WHD

Hi All, Here is my little addition to the art pages. This is unfinished so be kind. The room is modeled in Silo. it is really just a test to see how real I could get the it to look with the new Photon Maps and Area Lights. I was going for the run of the mill drab un-color corrected light. Like the light you would get from real ceiling florescent lights. I also added the ugly linoleum floor tiles and typical fixtures you find in real labs. In effect nothing flashy just how these places look before you'd dress them up to make them look better if you were a photographer. It is badly in need of further set dressing like bottles and beakers and some of those machines they typically have in the labs but I have not taken the time yet. The computers are the only flashy looking stuff. See what you think. PS...When I get some time I hope to finish it. Bill

Thanks Igors, Will do. Bill

Hi All, Is there a technical reason that subsurface scattering will not work with bump mapping? Every time I try I get black stuff that looks like you took a torch to the model. I'm guessing that SSS requires true volume and bumps may just not play well but skin surfaces are difficult without bump. Anyone know if this is a limitation or a bug? Attached is a test of a neuron model with a SSS material and then with a B Fraktal shader bump only applied. Problem shows up with all shader bumps that I've tested. Bill

Hi Diego, Thanks for the confimation. Bill

Hi All, Does anyone know the status of Fiber Forge? Bill

Hey Tomas, Thanks for the fast reply. Bill

Hi All, I'm about to start a project and in the past have used many of the of the A Edge shaders from Triple D. I plan to use EIAS 8 for this project and before I upgrade I need to know if there are any issues with these shaders in EIAS 8. The Triple D site says they are EIAS 7 ready but no mention of 8. Am I safe or do I need to find an alternate solution? Bill

Hi Igors, Richard and Juan, Thanks for the clarification. I'll try to come up with a better description. Sorry for the delay but I had a deadline last week. Bill

Hi Igors, A bit confused. Are you saying that the note field or log is not possible or just that my description is too complex? If the log or notation is possible which is more feasible from your programming view? Bill

Hi Igors and all, I think we need to keep it relatively simple. Modified or specialized materials probably are not worth saving this way if they are optimized to a specific piece of geometry. I think that customization should be left up to the user once they have loaded the material. The reason I made this request is to help make it easier to build and share a library of materials. I think that a simple check box next to the save and load materials in the info tab should suffice. Something like collect/archive material. When selected, it will create a sub-folder in the EI Materials folder using the name you have given the material. It will then deposit the material of the same name and all textures and shaders associated with that material. If we want to make it a bit more full featured and complex it might be useful to collect world-reflection/refraction maps and possibly HDRI sky maps as well. A log file listing critical lighting settings would also be of use or possibly less complex would be a field to allow the user to add comments at the time the material is saved . If this is too much of a pain it is not totally necessary. It is just that a material optimized for GI or photon mapping may not look the same in a Phong/buffer shadow environment. Things that a log could include would be Raytraced , Phong, GI, Photon Mapping,# of lights and their intensity, Use of global reflections or HDRI skymaps, transmission or caustics enabled in the lights . Possibly a users scene scale since materials are mostly scale specific. 1 GU =1meter/foot /inch etc. Most of the things that I can think of for a log are rendering, lighting or global settings that have dramatic influence on the look of a surface. If these can be noted automatically in some way it will help in the reuse of materials. A user notation option would be a fall back if the automatic log is not feasible. Guess it is not so simple. :-) Bill

Hi Richard and Ian, Richard, "Collect" collects the entire project. It will put textures in their own folders and shaders in theirs but all of them from all materials. If you have massive projects with many materials and other things it takes a while and then you have to trash all the extra stuff. I just want to be able to neatly package up just the components of the single material I'm saving to a folder in the materials folder. Something you could send to someone and it would work as packaged. Ian, if I understand your reply correctly I find that I just have load and save in the info tab. At least that is what I see in EIAS 8 unless there is a trick to it. I should also clarify something. The save window that pops up on a Mac when you save a material does have the option to create a folder. I just thought it would be nice to type in a single name in a field and it would create the folder and put everything in it for you applying the same name to both folder and the material. Bill

Hi All, I've just been working on a project and it reminded me of something that I would really like to see. It would be really cool if there was an option to save all the textures with materials when they are saved. Even cooler would be if we could create a folder at the same time to contain all the components and material. I find that I frequently have materials but the textures have been inadvertently misplaced because I was in a hurry when I created it and forgot to put it all in a folder. Would be great to be able to automatically consolidate everything. Bill

