fantomaz

Good find!

Yeah, we all thought of that, but never had these budgets to do it.... Glad that some of the leaders did it :-) Alex

Hey!! Thank you all!! For my part, yes, i had several beers over the last 4 weeks, some heart attacks, lots of sleepless nights (some matches start at 22.00 and some at 0.00), many lucky moments, some not so lucky moments (the lost of Marco Reus one week before), but i am very happy about seeing so many good matches from the beginning on of this world cup. Some team that will stay in my memory are Chile, Colombia, the USA (their keeper was fantastic!) the Netherlands (only the first match against Spain) and of course the Brazilian team. Too bad that they lost their mega star Neymar with this brutal unnecessary foul!! After all Germany is very happy to win the cup, today around 500.000 people come to Berlin to meet and greet the team, lets hope for the next cup that it will be so beautiful and full of fun like the last four weeks in Brazil. And some words from Bastian Schweinsteiger he mentioned in the TV an hour ago: Thank you Brazil for this fantastic event, it will stay in our hearts for ever! Alex

Hehe, don't worry! There are so many 3D models of the COBRA outside, hard to count.... Not to mention the countless variations (side pipes, bumper, ...). I also used lots of underlays for my model of that car, some old models, some blueprints, some photos and so on. It was more like a challenge for me and to have some fun :shy: Alex

Chip, i am with you -except Maya (never understand that app)- EI Modeller was the only modeler, that works as i expected him to work. Of course there are some glitches over time and you have to keep 10.6.8 for using it (or install an virtual server on Maveriks to use 10.6.8 and EIM) but for the last 25 years i can say that EIM was the best solution to work with EIAS when you need to model something. Most of you know my AC-COBRA, she was complete done in EIM, ok it took me 1,5 years to finish it, but it was worth - all the 2,7 million polys! So i use my 27" iMac from 2011 with 10.6.8 and EIM for the next 10 years when i have to model something. The only thing EIM wasn't as good as other modellers was conversion of other file formats. But for that case i use PolyTrans. Alex

Hi Maher, sorry to enter your thread - hope that Tom will jump in and answer your question. My point: This is why i really love the abilities of the internet and the global communication! Maher from Quebec is talking/working to/with students from Leningrad and they talk about a software which is in the hands of Tomas from Brazil and the Igors from the Ukraine. Me from Germany is commenting this international thread. Hope that Michael from Australia walks in and can say something here. Only Africa is a little behind - sadly. I love it! Alex

Yes, reducing the GI settings is my tipp also, but then you have to rerender the whole animation (because of a little different look than the other - most often) Some time ago i had the same problem, lots of frames were rendered fine and in the middle there was one frame that causes the error. I could not fix that error but my luck was to start a new rendering one frame after the error frame. Lucky me, the rest rendered also fine. I then did a snapshot rendering of that specific frame in a lower resolution and comped that in Apples Motion. No one ever saw that error :shy: Alex

Hi Michael, GILL means Global Illumination System - but Error -9 ??? In my list there is only one GILL error described: 1 And it says: could not allocate GI buffer. Hm, maybe my list is not up to date. Have you tried to render on a machine with more RAM? What happen when you render that frame via snapshot rendering? Alex

Nearly success - with my above described method. Only a few timing and matching problems. I did a simple plane (16:9 for the correct size of the videos i will project), deformed it to a quarter pipe in the dimensions of the tube. On this plane its easy to glue the texture :shy: - no camera map is needed. But the camera mapping is/would be more precise.... (ok, there is always 'something' ;) ). And at last: moved it along the path for the main camera with the help of Contornionist for the correct deforming along the tube. As i said above: only minor problems with speed and exact placement, but since the tube is nearly full transparent, no one will see this. But maybe Richard has a better method, lets see :) Alex PS: thanks for your 'rolling stones' that let my mind started to look in an other direction :D - - - - - - - - EDIT: Doesn't look as i wanted it to look :( But i have an other idea for that shot :shy: I will report....

