supernovavfx

my favorite was Fiber Forge... whatever happened to THAT? wasn't it konkeptoine product? I remember making furry objects and more with it..... I was really sad not to see a 64 bit version of it.

the rendering slave thing is a great Idea! I'm pretty sure the windows box is 64 bit.... i dont start my new arrangement with them until Monday August 4th. My biggest problem is that they, at least at first, dont want my mac 'wired' to their network. The IT department is typically paranoid that problems would arise. Can a connection be made via wi fi? I dont think connecting to their windows box automatically allows me access to their in house network... so maybe I can connect for rendering ONLY and they can still deny me "network" access outside of my 'room'. Working on my own the last 5 yrs spoiled me :) Once I'm in the building and they get comfortable with me..... I have a feeling ill be able to know a lot more and do a lot more. Thanks for the ideas... I want to do as much EI work as possible there.

I have a new business opportunity that involves a PC and my Mac. Same room. I want to take advantage of whatever that PC is capable of doing for me... but I've never, in 23yrs of my life, worked on a PC... I'm a TOTAL beginner. Weird... but true. It appears to be a 2 core E5 processor.... K4000 video card. 32 gigs ram and not sure which version of windows... Im looking for COMPATIBILITY feedback.... not speed or performance... this PC is not going to change anytime soon, so I am looking at whatever I may get from it as being a "bonus". For example... if I were to design and save an entire project on my mac.... transfer it to the PC.... texture maps and all. Maybe a plug in used like uber shape or a shader.... but ONLY ones that come with EI... could I render this seamlessly on the PC? I have to guess that yes is the answer.... but id like to hear if anyone had trouble or could help me with anything I should be aware of going between machines. Thanks.... Scott

if your on a mac... I used an app called memory cleaner... it was free or cheap.... it would solve the problem

great to hear from you... I hope your doing well! Your far more advanced with linkings and intricate motion than I am, but your questions are ones I have thought about. If Bullet allows for keyframed control and more nuance... I have not found it in the manual. Maybe it exists somewhere but thats why I am asking. I "KNOW" exactly how to do what I want but the bullet system does not allow for it from what I can tell and that is this. #1 I make the chain with complete links.... set up the dynamics and let it go... the chain would naturally sag a bit in the middle... perfect. I would pick which link I wanted to be the weak one and take the "pre cut up" chain 'link' and make it a child of the non pre cut up link. I would align it exactly to begin with. So the sim would run.... the chain would sag but NOT break because its using the dynamics from a solid link.... when the object falls on the chain ( and shatters the link ) I would like to be able to take the pieces of the "pre cut up link" and in have the bullet dialog box which already HAS an "ACTIVATE ON HIT" check box... to have a SECOND activate on hit check box with a pull down.... where you could pick the layer or object that you are telling the simulation to 'have permission' to dynamically interact with those pieces. This would technically still call for 2 renders I think.... one would be every frame right up to the very frame that the secondary object touches the first pre cut link piece.... so then the chain would sag a bit naturally with dynamics... and the pieces would lie dormant... only to respond to a second "level" of interaction. This is something I can not find or see Bullets interface allowing for. Im NOT complaining. Work arounds are part of an animators daily job... and since this is a personal piece for my new reel... I am adjusting my concept a little to allow for the current Bullet dynamics to work as I know how to use it. Animating roughness and stiffness is very smart... thank you.... but I do not see that capability... reading the docs I think there are a few animate able settings.... but I'm still in my infancy messing with this.... very fun and cool stuff I plan on using a LOT going forward.... especially now that the speeds of trial and error have gotten to where I can kick out work daily. Some of my first dynamics laden animation \ motion graphics are finished and ill share them when I'm done in the weeks to come.... :)

your a perfectly normal VERY talented artist in my opinion. being obsessive is part of it! LOL we balance that and getting production out the door... so much of my paid work may be great to the people that buy them... but most of it does not reach my level of detail either. I can model a huge amount of whats in your scene in Pro Modeler... by far the most easy to use powerful modeler that exports facts on the market. Imports beautifully and gives you such insanely easy control of those little edge things I spoke about. I would mix it up a bit... go with what you bought here and there and some of those really easy shapes like rectangle table tops, marble tops... heck a lot of these are easy shapes... you can then handle the edging thing and add that warmth I commented on. Im telling you though... the lighting and overall look is just beautiful and Tomas should definitely show them as examples of great EI work....

