rtrowbridge

Tom, If Felix is looking at the dark, smooth areas between the spikes, you are correct. It is only dark reflections. Good eye! Ross

Tom, The MOV file was about 21 MB. That's as small as I could get it. The XVID AVI was MUCH smaller (1.7 MB), with very little loss of quality. Ross

I've uploaded a couple more animations to youtube. The first was a test of environmental rotoscoping in EIAS v.8. I made the chrome object in about 5 minutes using Wings3d. The second was a test of using area light to light up the windows of a flying saucer. There are four separate windows in a selection set that the area light is set to use. It could use some fine tuning, but I am happy with the way the light plays out over the ship's panels. Ross

Tomas, Any chance of getting that 7 mb limit to include AVI files as well? I'm creating AVI's these days. Ross Tomas, Any chance of getting that 7 mb limit to include AVI files as well? I'm creating AVI's these days. Ross

Tomas, Thanks. The object is a CR3000, a datalogger manufactured by the company I work for. It's used in environmental, engineering, manufacturing, and scienific research. We have one of these controlling a 20'x40' solar panel just outside my office window that tracks the sun. It supposedly is large enough to meet the needs of five househholds. A weather station is also attached to the datalogger, so if the wind gets too strong, the panel will be moved to the horizontal position until the wind subsides. The CR3000 was created in Solidworks, exported as a v.6 SAT file, imported into Modeler, and then exported as a FAC file. I then textured it in EIAS so I could use it in illustrations. I'm still waiting to get my own Solidworks license so I don't have to bother Engineering whenever I need an object. I uploaded an animation I did of another datalogger to youtube. I still can't attach anything larger than 1MB here. It was an early test of EIAS v.8's area lighting. Ross

I've seen an issue several times where bitmaps I apply do not preview correctly. The bitmaps switch objects and orientation. They do render out properly, but the preview is all messed up. This is happening with 8.0 on Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista (both 32 bit). I recall seeing it with 7.0 as well. In the example I've attached, the full render is on the left. The screen capture of EIAS is on the right. The bitmap (png) for the keypad has been repeated for every bitmap on the datalogger. Ross

"Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down." I don't remember any looking that mean, though... Very nice!

Ian, That would be very kind of you. :) I entered the "Render by the Numbers" competition on the EI Technology Group website back in 2008 hoping to win Pacifica. It's too bad that contest fizzled out. I hope you can find it. thank you! Ross

Tomas, Were you able to open the project? I just want to make sure the file wasn't corrupted somehow. thanks, Ross

Very cool! Looks like I need to do some experimenting with Camera Mapping (or at least going home and running my model railroad!!!). Nice job. Ross

Tomas, The zipped file is just under 6 megs. The actual project folder is about 10 megs. The FAC files are large. I just tried to attach a png file that was almost exactly 1 meg in size, but it wouldn't do it, either. The same file as a jpg seems to have attached just fine, though it is only 416 kb. Ross

Mick, The Kelvin's design threw me a bit at first, but ended up being my favorite design from the new Star Trek movie. I'd be happy to share the marble project. It's about 6 megs. The system is not allowing me to attach the file though. (Tomas, is there a file size limit?) I just used phong shading for the animation and each frame took about 5 seconds to render using one core on my 1.83 GHz dual core laptop. Switching to raytraced shadows kicked the time up to 25 seconds per frame. The Rodeo calculation for 450 frames took about 45 seconds. Ross

It has been too quiet around here the last couple of days, so I have uploaded three animations I did to Youtube. The first is a Rodeo Test I did that turned out pretty good. The second is an animation of Tobias Richter's USS Kelvin. I was able to get the Lightwave conversion input into EIAS with the UVs intact. The third is an animation of a ship taking off from a space station's hangar bay. The ship was created by Medjai, but I built the station. At some point, I want to replace all the lights with light fixtures lit by a single area light and attached to the lights with a selection set. This animation was used by a local middle school teacher who operated a space simulator for students. He used it to represent their space ship launching. I also did a flyby of all the planets along with many of the moons in our solar system.