Hey All, Well I wanted to try to get Onyx Storm Trees into EIAS 8 so I had an idea. Go back to 6.5 and export as a fact sequence. The export worked but the multitude of Tree Storm models don't move. They do in the preview and in renders but not in the export. Damn and I thought I was so smart:-) Can anyone think of a way to convert the storm trees into a moving fact sequence? Why on export is this motion ignored? Is there a way in 6.5 to convert the data so that it will export or bake into keyframes so that maybe the project will move forward without the plug in that does not run UB on a Mac. Bill

I like that idea Diego, Another nice thing would be if only the current frame of the cycled model was displayed in the camera and world windows once cycling is enabled. Visualizing a scene with all those cycling models at the same time is problematic. Bill

Hi, Oddly enough I actually prefer the dongle set up. I regulary jump between several computers on a network via KVM. I'll run EIAS on whichever machine is best at the moment depending upon what else I'm doing. I decide what I need to run that day and the resources that are available and I can choose a computer for EI cause EIAS is on all the machines and I just choose which to plug the dongle into. The restrictions of the other systems can be problematic. Each company has a different system so crash recovery can be a challenge. Many apps make running other software simultaineously difficult. Also I've found with Zbrush the key issues are a total pain logistically. I had ZBrush crash and when I tried to get it back up and running I got a support email telling me I needed to have my original version 1.55b copy installed. Well that was downloaded years ago and I have misplaced it.So far I can't get support to help me in a meaningful way. I also hear stories of problems reloading other non keyed software.Transferring license to new machines can also be interesting based on a few conversations I've had. EIAS is just install and plug it in and it works every time and I find this very flexible. I did have a dongle emergency a few years back when we did some construction and a box that I put all my important things in ,including dongles, was thought to have been accidentally placed in a dumpster and hauled off. turned out it was safe but quite a scare. Igors seem to think it is difficult. I have no issue with a dongle free option but I personally prefer the status quo over one of those internet systems or machine locked copy protection that have on occasion failed me. I think a demo version is a good idea. I tried EIAS years ago using a demo version and its ease of use and speed sold me then and there. Bill

Hi David, I use EIM and Silo with a few additional specialty modelers on the side like ZBrush, Onyx and Organica running on older machines. I typically figure out what to use based upon the model I need to build. Some tools are equally functional and some work better for me in one program verses another. It took a while but these days I use mostly Silo ( the pro version) and have even figured out how to do hard edged models. I just don't subdivide. Ta Da. Not sure what happened to crease but if you divide manually for hard edged models you have better control over poly count anyway. I have learned to love working with it in most cases. I export via .obj and use OBJ2FACT to get my fact files and that works pretty well. I particularly like getting down to vertex level control and the paint displacement that is almost ZBrush like. I can also import models from other sources which was my main problem with EIM. Problems with Silo are a lame management window that does not update properly once it reaches the bottom on a Mac. Limits the number of objects that you can comfortably use in a model. Array tools are needlessly complex and limited in function at least to me. Even Strata Pro had better array back in 1993.I like the key stroke manipulation but If I'm going back and forth between EI and Silo I keep hitting the wrong keys so I try to complete models and only then move to EIAS. That is probably more of a sign that I need an upgrade. :-) Had Lightwave 5.5 back years ago for the modeler. Used it once and could not figure out the tool naming conventions. It was powerful but it drove me crazy so I shelved it. I find every app does some things better and some worse. Of course some folks may really like how the things that I dislike work. Matter of taste I guess. Bill Dempsey

Hi rdm, As Gigayoda said Tesla is supposedly being developed at EITG. There was a lot of talk a while back about possibly starting from scratch and how would EIAS fit in this picture. I think that what happened is that EITG decided that they would begin from the ground up building a modeler and add animation functions ,like Modo , to the new foundation. Rather than try to support 2 platforms it was easier for EITG to cut EIAS loose to folks who would give it the care and support it deserves.Tomas is a pro user who knows what EIAS needs to function in a high end pipeline .The Igors have been the primary code writers along with several other contributors for a while now so EIAS is in the hands of folks who know EIAS well. Rumor has been that Camera would be a shared link since it is so fast and produces such great quality images . Keep in mind that all of what I am saying here is based upon my processing and understanding of what has been said, and like Gigayoda, I am not an official of either company so until Tomas or someone else says so much of this is just a best guess. I use EIM and Silo and love both but am finding that I prefer Silo for most things these days. I have no experience with Modo but I hear a lot of good things about it. Silo won out for me because it is powerful and very affordable. Bill