ok Michael... you asked for it... lol. First off. These are beautiful. The lighting and design make me want to move in. I had to REALLY SEARCH for something tiny that maybe I might do.... but its a "taste" thing. I love the couch and the soft warm feeling of volume it has. Its lit and modeled so nicely. I only saw 2 things I would do to it personally. Edges. there are a lot of perfectly straight lines and edges to table tops wall corners and objects. I would 'soften' a few of them up by making them either slightly imperfect or with the subtlest, tiny rounded edge... that still would look clean... but not quite cut your finger sharp... even marble tops have tiny beveled or rounded edges to them. thats being real picky I know. And maybe in architecture that is a no no... the other small thing is that personally again I'm not a fan of procedural wood shaders. Most of them. NX has some great bark but I would maybe swap out the wood texture on the coffee table for a true wood texture map... maybe even 2 tones, one for the top one for the legs or just a more photo real treatment which you have done a masterful job of here.

yes I do, thank you Steven... the problem is that when the simulation becomes active... gravity takes over and the other links 'touch' ever so slightly the pre cut up link... and it begins breaking apart RIGHT AWAY... not obviously what I want. There may be a complex compositing way to do it... but I have concepted a way around this that I think will look cool... but its a pretty interesting dilemma... I would think there would need to be some kind of parent child ability but I'm not sure.

I have a complicated visual i want to create that requires me to figure out one ( I thought ) relatively simple dynamics set up. Here is the set up I tried and hope to find out how to pull off: I have a simple only 5 elements. 3 chain links and 2 static rings. All 3 links are interwoven with each other like a real chain. The left and right links are "linked" to the static rings. the MIDDLE link is where the issue is. I am going to have some other elements come falling down onto the chains ( so i guess there will be more than 5 elements, but those dont matter as to this question ) The middle link will be made up of some pieces.... what I want to happen is that when my falling elements hit the chain, the center chain breaks apart ( into its pre cut pieces ) as the falling objects hit the chain. I've set this up, and with 3 links its simple and easy... set them to dynamic and they fall with gravity and hang their connected to the static rings. BUT... the pieces that make up the link that I want to shatter on impact... begin shattering almost immediately because they 'technically' hit the other links... I dont want this... I want it to hold its shape hanging in there with the other links for the 1 - 2 seconds it takes for my falling objects to hit them. I can't think of a way around this. I want the pieces of the middle link to not shatter when touching the other links. I put a "dummy" link in the middle links place and parented the pieces to it... so the pieces fall and "hang" with the others, but now I need the middle pieces to react to the falling objects. Im not sure this even can be done. if anyone knows how to pull this off or even IT CANT would be helpful and ill have to re concept the segment....

I knew it was simple... for some reason I never put together in my head that a black and white ramp in one tab would affect the overall reflection, bitmaps and all... like a clipping map does or an alpha channel. Can I load a bitmap in if I want a stylized reflection... ?

I actually thought of that... but did not try it yet... I think ill give it a shot, - using a gradient in the reflectivity channel - if that works it would be great because it would be fast and not much of a render hit.

I have a super simple setup of a floor and a wall with an image on the wall. I want the image on the wall to reflect down onto the floor which is the easy part. I'm surprised after all these years i never needed to do this, but here is what I'm having trouble seeing if I can do.... I want the reflection in the floor to fade out gradually to nothing \ the floors texture.... I've seen this in other software but forgot what they labeled it. I played with some settings that I thought would produce that... but I figured id give someone here a chance to help me on this. thanks Scott

LOL yes... Tomas... I am currently working 16 hr days on a brand new website (basic and clean, not fancy) with multiple new reels and a lot of new EI work as well.... I have a lot of better WCIU stuff ill get to you if you care to show it... i NEED to be done with that new website and reels so I can start looking for new work, in the next 10 days or so. Once the site is up and I'm looking for work I will have the time to forward samples of any number of things EI. Im creating an original animation for the opening of the my sizzle reel right now in EI that will take me about 7 of the 10 days.... editing the reels won't take me too long after that..... just want to add something fresh at the opening.... wish me luck. This is a bit of a "phase 2" in my life and my career and I'm pretty excited about it... nervous in a good way as to where I may end up... stay in LA, Join a design firm, work for a network... I dont have any idea but I'm keeping an open mind.... :)

im not sure I even have 8 any more. You all did great work in 9.1 speed wise. Its very noticeable. Yes, the fastest iMac I have with internal SSD's and an external SSD raid is very very fast. After Effects noticed some nice speed improvements, but EI, as usual…. noticed the biggest jump... some of that I'm sure is the faster machine, but Im well aware of all the time put into Optimizing EI. And thats why it seems too have the largest jump in performance. great work!

all done with EI 9.1 very simply. Modeled in my FAVORITE MoGraph Modeler Zaxwerks Pro Animator... which also has a really easy to use geometry slicing utility.... and exports native FACT files. just one light source and shadow... vimeo does not make it easy in my opinion to see the 1080 version... you need to go to 'couch' mode. The transitions were done in After Effects with Sapphire Defocus and glints. Id love to be able to have an easy to use rack focus ability in EI... its used non stop in cg and i prefer to try it in EI FIRST and only mess with it in post if i have too or want to effect it. The key was EI's refraction mapping global. I LOVE it. I dont have to build complicated environments just to get some lighting into the glass of a dramatically lit scene. It fakes reality, but so much of commercial animation and logo work NEEDS to 'fake' lighting for stylized purposes. THANK YOU for the kind responses very much!

amazingly averaged around 60 seconds a frame or less at times.... 1920 x 1080 start to finish done in 4 days.

