Re: trebuchet restored

[Mark Heuymans]

By pure coincidence, I saw an episode of 'Punkin Chunkin' on Discovery 
yesterday, never heard of it before. A clear sign that I shouldn't 
meddle with trebuchets for too long, it makes people crazy and obsessive! ;)


It's going to be fun to compare DA /Chrono / Realsoft with Blender's 
simulation tools!



-Mark




On 15-10-2011 4:46, Beg1nner wrote:

Hi Mark..

Yeah.. you have come very close to your earlier version and its 
equally cool...! nice to see it up running again..!

so those hours paid off
thx for sharing it.

and yep, working with sims are really mm precision and abit at times 
trial n error..
even though in real life these things are complex, its abit too much 
more complex in a sim =)

But its fun that its possible to do these things...

I have been thinking a lot what would be cool to make a sim of... hmm 
will see if I come up with something..


Looking forward to see it progress and also other DA sims of yours 
later on !


Take Care
Best Regards
Stefan Gustafsson ( Beg-inner )
A Proud Owner and User of Real3D and Realsoft3D

Re: news about v 8:) // any news about realease date V 8 ?

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Aidan,
Yes, Blender's feature set is impressive and people have made large 
animations with it: Sintel, Elephant's Dream etc.. My main problem is 
its interface, I can never find stuff... I want to expand my toolkit and 
use it next to RS in the pipeline, it's not this-is-better-than-that.


To me, RS is an oasis of logic and its interface is very intuitive (to 
me), I still love its VSL, SDS modeling, material objects, the powerful 
hierarchy window.. But I'm a rare breed ;)


-Mark



On 10-10-2011 17:30, aidan o driscoll wrote:

Mark,

Re Blender you have to admit the advances and progress and feature set
far out strip that of RS now. The day RS updates ... everything, that
will be the day I jump back on board. In my opinion it is too far
behind in development now, almost needs a complete rewrite?

Blender ease or not ease of use can differ from one person to another.
Personally I find the new v2.5 very easy to work with.

Aidan

Re: news about v 8:) // any news about realease date V 8 ?

[Mark Heuymans]

Thank for the tip Frank, great news and impressive GI animations!

By coincidence I've been toying with this Sponza scene lately with other 
renderers like Luxrender and Cycles for Blender.
The image in these unbiased renderers starts very noisy and 
progressively improves until the noise is acceptable, a completely 
different approach from Realsoft's. Looks like RS is catching up and 
adopting more modern techniques.

By the way, Blender is a b to learn compared to RS ;)

cheers,
Mark H



On 10-10-2011 14:17, "Frank Brübach" wrote:



look at www.realsoft.com / news

Re: DynAtomic for Realsoft3D 64 Bit Released

[Mark Heuymans]

No worries, I had figured that out myself :)
When I make new projects from scratch it works fine. Time to re-create 
that trebuchet!


-Mark H



On 4-10-2011 17:12, Carlo Lanzotti - DynaDream wrote:

Hi Mark,

Yes sorry, it was my fault, the samples where made with RS3D V7.

Best Regards,

Carlo Lanzotti

Il 04/10/2011 17:05, Mark Heuymans ha scritto:

That's quick Carlo, thanks!
I installed it manually, it seems to be working except the samples 
(crash!).
Now I'll have to refresh my memory and study the manual again... and 
practice ;)


cheers,
Mark H

Re: DynAtomic for Realsoft3D 64 Bit Released

[Mark Heuymans]

Yes, DynAtomic seems to work on V6, both 32 and 64 bit, but it is 
unsupported. I may post a detailed procedure on how to setup this if 
there are enough requests.




Me too! Still on V6 and 32bit...

Time to make DA animations, I have some free time now ;)


thanks,
Mark H

Re: best export file format including textures?

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks for the tips Arjo! I knew it wouldn't be easy ;)

-Mark


Hi Mark,

First of all you need to convert all your objects to polygonal SDS objects.
Next use the Map2Obj tool to convert the mapping objects to face maps.
RS can't make the mtl files. So the Obj files contain the UV information,
but you need to recreate the materials in another application. The only way
I could export textures was using the VRML export. After the export I
converted the file to obj with Polytrans. But these materials don't contain
reflection or other stuff. Only the texture maps.

