Making stones

[Thomo]

Hi,

What is the best way to make a realistic close up stone/gravel.

Any tips much appreciated

Thanks

Thomo

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Thomo,

Joe Tucciarone can help me here, but if am I not wrong, he uses Zbrush for detailed Space Asteroids for example.

Thanks

Tom

[RichardJoly]

Hi Thomo,

Depending of the level of "realistic" and how close your closeup will be.

We usually don't look at gravel from a few centimeters but usually from a few meters.

Here are some examples using a photograph with bump and displacement

and one with actual EIAS UberShape Rocks and dispersed with Rodeo.

Gravel_Project.zip

[interstellar]

Hi Tomas,

You are right - I use ZBrush to make asteroid models. After converting them and importing them into Electric Image, I use a combination of EIAS shaders like Fractal Noise, Rust and Crumple to add lots of detail. However, I think Richard's idea of photographing a bunch of pebbles would work best for Thomo!

Sincerely,

Joe T

[Thomo]

Thanks for all all the advice. A photo texture will not cut it in this case and it seems rodeo is no longer available.

I'll have a look at the video tutorial as well and see if I can go from there

Thanks

[apu]

Fichare, how do you mame so many instances of the rocks in the rodeo examole?. One by one?

[bwcc]

Hi,

What is the best way to make a realistic close up stone/gravel.

Any tips much appreciated

Thanks

Thomo

Placer Deposit form northern lights would work too. you could make a couple of unique pieces then randomly instance them over a surface. If you don't already own it, you might want to wait until EIAS 9 comes out. The Northern Lights plug-ins aren't really supported any more and if it doesn't work in 9 it's not worth buying.

bw

[RichardJoly]

Fichare, how do you mame so many instances of the rocks in the rodeo examole?. One by one?

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question Apu. Do you mean how do I make the instances? I make a row of 10 rocks align in X then duplicate the row 10 times in Z. This gives me 100 rocks that I can duplicate in Y, 100 at a time. I used 800 in the example. Sorry I cannot share the Project, I'm having problems with Rodeo right now.

[apu]

Thanks, that's exactly what I was asking. Damn autofill of the ipad

[Mark Johnston]

Hi Northern Lights plugins not supported ? First time I've heard this. I lost use of half my konkeptoine plugins before so hope this is not so.

Mark

[Northern Lights]

AFAIK, my plugins will work under EI 9 although to be honest I haven't tested them myself. I haven't heard of any show-stopper changes to the plugin API.

[Mark Johnston]

HI Thanks for that feedback nice to know.

Mark

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Blair,

Thanks

Tom

[bwcc]

Ola Blair,

Thanks

Tom

Has anyone tested the plug-ins to see if they work?

[Tomas Egger]

Ola,

They run in EIAS 9 and Camera in 32 bits architecture mode.

Thanks

Tom

[bwcc]

Ola,

They run in EIAS 9 and Camera in 32 bits architecture mode.

Thanks

Tom

what limitations are there in 32 bit mode? If we use a plug-in can we still render with multiple processors? Is Camera limited to 2GB of RAM?

bw

---

Ola,

They run in EIAS 9 and Camera in 32 bits architecture mode.

Thanks

Tom

one more question... when you say "32 bit mode" is that something that Camera will do automatically or would you set it to "32 bit" or "64 bit"

Can I use 64 bit Camera while using a 32 bit plug-in?

bw

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Brian,

All plug-ins will use all cores :), but you will be able to choose 32 bits (2GB RAM limit) or 64 bits on Camera settings (all RAM you have :)).

To use 64 bits, the plug-ins and shaders need to be updated, so, the third party tool developer need to take care of it.

Its why we released the EIAS 9 SDK some months ago.

Hope that helps

Thanks

Tom

[bwcc]

Ola Brian,

All plug-ins will use all cores :), but you will be able to choose 32 bits (2GB RAM limit) or 64 bits on Camera settings (all RAM you have :)).

To use 64 bits, the plug-ins and shaders need to be updated, so, the third party tool developer need to take care of it.

Its why we released the EIAS 9 SDK some months ago.

Hope that helps

Thanks

Tom

Do you know if which, if any, of the plug-ins will be updated? Have you tested any of the plug-ins or shaders to see if they work in 64 bit?

Even though the Camera will use multiple cores. Will we still be able to use Renderama?

bw

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Brian,

I cant share info about third party tools and Rama will be available for sure.:)

Thanks

Tom

[bwcc]

Ola Brian,

I cant share info about third party tools and Rama will be available for sure.:)

Thanks

Tom

Unfortunately, it seems that using 64 bit Camera would be nice, but it's not really practical. I don't do much without some 3rd party plug-in or shader. And it sounds like the plug-ins and shaders will not be updated. I know the 64 bit Camera is something a lot of people asked for, but if you can't use it with any plug-ins or shaders, it doesn't seem to be worth the effort.

So, what will be the best way to use 32 bit Camera(s) with Renderama? Would I set up Renderama with 1 Slave and have the 1 Camera render a single frame but using all cores? Or would it better to set up slaves for each core, like the way it works now? If I am using one 32 bit Camera on 8 cores, it will still be limited to 2GB of memory, right?. If I use 8 slaves, running on 1 core each, I can use 2GB per core. Does that make a difference?

thanks,

bw

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Brian,

When I wrote about plug-ins and shaders will not be available to 64 bits? :)

Right now, the best way in particular for me is have Rama + 1 Camera per machine - slave using all cores (a lot more practical), sometimes, I use in 32 bits mode when I dont need more Ram than 2GB and sometimes, to huge scenes and huge frame size, I can assign more than 2GB in the 64 bits mode. :)

Thanks a lot

Tom

[bwcc]

Ola Brian,

When I wrote about plug-ins and shaders will not be available to 64 bits? :)

Right now, the best way in particular for me is have Rama + 1 Camera per machine - slave using all cores (a lot more practical), sometimes, I use in 32 bits mode when I dont need more Ram than 2GB and sometimes, to huge scenes and huge frame size, I can assign more than 2GB in the 64 bits mode. :)

Thanks a lot

Tom

I don't know if you don't know or if you can't say but it would be foolish to assume that any of the 3rd party plug-ins or shaders will ever be updated. We can't even get a working UB version of the best plug-in ever created for EIAS. So I have to think that 64 bit Camera will never be something I can use in real production.

but, assuming we are using 32 bit Camera. Lets say I have a big project. In version 8 I can render a snapshot using, 1 core and 1 Camera with 2GB of memory allocated to that Camera. When I send it to rama I can render in 8 Cameras using 8 cores with 2GB allocated to each Camera. I can see in Activity Monitor that each Camera is using about 1.6GB of memory to render the scene.

If I try to render the same scene to 32 bit Camera 9 using all cores, will it run out of memory? Will it still need 1.6GB of memory for each core?

thanks,

bw

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Brian,

Remember we personally take care of plug-ins / Shaders bundled in EIAS and these Konkeptoine tools:

http://www.eias3d.com/products/konkeptoine-plugins/

About Camera 9, you will see when you play with it, since the memory management is totally new :)

But, you will be able to work in the way you want, 8 cameras with 1 core each, 4 cameras with 2 cores.. if you choose 8 cores with 2GB of ram, the limit will be 2GB, but Camera handle memory differently now.

Hope that helps

Thanks

Tom

[RichardJoly]

I forgot EXR2Mesh...

Not bad for a closeup of a picture... Would be better without specular...

Photo_and_exr2mesh.mov

[Aziz]

That's a pretty good example, Richard. The rock field looks almost real in that fly by. Yep, I think less specular would sell it better :-).

But I'm still missing Image2Mesh.