Yes, a glas tunnel, thats the right word :shy: Yes, we see through the glas, the background is full with stars, like the milky way. And yes, is like billboards along the autobahn but the billboards are traveling with the camera - the projected pictures/movies don't cover the whole tube, only parts of it. One idea of mine is: model a small part of the tube with the correct rounding and project the movies/pictures on that part. Together with the projecting camera i move the small part of that tube along the path of the main camera. The only problem is in strong curves, there is a chance to see, that the projection is not on the original tube. But maybe Contortionist can help me here :idea: Alex

Quote: Why you don't render in the passes and compose? one Transparent and another only with the projections? Rendered the drive through of the transparent tube - works well (of course). Tried to render the drive through with the camera map but don't get the rest of the tube transparent/invisible. In other words: When using camera maps i don't get the other part of the tube transparent/invisible, hmmmmm... ....how can i do it? Is there a setting i am missing some how when using the camera map? Its not like using a normal texture map, where you can have an alpha channel to mask the rest. --- Quote: Does the bend of this tunnel change in any way? Yes, its a long tube like a snake and the camera is driving in the inside from the start to the end of that tube. My example is only an example :shy: , in the real project the tube is much longer and curvier... Alex

Hm, good point, thinking and trying :idea:

Hi gang :shy: I ran into a problem: Imagine there is a cylinder made of glass (a sort of tube), my camera is inside this tube and travels through this tube over time. Now i want to project (films) images on the inside of that tube, that are traveling with my main camera (parent/child). My first thought: this is a job for camera mappings! Works well so far, but... When i made the material of that tube transparent, my projected movie on the wall is also transparent :( . Is there any other idea to get the tube transparent (glass) and the part of the tube, where the image is projected on the tube, is NOT transparent? Thanks in advance Alex Test project

Time is fleeting. Man, we are glad, that we can manage FullHD right now, that the computers are fast and cheap enough to do work in 1920x1080, we have terabytes of HDs, we do multilayer renderings and compose them in FullHD in nearly real time, we dont care about rendering -lets say- 5million polygon and don't see any edges at round objects, we do fast shadows and ray tracing, we use millions of particles to simulate smoke, fire, water, we do test renderings in FullHD (just for customers) we don't care about growing backups in the range of petabytes, and so on, and so on, and so on... And now they want us to multiply it by 4. I am too old for that (sh*t). My eyes don't see 4k, only when i am sitting 1 m in front of my FullHD TV... Maybe i should better use my pencil and brush in the future and let younger and smarter people than me do 3D animation in 4K. Alex PS: of course can EI handle 4K!

WOW! Is it a personal project? I mean no client, not a job, only for learning etc.?

Happy new year to you all - all around the EIAS world :shy: May the big poly and all the cores be with you and do always what you want them to do! Many jobs, no blue screens and always full batteries for all your mice, ideas and minds. And, of course, lots of beautiful rendered pixel in 64bit :) Alex

Hey, thanks for your words, makes me smile! Background of this clip is this: I wanted to do a test with Bullet, where a car drives a 'slalom'. So far so good, everything worked fine, but the rendered image was boring. A Client gave me some backgrounds for some beauty shots (damn, we don't get the job!) but the conversion from .3ds to EI was ready - so i tried the slalom in that garage :shy: (in the first version the Volvo 480 drives around the parked 'text cars', but doesn't look good). I found out, that it now looks better and started Renderama, after several camera tests the overall look was good and i did the final renders. Glad you liked Alex

This is a 'feature' since i use EI (long time!) and the only way to get the right path is: After you did 'collect files' close EI. Compress the original project folder with ZIP or something like that. Open EI and the new collected/created prj. EI will ask you where the files are (textures, geo, etc.) choose the right files from the right folder. When EI is ready opening the prj, do a 'save'. Now all the path are correct. Alex

Driving the Volvo 480 with EI and Bullet (vehicle plug): Just a test, no client was harmed :blush: Alex

Hm, what about magnets and Bullet? I didn't do anything with magnets, only testing Vehicle with Bullet, but magnets could be the answer to your prob, could they? Had anyone did some tests with magnets? Alex

Hey, i did it the same way like Steve, you can see it here: http://www.cobra-gestaltung.de/Webvideo/SiCon_Ton_512x288_dt.mp4 Look at the first 2 minutes, there are several parent/child „objectsâ€, worked perfect :shy: Alex

No way, max is proprietary. The only way to use max files in EI is via Polytrans (when you have the max plugin) or to open in 3DStudio and export the file as a readable format for EI. Sorry to say that. But you can dl 3DStudio when you are a teacher/student/instructor or something like that for free ..... ;) Alex

Wuhaaaaa, from 6.5 to 9.1..... Its like Christmas and Easter on the same day :-) You will like it!

OBJ and 3ds works good with EI8, you can import them via Transporter or direct in EI. Alex

Hi Vic, i had some trouble to dl the folder, now i got it. Tomorrow after midday i have the time to look for it. Alex