Arketype

Sad News. Thanks Triple D for all you have done for EIAS! Dave

Hi Apu, This is easy if you use the Layers feature. In the layers tab add the layers shader to "all objects" and edit it's settings to produce a "final render" with layer mode set to multiply. Also create a selection set of all objects, but exclude your shadow plane. Add this selection set to the Layers tab, and add the layers shader. This should also be set to "final render" but the layer mode should be "normal. This technique works very well with still images. I have been meaning to do a quick tutorial video of this ;) I have not tried it with animation, so hopefully sequential PSD files won't be a problem. Let us know how it works for you. Dave

Hi Diego, Keep us updated! Dave

Hi Diego, Open Activity Monitor and watch the disk activity tab to see how much throughput the drives are experiencing. I have seen close to 200MB/s on 4 drive setups, but this is an extreme situation that I created with a test project designed to max-out the throughput of the drives. Partitioning will do nothing to help. Also check to see if you are running close to the 2GB limit on each Camera, and how much total RAm you are using. High resolution GI scenes can be very memory intensive. If your Cameras are low on memory they will likely pull a lot of data from the hard drive, making the drive access even worse. Let us know how it's going. Dave

Hi Christian, You must import the Fact model into Animator and render from there. Animator sends special data to Camera by saving a .ccn file that Camera reads. This is much more than just model data. it includes rendering variables, Global Illumination, and resolution settings, environment information for reflections, etc. etc. etc. The EIAS 3D team is working hard to make EIAS better, so if you have suggestions for better model import, please post them here ;) Thanks, Dave

Hi Richard, Yes, you should be able to use any supported image format in the World Raytrace tab, even jpegs, QT .mov, etc. The GI "glossy" setting filters the adaptive skymap (hdr or other image loded into the skymap list) through the "specular" channel of all materials. This way you can have specular highlights on "plastic" materials that corresponds to the light sources in the hdr image. In each materials reflectivity tab you need to set the mode to "normal" to enable raytrace reflections. This will automatically enable the material to "see" the image file in the World Raytrace tab. The "environment" and global reflection controls are not needed. Most likely the reflection looks blurry because your windows are a flat plane, and will only reflect a small portion of a spherical environment. Dave

Hi Richard. The difference is this... World Reflection is a phong based reflection environment (just like fake reflection map). You can ignore this tab if you are raytracing. The RT environment is reflected as the "background" for any material with raytraced reflections. These work with regular images, as well as HDRI files (.HDR and .EXR) High dynamic range files wil give bright values (greater than 1.0) and have the most potential for mimicking reality ;) Hope that helps ;) Dave

On the Mac you can highlight multiple fact files in the finder and double click- all of them will open in animator together. OBJ will need to be translated to .fac via Silo, formZ, obj2fact, etc.

Hi Michael, When you place a map in the reflectivity channel of a material it overrides the main reflectivity slider (as you noted). The easiest way to control reflectivity is to darken/lighten your reflectivity texture in Photoshop and this also gives precise control (so a 20% black is 20% reflective) You can also blur the HDR in Photoshop (make it VERY blurry) for more of a brushed look. That should get you closer to what you are looking for, without affecting your render times. Dave

Hi Mike, The "Glossy" effect is really more of a specular highlight effect, not so much a "blurry reflection" effect. To use GI glossy, simply load your HDRI map in the skymaps tab of the GI dialog, check the enabled box under skylight, and set the "color from" pop-up to use adaptive skymap. You can then click on the "glossy" button for the Glossy settings. The blurriness/ softness of the specular is controlled by the base angle. A value between 10 and 15 works pretty well. If the value is too low your speculars will often look "spotty". The "amount" works as a multiplier to brighten glossy highlights. This is the global setting and will increase all glossy specular highlights. I usually use a value between 1 and 4. You can adjust the amount of glossy reflection on a material by material basis by adjusting the falloff in the specular tab of an object's material. This functions as a second multiplier for glossy speculars. You can set this somewhere between 1 and 2 for glossy materials like plastic and glass, or set it to low values like .1 for matte materials like wood. Try some experimentation with some different HDRI maps, and a simple sphere to get the hang of the settings. Good luck! Dave

Hi Apu. You need "secondary illumination" in your scene. Any raytraced transparency or reflection cannot use the "primary" GI rays cast for basic shading. So basically your transparent object (and what you see through it) is not being illuminated. There are 3 methods of doing this. 1) Add secondary rays in the GI dialog (brute force method -Very Slow). 2) Add standard lights with their mode set to "secondary" (very fast "phong" shading, but secondary illumination will not have the "GI look") 3) Use lights with photons set to "GI & Secondary" . This can give very high quality throughout the image with highly realistic shading for both "primary" and "secondary" points. Dave

Hi Bill, When you are finished with your deadline, please post this bug in the bug tracker (link in upper right corner of this forum). Please reduce an example prj to a minimum by removing unneeded elements but still shows the problem. You can ftp the prj for us to check out. Thx. Dave

According to the website, Xenodream 2 should export obj format. This should work, at least "in theory". Dave

Hi James, Animator can only handle a single UV space per object, so you will have to split the object in pieces if you have multiple UV textures applied. Dave

Hi Steve, You should load it into the "layers" tab of the render info window. This will output the standard .img file, and the DOF effect to a PSD file. Dave

Hi BJ, Nice looking image so far! What are your photon map mode settings, and your photon radiuses? It sounds like you might have it set to "always visible". While this can be useable, the proper setting for a final render is "GI+Secondary". Inside the database feature is a checkbox to "render grid" which should be unchecked. (GI+Secondary will automatically turn this off). GI+Secondary engages the GI engine to shade the points identified by the photon map (or as defined by the baked database). The shading should improve with this setting. Dave

Beautiful work! Thanks for sharing, Ash. Dave

EXR2Mesh beta 4 for Mac is available... http://www.eias3d.com/WebDownloads/EWXR2Mesh_b4MacUB.zip EXR2Mesh beta 3 for PC is available... http://www.eias3d.com/WebDownloads/EXR2MeshWindowsb3.zip :) Dave

I thought I would share the results of a few "experiments" I have been conducting... Each image uses a slightly different setup, with different light settings and different "tricks". Maybe these will eventually lead somewhere interesting ;) Comments are welcome. Dave

It's still there... Object Menu --> Add 3D Text... ;) Dave

To release a "working version" there needs to be info on what is not working. I think there are users who are successfully using Dante and v8. If you have some small projects that demonstrate problems, then the issues can be more easily addressed. See this post for file upload info. http://www.eias3d.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=74 In addition to the sample project, please include a text file which lists a series of steps that reproduces the problem, as well as your computer specs, OS, and EIAS version information. Thanks, Dave

This will be a place to post download links for software updates and new plugins.

In order to address this issue, we need to find a way to reproduce the bug. If you find a project which does this 100% of the time, please post it here for us to review. Thanks for your help. Dave

Whoops, the early beta was left online. Downloads for the lastest betas are here. Mac: http://www.arketypedesign.com/Downloads/EXR2MeshMac_UBb3.zip Windows: http://www.arketypedesign.com/Downloads/EXR2MeshWindowsb3.zip Thanks, Dave

Hi Brian, I think b-spline smoothing would be a good addition. Sequentially numbered EXR files can be used for animation. See my test here using an earlier beta of EXR2Mesh... http://www.arketypedesign.com/Downloads/AnimateEXR3.mov