SPEED RESULTS I wish I would have an absolute for anyone that cares, but here is what I experienced with over 40 renders. On a 4 core i7 ( with 8 threads ) and 32 gigs of ram. The fastest individual frame was a 64 bit camera.... no surprise there. When rendering 4 64 bit cameras... I got the fastest performance but about one third of the way through I got 64 bit errors knocking out one of the 4 cameras. Memory fight is my guess... Tomas's guess of 4 32 bit cameras was VERY close too the fastest... and it was 100% reliable... no cameras erring out. 'but' I was able too beat that with 6 32 bit cameras. Not by a lot... but enough to make it worth being my 'go to' set up. All cameras exist on an SSD thunderbolt raid. Not spread among hard drives. I tried 6 cameras at 64 bit with each camera allotted 4500 gigs of ram per camera... more than double the 32 bit cameras... but that still led to a few memory 64 bit errors... again my 'guess' is that 64 bit just wants a lot more memory to work efficiently. For now... I think ill keep my still renderer 64 bit and my renderama setup at 6 32 bit cameras. - i did 'try' 8 cameras. One per thread but it seemed to increase the render times to about match the 6 camera setup... going from 4 - 6 cameras did save enough time over a rendering to make it easily the best choice.

I render a lot of what I would call pretty "clean" scenes, in a way because Camera can do such beautiful renderings with just a few settings. in this case... I have a solid beveled logo made out of glass... a tiled map for the floor that is roughly 512 x 512 and then the big map is an HDR file I loaded into the refraction sky maps and reflection sky maps and environmental map tabs. One light... the shadows, refraction and reflections are the creative behind this logo animation. I run the clients name STEVEN through the glass logo that is so closeup you can't read it. My goal was to have the glass "bend" visually his name in a way that was visually organic and sort of 'mysteriously' readable if anyone understands what I mean by that. Ive done this once before and it was pretty cool... fading between 3 separate glassy moves that refract hints at the companies name with the final move being a 'full assemble' of the logo as completely readable at the end.... simple concept with very render heavy expectations that camera alone, I have found, really pulls off great.... plus the new refraction maps are awesome for letting a more graphic animator like myself add sort of 'fake' complexity' into the glass that would have taken me forever too set up before. Rambling here. Fingers crossed for some animation features in the next version of EI... but what will be will be.... I have a good workflow now... new features are just bonuses...

setup #1 4 32bit cameras using the full 2gigs of ram each setup #2 4 64bit cameras using 4 or (5) gigs of ram per camera setup #3 1 64bit camera using 28 gigs of ram for the camera projects are animation projects using a lot of raytracing, motion graphics and while some of the maps and HDRI's are larger the polygon counts are medium compared to some of the more intricate things I've seen others create. Output is 1920 x 1080 My "guess" is setup #2 but I'm not even close to sure..... thanks! Scott

great to hear....

Hi Tomas and all.... checking in to see if there is any news on a V10 or V9.5 or EIAS or any other announcements or hints that could be shared with us... Thank You Scott

wow! what a great and generous offer. I for one miss you a LOT Brian... your an amazing man. Scott

i don't know if EI will post this… but I've had similar issues with renderama…. it was not 'supposed' to happen but then i just found MY workaround. for example… as i switch between projects and situations I've literally went back into renderama and renamed my slaves brand NEW numbers like 1705 - 1706 - 1707 etc…. "THEN" they re - connected" with the 'render' I'm not sure why. I'm so used to troubleshooting and finding my own work arounds that its not worth sharing. Bottom Line…. I had to spend about an extra 5 minutes prepping new slaves for renders that averaged 6-12 hours…. once i get a set up to work i seem to have about 95% success… but i have to admit… going to NEW files on occasion makes the slaves nutty… but be patient and re entering brand new numbers takes only a few seconds.

when i have time ill look into that… I was not sure how easy it was to use the layer shader. Where do you apply it etc….

i think the fog pass is the way to go… I don't want to sound critical…. but this is something that would be great to have working easily in EI… so much hi end work uses these lens effects. So maybe in EI 9.5 or 10??? :)