Buggsy

Thanks Lazlo. :) Clients comment last week: The images are fantastic and really show the detail along with the landscaping give a sense of realism. Wish we could move in now. Very excited I really hope to become more proficient with using EI. I mostly use shaders due to their flexibility but this tends to compromise on realism a little. Being able to create the right looking noise to be convincing is difficult with shaders. They do the job though. Michael

I think I almost wet myself :-/ Can you feel that? Some one has stired the beast of EIAS. After a good while of standing still the bullet train is leaving the station and I'm on it. Yippy...... Strap yourself in!! Ride like the wind bulleseye. Michael

Thanks everyone. Your comments are much appreciated. Alex - Maybe one day they'll look photo-real :-/ Richard - Let us know what Jeremy Birns book is like when you've finished reading it. I'm sure it will have some gems worth knowing. Nige - The grass is a combination of the following shaders: Clouds, Crumple and BumpyNoise. I can send you the material if you'd like. Ian - Dirt? I'm looking to complete my animation demo reel in the next 6 months which will have a cross section of lighting challenge scenes and architectural work. Big job though. Michael

Hey that's really good. :) I slowed down each frame to check out the rat and the little guy is looking around and jumping in time with the ladies jerking motion. Nice work. Michael

Thought this would be worth posting here. Following is the link to our website page for our artist impressions product. It represents the last 2-3 years worth of architectural work with EI. I'm a building designer with all of these houses being either designed, documented or modelled by ourselves. We use ArchiCAD, OnyxTree (using UV's and .fact model), Photoshop, NX Shader. Hope you like.:rolleyes: http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Artist_Impressions_by_Good_Building_Design.html Michael

Hi Nige, Thats a very nice scene/model and rendering. Are they all your own models or a composition of purchased/free models? Love the stainless steel table legs material and their shape! Table glass looks really good too. Curtains at the rear are great. How did you do them? I think your scene is really good and only needs a small amount of refinement to make it excellent. Just some comments on elements in the scene. Please don't take offence, I love the process of resolving what are the missing attributes when refining renderings: Green plant in the back right appears overly green. Top of wine bottle appears too clean and white. I drink a little wine and most wrappers on the top are coloured the same as the bottle or silver or even more mature colours rather than white. Red chair material looks too pretty and clean. Can't tell if they're leather or vinyl or something else. Floor texture too repetitive and out of scale. Floor mat in front of couch flat and not sure if it is a rug? Timber material of rear french doors not convincing. Some atmosphere fog and light rays enabled would add mood. Multiple light pendants in varying lengths would feel right. The cushions on the couch at the rear don't look right. Maybe some magazines on the glass table at the rear? Keep up the great work. Nice to see other users exploring the new v8.0 features. Michael

Thanks for your positive comments Richard. I really appreciate it. Yes this was not modelled by myself but by Christophe Desse and Matthew Thain. It is my contribution to the CG Society Lighting Challenge Neon & Chrome hosted by Jeremy Birn. I've been using EI since version 2.9 and at times I feel like I've been banging my head against the wall with it. Sometimes because of it and mostly because I've been slow at getting just how to use it. I have realised to get results requires a LOT of time and skill not necessarily with EI but with CG in general. I have long held the opinion that the software is not so much what needs to develop but it's the individuals skills. I have contemplated switching software but in the end I figure that they all require skilful use of photoshop, an intimate understanding of natural lighting and physics and a ton of imagination. With each new project I do I feel I'm finally starting to feel happy with the results. Next will be to nail down a decent modelling program that works with EI and to hone my modelling skills. My dream is to see an integrated modeller with EI but the conversation I've seen over years suggests that wont happen any time soon. I still feel out in the cold with what modelling program to use. I use ArchiCAD for architectural stuff (as I'm a Building Designer) I used EI modeller in the past but found it so unstable and to flexible (if there is such a thing) Silo has so many things I don't like about it. Exporting to EI with any certainty has been the greatest challenge with any of the CG Society lighting challenges that I have done. Mike