Hi, I've been working on a project for the past 2 weeks and have had 3 repeated issues with Renderama that are not typical. This is not going to be a very good bug report as I can't find any similarities between any of the events yet. Just wanted to report in case others are having the same issues. First is that Renderama is occasionally and randomly quitting unexpectedly. I will have a list of 10 renders and it will quit on render 3 this time and 7 the next.Good news is that it is so crash proof that it picks right back up when restarted.This has been happening about 3-4 times per day. Second issue is that some renders have chosen to hang on stitching. It will complete the process if Renderama is closed and restarted. Third issue is that some renders hang so I'll have a list of 10 items and when I return I find that item 3 in the list is at say 98% complete but is not progressing. Again when Renderama is shut down and restarted these issues are solved.This issue is most often encountered in the high 90% range. Note: my use of numbers and percentages above are just examples and not intended to represent actual events.Issues appear totally random right now. These things are happening on a Mac Pro 2.8Ghz 8 core machine running OSX 10.5.8 10 gigs of ram using no more than 5 cameras. EIAS 8. Have not had a chance to test this on any G5s that I have. Bill Dempsey

Hi Mickael, I don't expect this to be an EIAS 9 thing. As you said and most would agree it is most certainly too involved for that. But if the infrastructure could be built and some elementary functions added it would most certainly be a good start. Then features could be added over time with EIAS versions. The foundation for this alone is most certainly a huge project. I hope that users will be willing to recognize that for the time and effort of the programmers this will not result in a full featured modeler right away. It may even just have to start as a hidden under the hood thing for EIAS 9 and be worked on a little bit over several versions to spread the cost and make it viable. I just see this as a critical feature for EIAS's future survival. If you look at all the really big successful 3D applications now it seems they all have integrated modeling functions while those without are slowly being left behind. Bill

I second that or third it. Both request and sketch. Bill

Hey Ian, I'd hope that a truly necessary function like this will be voted in this time. Without it Materials loose so much of their potential. Specially for folks like me that use a new scale for almost every project. Bill

Hi All, I recognize that not all 3D apps speak the same language and that it is likely that some things will be lost in translation but the more options we have to translate with the more likely we are to get across what we need to have to do the job. Another animator and I spent the better part of a day getting a shot out of 3DMax and into EIAS with the existing FBX import. After we figured out what she had in her file that was problematic in the translation and removed it we were successful. Ultimately that we succeeded was all that mattered. I'm all for other translation methods .Collada and any other robust format that might come along as well as direct bridges to other applications. I also recognize that every time other apps upgrade it is possible and likely that something will appear that may lead to problems. Maybe we should try to have a format exchange database that lists the features that will not translate from other apps so that we can be both informed of limitations as well as know what to tell collaborators who use other apps the features not to use or to remove prior to translation. Bill Dempsey

Hi All, This was the one item of the EIAS 8 Wish List that I was really bummed was not in the winning category last year. I run into Texture/Material scaling issues all the time. Unfortunately not all my scenes are the same scale and when you have 10 maps and a shader or two in a number of different texture categories re-scaling is a very time consuming pain. Please include this in EIAS 9. Bill Dempsey

Hi All, I saw this over on the Eterea site a while back. At the bottom of the page is some wild looking displacement that I seem to recall was done in Modo. http://www.etereaestudios.com/training_img/relief_maps/relief_maps_2.htm Being able to create this form of displacement detail looks really cool and would be very useful for creating the level of detail that clients are beginning to ask for. Also while I know that Adaptive displacement can be done in EIAS 8 using the new Dicer it would be nice if it were integrated into the mapping process in some way. These are not must have features but they fall into the category of it would be cool. Bill Dempsey

Hi All On my wish list for a while now has been an integrated modeler. I know that this has been discussed now for years. When I started using 3D I was using Strata Pro back in 1992 or 93. When I came to EIAS the most difficult issue was that my animation process at the time utilized the power of integrated modeling tools . Abandoning that was very difficult. Every time I needed to make a change or tweek I'd have to go elsewhere re-export, re-import and in some cases redo a lot of work because the model issue did not appear until after I had committed much time to the scene. Many of the tools I use to create animation now are really simplified forms of modeling tools and many of my current jobs would benefit from the power integrated tools. I dream of being able to apply keyframes in a Silo like environment manipulating vertices within EIAS. I'm aware that this is not an easy task in EIAS due to certain structural issues of the current code but an integrated modeler would not only give us modeling tools but serious animating power as well and address one of the biggest deficiencies that the program currently has . Bill Dempsey