S. Houtzager

.....and you can't paint inwards to do ponds and such. What I was referring to was in Sculptris you have no tools that "push" into the mesh, they just pull the mesh out. I created a decent mountain scene for EI using Sculptris. I am looking for a better tool for doing that. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hncogbswi83prwu/ground2.png

Looks great, very clean. There is not a lot to improve that. The only thing is that plastic on the body could have either a glossiness to it or a slight bumpiness.

Ah there it is. I had to make my Photoshop image 32 bit and then I can save it out as EXR file. Easy enough.

Hey Scott, I have been messing around with that myself. There is now EXRtoMesh which is a little more complicated. There is a sample in the downloads of a orange kinda landscape. It is nice because you can set a preview resolution and camera resolution. But how to create from scratch or find an EXR file, I am not sure. I started playing around with Sculptris which is ZBrush's freebie but it is limited in the number of brushes and you can't paint inwards to do ponds and such. There is Vue which I have seen great stuff from but I have never messed with it.

Hmmm. I just opened up sketchup and looked around for a grouping tool and did not see one. Lots of modeling programs have a group tool which is another way to organize files for EI. Some have a join tool which makes objects not touching each other one object. I use that a good bit to speed things up going from FormZ to EI.

Hey Michael, Has not ever been an option.

There are quite a few more options in Wiremaker and I have never seen it in the manual. Can make wires from lots of things. :)

Hey Brian, I have played around with Contortionist a bit but I can't use it that often. What sort of stuff do you use it for? Can you animate a null and then parent that null to the Wiremaker pluggin perhaps to create a curve?

Hey Kurt, I have this set for the Parametric Surfaces pluggin. There is a video tutorial on it on the EI web site. http://www.atlantis23.com/ei_parmsurf/parametricsurfaces_catalog.html

Hey Michael, I am running 10.9.4. Runs well with EI. I just enjoy all of the latest tech that Mac rolls out, and it is free now. You could bump up to 12 GB of RAM by replacing the the 2-2GB's with 2-4GB's. The RAM in iMacs is a little different than that in the towers. Imac RAM requires a restart every now and then. I use otherworldcomputing ram.

Those are looking really good Greg. Trying to figure out why snapping has affected light leaks. Did you have small gaps here and there and they caused light to leak in? The sunlight coming thru, which is really attractive, says bright day so you might want to not have ceiling lights on.... or maybe fewer.

Hey Alex and Jens. How much beer have you had? Great set of games.

Hey Michael, I have the exact same machine except I bumped mine up to 16 GB of RAM. They will go higher if using the latest OSX. 8GB is just not enough to make everything happy. You would need to zap the PRam to free up the memory which requires a restart. Why are you running 10.8?

That is true that I get really obsessive when most clients are not even as obsessive. As far as documentation, FormZ overhauled that with Version 7. It is called layout mode and it works well. You can model and all of your 2D documentation (top, side views w dimensions) will be updated as you make changes. Version 7 was a whole rewrite for them and is very different from V6. You have a good bit of control of how many polygons will be exported into EI. You could model in straight polygon mode which stays intact into EI. As far as your snap you posted, my stuff looks similar. EI doesn't want big huge 10 sided polygons. It will want to mesh them out somehow. FormZ and Rhino do not have any brush controlled modelling which would be good for wrinkles on furniture. You would have to use an image and derive a height map. Btw, Encage is very useful in smoothing out bought models. Lots of times they look good on the web page but just are not smooth enough. It is really handy and I have not seen anything like it. You can see your results very quickly.

It would be realllly hard to provide a Modeler ranking as it is constantly a moving target. Each program advances at its own rate and becomes more or sometimes less compatible with EI. It is just how EI has evolved... bring your own modeler. It has it advantages in that you can model in your favorite modeler and are not locked into one modeler. I have been using FormZ with EI back when that was the only way you used EI. There is a huge advantage to having a modeler with Fact export as it allows you to use your layer system. If you did not have fact you would have to make a grouping system and use that as layers. Layers have been key in big Arch projects for me. FormZ has a wide range of modeling methods: polygonal, nurbs, smooth modeling (their term), and now SubD. Very design oriented. Very architecture oriented with roofing tools and stair tools. The name of each object comes thru and its color does to. Most texture maps come in. FormZ gives each object a slight transparency which is annoying but you have to manually change that. Rhino is awesome as well but is more product oriented. It has a much bigger user base so there are many more add ons. Many more tools in Rhino vs FormZ. I usually go Rhino - FormZ - EI so not sure about the obj import. I would like to hear how Archicad works with EI as I see more folks using it.

Hey Mike, Your images are looking sharp! I was trying to figure out why the leather on all of your couches looks so good. Is that the specular fall off that you are adjusting for those or is that a shader? You talked about Zbrush for this type of work. Seems like interior work is not organic enough to get Zbrush. Might want to look at FormZ or Rhino or lightwave.

It sounds like you know this but not sure. Do you know about the "activate on hit" check box? An object can just be floating until it is struck by another object. If the 3 links are just hanging there it might work. Pg 867 in the manual.

impeccable lighting!

Hey, Does anyone know of a Roughness setting similar to the one that the Oren Nayer shader had. Unfortunately Oren Nayer no longer functions. I want to control an extremely fine roughness to create an anodized finish. Tried noise factory and it is not fine enough. :at:

The beta for FormZ, which is public to V7 users, now has subD surfaces. They did a good job implementing them with a lot of flexibility. I got into Silo for awhile but there is no need for me to go back now that FormZ will have them.

Hey EIers, Does anyone have any files that uses the Mondo Cloud Shader from Northern lights. There used to be some test files around with different cloud settings but I am unable to find them. Remember the tire rolling down the hill on fire. Classic EI. I just bought the shader after upteen years and would like to see how it is used. :)

I like it! Bump up the size as it would be cool to check it out.

Hey, Did you take a look at the actual file to pick it apart? I have it. I believe I got it from the downloads link here http://www.eias3d.com/downloads/ That kitchen has some glossy shiny objects which makes for a good focus point.

Well I think it is a photon issue. I am rendering a still to Rama and it is using 2 machines. The scene has 1 sunlight and 2 area lights. All of the lights use Photons. When I render using renderama I notice a stripe where it stiched the 3 strips together. Is there a trick when using Photons?

It looks like the SlateMaker pluggin is causing it. When I use SlateMaker about every 10th rendering camera will hang up. I have to quit camera manually and the rendering will appear and can go back to work. Don't have empty cache files.