Ok here's the updated rendering using EIAS v8.0. I didn't use area lights in this rendering before and I haven't used them this time either. Just radial lights. The lights at the front have photons applied but the lights at the back don't. I seem to get an error message when I activate photons on to many lights. There must be a ceiling for photons!? I've added more textures and changed camera angle etc. Maybe not a good comparison between versions due to the large amount of changes. I've used the EI_Layer.shd shader with this job and it is so good I can't recommend it highly enough. I used each separate photoshop layer (reflection and transparencies) and placed them over the final rendered image to enhance that particular attribute of the final rendering. I was able to make my reflections more blue and the transparencies more transparent. I will add it to every job I do in future. Having said that can anyone say whether adding the shader increases rendering time? Hope you like the image. http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Neon_&_Chrome_lowrez_v8.0.jpg http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Neon_&_Chrome_hirez_v8.0.jpg Mike

I couldn't say that I quite get what your saying. Do you mean providing a place here on this forum for a textures repository? Was the Material Repository that was started on the EI Technology forum get swallowed up by the new EI development team and if so will v9.0 have improvements regarding texture previews? A while ago a user made a comment that he had to do a lot of previews due to the absence of multi-threading which reduced Animators performance in being able to provide quick rendered previews. I know this is more than just about textures but my thinking is to provide (in the standard "EI Material" folder better previewing to open up greater access to current shaders. The current EI palettes and texturing system is clunky at best but that doesn't preclude solutions that try to work with what we have. I am one of the users that watched the Material Repository concept developed by users on the EI Technology website forum, die a quiet death. Maybe there is no merit in being able to see what the texture looks like. Maybe relying on texture names, blind faith and frustration in using the shaders is only something I suffer. First you've got to wrestle with the model scale then the shader "Projection" scale then the shaders units and try and get something that looks remotely like the shader preview. Part of the solution could be as simple as providing a location in EI that allows the user to insert their own texture preview. And/or like OnyxTree allow access to a preview image from the OS browser so you can get visual feed back about the texture your about to import into your project. Currently if you "Load" a texture via the info tab on an object in EI you can't view anything other than a .mtr file. Why not allow a .jpg file to be previewed here which corresponds to the .mtr file you think will achieve the look your after or right click on the texture in the Material Palette and have a preview pop up? I have NX Shader and the material library that comes with it. After adding all the textures in it to my Material/Texture project I'm inspired and surprised by the effects I can achieve with it. For most users I think you want to be creative quickly and finding a texture that has been prepared by the Developer or 3rd party which gives the user some assurance that your working at least with something that should yield predictable results and is also a place of creative inspiration. I just thought it may be useful to other users and if there was anything the developers could glean from it then my hours (days actually) of work (which I will definitely benefit from) can be shared with others. If anyone knows whether there is an application that can split my .mov files out into individual .jpg files that would be great if you can post it here. Buggsy

Hi Everyone, I participate in CG Society Lighting Challenges from time to time and thought I would post one of my images here of the Neon & Chrome lighting challenge. The image is an old one now having been done over a year ago on version 6.5r of EI. NX Shader and standard EI shaders used as well as photoshop. The one texture I am really pleased with is the car paint. Hope you like it. http://www.goodbuildingdesign.com.au/Carpark_Project.jpg Buggsy

Hey Everyone, I don't know how usable this might be to everyone but I am creating a project of all of the standard EI textures that come with v8.0 and my textures (NX Shader) into one EI project file. I have used a null as the folder heading (example: Skin & Leather which corresponds to the folders on my Mac) and then linked each cube (model file) that has animated visibility enabled on in order to create a .mov file with all the textures in it. I am then going to import single frames into the all the textures in the project file and then save them out over the current .mtr files via the Material Palette inside of EI so that any texture that is imported will come with a preview of what the texture looks like. My questions are, would this be valuable for everyone to have making it available for download to all users? Is there a free software program that will split all of the frames out of my texture movies into single .jpg files? I have also created a "Set" that will show which files have the NX Shader in it so they can be filtered if you don't have NX Shader. Let me know everyone. Material/Texture Folder headings are: -Brick & Block -Fabric & Textiles -Flooring & Tiles -Fruit & Veg -Glass -Hi-Tech & Hi-Gloss -Landscaping -Liquids -Metal -Paper & Cardboard -Rubber -Skin & Leather -Space -Stone & Ceramic -Tree -Wall Finishes -Wood -ZZ Miscellaneous Buggsy