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Yes, thank you Richard. Got a new code and off she went:) Michael.

Is anyone using Toby Thains plug in with Photoshop CS5? I've been trying to get it to recognize .img files for the past half hour and no matter what I do they remain inaccessible. Michael.

I am on an Mac, Intel 8 core running 10.6.4 Until my hard drive went tits up it was running fine - but I do remember that Phillip had to send me a new code when I first got and installed V8. Unfortunately that email went into the wild, blue digital yonder with the crash. This is also a bit urgent because I have a deadline involving several renders in a short time. Michael. Michael.

Thanks for the quick reply Tom. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anything like that in there. See the screen shot. Mike. Screen shot.

Hi, I updated to V8 when the old EI had their offer. Since then I have had my main hard drive go down and had to reload everything. Now my authorization code will not activate Animator. Can you help? Thanks, Michael.

Yes, I will have to start looking into a third party UV editor. I used to use 'Steamroller' (which admittedly wouldn't have done the job for this), until I moved to an Intel machine and 'Steamroller' didn't and hasn't. Michael.

Hi, I have a metal pipe that twists all over the place. I want to put a texture and bump map on it to simulate a segmented look. The problem is that I can't get anything that really works. Any suggestions? There are no UVs. Michael.

Thanks Dave, that explains a lot. Michael.

Sorry, I don't seem to be explaining myself very well. I started off using Mforge but ran into some roadblocks that I just didn't want to spend the time solving. (I am aware of the tut you sent). So, I changed to just a standard material where I could control everything far more easily. The problem now is trying to control the reflectivity of the HDRI. If you take a look at the attachment the first image shows the (grey) material with a brushed texture map in the diffuse, specular, reflection and as a bump. The second image just has the map in only the bump and diffuse. What I want to do is control the reflectivity so that I get the effect of a dull, scratchy aluminium and to do this I want to use the map in the reflection channel. When I do this the reflection goes to 100% and the main reflection slider has no effect. 100% is just a little to strong for what I want. Hope this is clearer. Am I missing something? Michael. and the images - which I hope load this time.

Yes, but the material I am using now is a standard material with no plugs, just texture maps. Michael.

I didn't use HDRI in my example, but is this something like what you are looking for? If it is, I will upload the project.

Thanks Dave - and Tomas, my apologies for spelling your name wrong. Just got V8 and am starting to experiment. I was watching one of Ian's tutorials and thought that he had suggested that the 'glossy' setting could be used as a blur in a more general sense. My problem still remains. How to get fast blurred reflections in a specific material (while other materials like chrome keep their high, sharp reflectivity), while using HDRI maps in the rotoscoping, sky maps and world reflection and refraction tabs. Still playing around but it takes a lot of time - even with the faster engine:! Michael.

Thomas, I seem to remember that you were going to do a tutorial on the 'glossy' setting in the GI window. Did you ever do it? I am trying to do blurry reflections from an HDRI map on a particular material in a scene and don't want to use the reflection/blur setting if I can avoid it because of the time hit. Thanks. Mike.

The initial impulse to post came from a discussion about the Octane renderer. Looks really nice and the real advantage for anyone tweaking their scenes - which I would imagine is just about everyone - is the almost instantaneous feedback. The downside is that you have to have a specific Nvidia card in your machine to run it. I, and presumably many others, don't have that card, so then it became a question of if you had to upgrade anyway, which way would you go? Michael.

I was hoping that the Igors could chime in and tell us if this would work with Camera - if they haven't already done so somewhere else. Igors?

http://www.caustic.com/index.php

Hey Richard, are you in Montreal? I'm in Halifax and when I go on Kijiji for your neck of the woods there are a heck of a lot more bikes - and cheaper by the looks of it. Maybe you could be my agent up there for picking something up if this guy doesn't want to deal:) Are you a biker? Michael.

Did this for a guy who sells used motorcycles - hoping to do a deal with him to get an 1100 Virago or Honda Magna. As usual, modeled in EIM and rendered with Camera. Michael.

this is sort of what it should look like. Michael.

Hi, I have a project where I have to place hundreds of small rocks in a project. I'm trying to work if I should do it in EI (and if so how???) - or try comping it later in Photoshop. Anyone got any suggestions as to how it could be done in Animator? The rocks have to be placed as a type of loose foundation for a structure. Thanks, Michael.

Just a quick update of the image as it moves along - to where I don't know. Michael.

Are you using GI raytraced shadows with any of the lights, as I have found that they do not seem to work with mForge. What size did you render the image? These are straight Phong renders. Each image is rendered out at 2552 x 1914. Michael.

I did a lot of work in Photoshop. Basically I am a stills guy - the moving images bit is a mystery to me. Here is a shot of the 'clean' ship. Michael.