Arjo.


-Oorspronkelijk bericht-
Van: owner-l...@light.realsoft3d.com [mailto:owner-
l...@light.realsoft3d.com] Namens Mark Heuymans
Verzonden: zaterdag 4 juni 2011 21:51
Aan: Reallist
Onderwerp: best export file format including textures?

Hi all,

Please refresh my memory: can RS3d export files like .obj including
UV-mapped textures? I know .obj import is perfect, but the other way
around..? V6.1.

I'm asking this because I want to make some of my free stuff available
to a wider audience...


thanks,
Mark H

best export file format including textures?

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

Please refresh my memory: can RS3d export files like .obj including 
UV-mapped textures? I know .obj import is perfect, but the other way 
around..? V6.1.


I'm asking this because I want to make some of my free stuff available 
to a wider audience...



thanks,
Mark H

Re: preview updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

More stuff added:

- island and soap bubbles available for download
- that hatch in the cellar is finally accessible
- implemented special Cave/Earth navigation arrows
- some other updates and forum posts

Now, some work on the cave and then connect the worlds!


enjoy,
Mark H

www.athanor3d.com

Re: question from the past.. real3d 3.5

[Mark Heuymans]

On 17-5-2011 19:44, Lorenzo Pistone wrote:

Hi Mark,

Thank you for the advice.

I changed the undo to 0 and changed also some configuration option of
the emulator giving a lot of megabytes for every kind of memory, like
zorro3, chip mem, fast mem and so on and now it render to file at 1920x1080.

I think the problem wasn't the undo but the uae settings, but I will
investigate more..

Anyway I have some more questions about the realsoft 4.2 version.
I would like to move some old amiga project to this version that seem to
like the old format, at least for the same project of the memory prolem,
but I would like to know if there is some thing I should know about
import from previous real format.


The Undo was a wild guess... I hope you solved this funny retro-problem.
About importing: beware of trimcurves! They import inverted into V4 and 
later, you´ll have to invert them manually.


I still have some parts of my very first Real3d 1.4 model of a 
microscope in a V6 version!




Another question is about RPL, if I open the rpl windows I receive a
error about missing  scripts/rpl/startup.rpl
It seems that the installation do not create this file, there is a
workaround?

Lorenzo Pistone



As far as I remember ´startup.rpl´ is an essential file for Real3d to 
function properly. But it´s been too long, forgot the details...


-Mark H

Re: question from the past.. real3d 3.5

[Mark Heuymans]

On 16-5-2011 21:53, Lorenzo Pistone wrote:

I'm sorry Vesa, but the button do not exist in the amiga version, it's
in the Windows version, I know because I have the full version for Amiga
and the demo version for Windows.
If there is a way to set the memory usage is not that button, for what I
can remember maybe there is an option to set in the program icon, maybe
in the same way I was used to increase the stack memory for each program.

Best regards,

Lorenzo Pistone



Maybe setting Undo to zero helps?? It helped me with large objects like 
plants and landscapes in later versions.

In V3.5: Settings > Undo > Set Depth

good luck,
Mark H

Re: DynAtomic forthcoming release

[Mark Heuymans]

So does that mean ONLY v7?

Such a shame for many of us v6 users. 


You can say that :(
I think I'll skip V7 altogether and go straight for V8... and get a 
decent 64bit workstation class machine that it deserves to be run on. If 
cash flow permits.


-Mark H

Re: preview updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

Yepp, the way it´s implemented now you have to manually confirm each and every 
new registration.
Should the forum be a success that could be lots of work.


Greetz

Martin


It was a matter of minutes (what a relief!) to do it, but what's weird 
is that I set it to 'Account activation by User', not by Admin.

Ah well, one registration per week is easy to handle :(
I haven't got any fake registration from bots yet, thank god.

BTW I added the vitrine, Platonic bodies and Buckyball to the shared 
projects.
I'll try to convert the relevant shared stuff to .obj to make it 
available to a wider audience...



thanks again Martin!