Oh, yeah! I really like that idea. Ross

Ton, I've always left the setting at binary without any issues. I've never tried the ASCII setting. Ross

You might want to try Autodesk's free FBX Converter program. It will take OBJ files (as well as 3DS, Collada, and DXF files) and convert them to an FBX file that can be opened in EIAS. When I've had problems separating an an OBJ file into its individual components, I've used Accutrans 3D ($20.00 shareware). You can do a save with options and tell it to save each object individually, or save the file as a collada file. Then I run those through the FBX converter. If you do individual OBJ files, you can bring them all into the FBX converter and batch process them. You then have to merge the FBX files inside EIAS. You end up with a bunch of extra lights, but the objects are there with their UV's intact. Ross

Rob, The first column in the project window controls visibility in the windows. Select the components you want to hide, and then uncheck the visibility box. You have to select all of the objects, not just a parent object. Those components will then disappear. They won't render when unchecked either, so remember to check them again when it comes time to render out your project. Ross

Rob, It works fine for me in 8.0. One thing to note is that everything does remain visible in the four display windows, even when visibility is turned off. It's only when you do an actual render that the objects disappear. Ross

That was great. It really reminded me of an old B-movie I loved as a kid. I think it was called "The Black Rocks." It was about these huge black crystals that grew and moved by falling over to grow new crystals. Very nice job, and good luck. Ross

I mainly use EIAS as a hobby, though at work I do use it to create some nice 3D line art images. There's no way I could justify having my employer buy Polytrans, so I use a shareware program called Accutrans3D. It is a great converter, and well worth the $20.00 shareware fee. It doesn't export FACT files, but I use it to convert objects to Collada, and then run that through AutoDesk's free FBXConverter software. The objects come into EIAS with their UVs intact. I just have to reapply the maps. I'll have Accutrans open and work my way through each object, adding maps as needed. Ross

Thank you, everybody, for the comments. I've tried the "shield bubble" technique, but could never get a look I was really happy with. It could be a pain to get the visible section of shield exactly where I wanted it to be, especially if I wanted two or more simultaneous shield hits. Because the the bubble was oval, not round, I had to move the filter map for each hit. Using VisionLab has made it much easier. The effect is based on one of their muzzle flashes (fun to play with). I can move the hit anywhere on screen and have handles for the X and Y coordinates to angle the hit any way I want it to appear. Having the hit behind the ship is slightly more complicated, but can be accomplished by inserting a garbage matte to block the effect where the ship would be located. I"ll probably continue to tweek this effect. The first thing I'm looking at doing is moving the banding shades closer together so the effect is more subtle. Richard, I like your animated hit. Very nice! Ross

I did a second test. One thing I have never been able to recreate in EIAS is the effect of a phaser/disruptor hitting a ship's shields. Phasers (tube lights) and torpedoes (light flares) were always easy. This is my first attempt at a shield hit using the new software i purchased. I'm pretty happy with it. Now I need to finish storyboarding a space battle between this ship and a couple Cardassians. There will be three or four large ships, a handful of Federation Tactical Fighters, and several asteroids. It will all be animated using EIAS, and then have weapons effects added in post production. The nice thing is that there are no deadlines, so I can take my time to get it the way I want it to be. Ross

Richard, I'll have to give x264 a try. You can take a look at VisionLab Studio at www.fxhome.com. The interface is reminiscent of After Effects, so there's not too much of a learning curve if you're already familiar with AE. Ross

Richard, I tried to install CineFX, but the Windows installer was for the JahPlayer. And then it wouldn't run on my Vista machine. I've played around with Jahshaka before, but wasn't very impressed with it. So far, I'm very happy with my new purchase. When I render out an MOV, I use the MPEG-4 Video compression. It looks good and has a smooth playback. I would prefer to use the H.264, but the gamma issue drives me nuts. VisionLab Studio does a great job with image streams, so I have been experimenting with outputing PNG streams from EIAS and they work well. Ross

Richard, Cinefx looks interesting. I've been using Super and Rad Video Tools for video conversion. Super works very well, but it has a weird interface. The demo version of VisionLab Studio is fully functional, but has a watermark on all rendered output. I'm going to be adding a lightsaber effect to video I have of my daughter fighting Darth Vader at Disneyland. It is really a lot of fun just to play around with. One of their resellers occasionally lists the program on ebay, where I picked it up for about 1/2 the cost it sells for on Amazon (yes, it is the most current version). And it came with a 10' x 12' muslin greenscreen for even more fun. I've taken a couple other animations I have done and thrown effects into them, too. I'm happy with them as well. I also took a video my wife and I shot a year ago for a video contest and inserted lightning climbing up a man's arm when he touches an electric fence (just for fun). I actually stumbled across this software looking for open source alternatives to After Effects (though it is a commercial program, not open source). Ross