obj importer.  obj is the best, much better than 3ds or FBX.

 

But there are some rare cases where an obj would open in Maya, Blender, Photoshop CS but not EI.  Usually I resave in Blender or save the model as several parts and it would work.  Since Blender is free, maybe you can try that?

 

- David

[Yosemite and FormZ]

Been using latest EIAS on Yosemite for about a day, so far so good.

[New Artist Profile on the site]

Hi David, that particular exterior shot in the article was indeed rendered with EI, but on the MINIUSA site, all the exterior configurator images were rendered in either v-ray or modo.  Sorry for the confusion.

 

Thanks!

 

- David Wu

[Imagenation Alien]

Wow! Great work! Very realistic. When we are that close to a face, pores and tiny facial hairs would be visible, but tiny hairs would be hard to do.

[Northern Lights plugin development status update]

Great news indeed! Look forward to it!

[Hackingtosh]

EI works fine with hackintoshes, I have a couple hackintosh slaves and they are great! However, try to stick with snow leopard, as I am getting lots of OSX crashes on lion and mountain lion, even on real macs.

[Parabéns pra Você!]

Happy belated Birthday to you Tom!

-David

[Blaster/Rodeo]

Hi, I have a potential still rendering that needs to show a 3D text being shattered kind of like glass.

Looks like precutting the model then using Blaster is the way to go?

Question, any knows if Blaster is UB and works reliably in EIAS v8? Also, seems like Rodeo would can also achieve something similar?

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

-David

[Renderama Crash]

Hi I've been rendering lots of particles (PPP and Dante) with Renderama and I have a pretty consistent crash in Rama:

A window pops up and say:

Assertion failed on line 829 of file /Volumes/ProgramHD/EIAS8.0/EIAS Project/Renderama Sources/Rm/private/Rm_renderamaControl.cpp

This happens all the time when I have 6-8 slaves rendering a very simple particle sequence, and the renders are so fast (less than 1 sec), that so many frames are returning to Renderama at once that it seems to choke it and produce this crash. Then I quit all the Cameras and Slaves, relaunch the slaves and Renderama, and it would pick up from the crash point and continue.

But if I only turn on 1-2 slaves, this hardly happens, and when the particle sequence gets more complicated and takes longer to render, things would be fine.

-David

[Fire shader]

Ola David,

Let me check out..

Thanks

Tom

Thanks, anyway, just placed the order, any idea how long I will get it?

[Fire shader]

Hi, I'd like to know if the Fire shader works with Renderama? Since it seems each frame of the fire animation is sort of dependent on the previous state?

Thanks!

-David

[Recent Mini Cooper render]

Thanks for the comments.

It was GI w adaptive sky map and 2 or 3 RT soft shadow casting lights. And lots of blurred reflections.

No photons, not enough RAM, not until we have 64 bit Camera. And 64 bit Animator would be nice, but probably will take quite a while if at all possible.

-David

[Recent Mini Cooper render]

Here is a EI render of a recent job I did for Alonzo. We rendered a whole bunch of shots of the Mini Cooper Countryman.

Because of the large dataset, most of them were done with 64bit Modo, only the interior shot is done in EI, because I can delete all the exterior parts and anything not visible to the camera.

[Fiber forge available?]

Thanks, I wanted to have fur on the head of a talking donkey. Does not have to be super realistic, but a donkey head w/o fur will not look right. Not sure if placer deposit is still being updated. We have to do this in Intel Mac and v8 and also renderama compatible. Or do the job in some other 3D software...

[Fiber forge available?]

Hi, is fiber forge being ported to UB to run in Intel Mac and EIAS v8?

Any info on this plug-in? Looks like there is no solution for fur under v8 and Intel Mac at this point?

Thanks!

-David

[Scroll wheel support]

How about scroll wheel support in the project window?

[Renderama Quits in high 90%]

Similar things has happened to me also. I did realize 1 thing. Sometimes we might have tons of textures and models scattered in different drives and some on thumb drives without we realizing. When you eject a volume with a needed texture/model, Rama will crash with no warning.

Of course the other thing is a volume can be full. When you have 8 slaves on different drives and more on different machines, it can be very hard to keep track of free space left on drives. My data sets are often multiple gig in size. Add to that, for some reason, sometimes a the slave folder would contain multiple versions of the same data under different IP address named folder, taking up even more space not to mention wasted time to transfer the same data each time you render.

[Renderama fails after Bonjour update]

David,

Are you using a static IP address on the computer running 'Rama?

Dave

Yes, static IP. And same error message on both local slave and remote slaves.