-Mark

Re: preview updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 9-5-2011 21:45, fre...@gmail.com schreef:

Cool. You might want to enable the email confirmation procedure for
new accounts though. Could get spammed madly otherwise.

/ Fredrik



Ah OK I'll find out where that's hidden. Being spammed is the last thing 
I want.


tnx,
Mark

Re: preview updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

Regards

Martin


PS: If you would start a new forum, that would totally rock! =D



Done!

Phew, I'm new with this PHP forum software phpBB3 so forgive me if I'm 
making some beginner mistakes.
You get to the forum by clicking on what was the guestbook on the table. 
I should also make a link in the RS room.

www.athanor3d.com/phpBB3/index.php

It'll take some time to fill it with some content but this thing seems 
to work! I don't like the looks of it though, I'll have to change the style.


A chair is already waiting for download!


regards,
-Mark H

Re: preview updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

No tips for BB software here, but I have to say that I like the idea of 
presenting special materials/scripts/etc. the way you do it here.

Anybody still remember how we were supposed to surf the "matrix" in 3D by now?
VRML and stuff?


Ah yes, VRML... at least RS exports it pretty well. I'm not planning on 
a VRML version.

I had a look at WebGL, Firefox 4 supports that... interesting.


Turned out that "old" 2D representations of data/information still are 
superior, but some of the ideas of representing those things in a different way are still 
valid, I think.



Yes, besides that you need an up-to-date expensive graphics card to 
benefit from the latest realtime visuals. Realtime still looks more fake 
that pre-rendered imho, especially in the lighting department. Realtime 
shadows help but it's still not there.. and I'm a picture man: I make 
pictures!




Regarding your walkthrough-website there are some things that I don´t like 
though.
It´s hard to even notice what parts of the image are connected to other pages 
or objets.
Well, that pretty much is the one thing that I don´t like here.


The RS room is just in preview mode, more viewpoints and better 
navigation are in the works... Yes, overall, the navigation isn't 100% 
consistent and sometimes confusing, it's just too much work for one 
person to add many more viewpoints... and I don't want to re-work the 
early parts again and again to make them more consistent with later 
parts...




I think it would be better if you found a way to have two layers here - the 
background picture and a datastructure linked to parts of that picture.
This way you could have objects that hover in front of the image - simple designators 
("Realsoft 3D room", "click to go down the corridor", etc.) popups, links, etc..
For example in the RSroom you could have names on the objects that have more 
information, say, the rust example.
Clicking on or pointing to this name, a hovering menu could appear where you 
could choose to download the RS-files for the project or to open a new 
window/tab with tips or information about it, linking to a respective 
webressource like a wiki or forum entry.

That would be cool, though I don´t know how much work it would be.
Probably quite a lot though.


Regards

Martin


PS: If you would start a new forum, that would totally rock! =D


Thanks for the feedback, I'll consider your suggestions!

-Mark H

Re: Dynatomic release?

[Mark Heuymans]

Quote from Carlo's post, April 28th:
"After many years of crunching we at DynaDream comes to a conclusion: 
DynAtomic  for 
Realsoft3D  will be released as a FREE version 
during the next week. While some features are omitted, this version is 
fully functional and the license allow for commercial uses."


So, it's now (May 8th) three days late. Not too bad for an Italian ;) - 
I see some parallels with Chrono but Alessandro got it out eventually! I 
must be one of the few who actually bought it.


But hey, I made too many promises in the past myself, any free Dynatomic 
release - even if it's going to be 2012 is appreciated, many hundreds of 
hours of free time must have gone into it!


I just hope I can replicate the 2005-2008 (!) beta test stuff with the 
final version, some of the older beta releases were already very good. 
Same for Arjo, his elaborate rigs were incredible, must have taken 
countless hours to set up!


Let's just hope Carlo is not on a holiday or volunteered for some NASA 
manned Mars expedition..


-Mark H



Don't hold your breath... I gave up waiting for this plug-in which is 5
years overdue :(((


Robert

-Oorspronkelijk bericht-
Van: owner-l...@light.realsoft3d.com
[mailto:owner-l...@light.realsoft3d.com] Namens Ville Tirronen
Verzonden: zondag 8 mei 2011 4:07
Aan: user-list@light.realsoft3d.com
Onderwerp: Dynatomic release?


Any news about Dynatomic?


Ville

preview updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

Working on it... the Realsoft room has been updated:
http://www.athanor3d.com/RSroom1/RSroom04a1.html

You can already see some projects:
- the old VSL (c)rust tutorial which has to be updated
- soap bubbles with animated material and simulated movement (see 
animation on youtube)
- the dirty thing on the floor: a landscape, an island with layered rock 
material and volumetric lighting
- five Platonic bodies (tetrahedron, cude, octahedron, dodecahedron and 
icosahedron), a buckyball and a display cupboard (vitrine, English??)

- an antique chair

Next step is to clean up the projects before making them available 
(including textures), and update/write some tutorials.


Planned, some of it already imported into the room:
- the cellar ceiling and pillars (still has to be arranged properly) and 
hey why not the cellar floor procedural material
- aluminium ladder, maybe with ivy (including a tut about the ivy - ahh, 
I forgot all about that!)

- another landscape
- banana, pineapple, kiwi, orange, bowl
- wooden Expo table with procedural wood


Check it out, let me know if you have any interesting projects to give 
away! I hope I didnt make that room too big ;)


Mark H


PS: I'm thinking of setting up a forum dedicated to RS3d and the site, 
I'm checking out how that works... the room is just an appetizer, it 
would be impossible to maintain the fully rendered 3d part daily.

Phpbb3 will probably be my choice, any tips?




That's nice to hear!

The cellar ceiling was made with Boolean cylinders, I'll put an 
example project in the RS room. The edges are unrealistically razor 
sharp but it's good enough for me, long live booleans!


cheers,
-Mark H

BTW, the painting in the cellar is truly excellent!  (Go have a look, 
everyone!)


My brother lives in south Italy.  He'd be very impressed by the 'star 
ceilings' you modelled.  (For a long time he was trying to figure out 
how they were created - I was able to explain it to him by showing 
him a 3D rendering in RS3D.)

Re: updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

That's nice to hear!

The cellar ceiling was made with Boolean cylinders, I'll put an example 
project in the RS room. The edges are unrealistically razor sharp but 
it's good enough for me, long live boolenans!


cheers,
-Mark H


BTW, the painting in the cellar is truly excellent!  (Go have a look, everyone!)

My brother lives in south Italy.  He'd be very impressed by the 'star ceilings' 
you modelled.  (For a long time he was trying to figure out how they were 
created - I was able to explain it to him by showing him a 3D rendering in 
RS3D.)

Re: updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks, hmm you have a point, I'll look look for another guestbook.
I'll disable this one immediately.

-Mark H


Very nice...  Reminds me of Myst.  Are you going to include a simple 'quest', 
and some puzzles? ;-)

BTW, I signed the guest book.  Are guests' email addresses safe from spam?  I 
noticed an email icon which linked to my email address...  Vulnerable to 
harvesting?

Amir

Re: updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

Sorry to be such a hardhead ;)
But I even dug up some old posts about this in the archives when 
resuming work on it, your suggestions are not forgotten and appreciated!


Anyway, the concept and 3d modeling/rendering are 95% of the time; the 
2d, slicing up and linking together are just an afterthought... the way 
I do it now is simple, fast and fool-proof but it's not too late to 
switch to another system.


Thanks for the feedback!
-Mark H


Cool. I love this idea and you did a good job on it.

But I see that you opted not to try the absolute positioning of the
link arrows using CSS that I suggested so long ago. ;-)

/ Fredrik

updated website

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

I've been working on my site www.athanor3d.com, everything made with 
Realsoft3d by me. Go for the hi-res version, the low-res hasn't been 
updated yet.
It's more like a point&click game than a website, a lot of work for one 
man...
All the hall and cellar pictures are GI; the expo, entry and RS room use 
ambient occlusion.


Next step is to fill the RS room at the end of the hall with clickable 
tutorials and RS3d projects to share, displayed fully rendered.

Preview is ready, next week I'll add interactive stuff..
I'm even thinking on adding a forum dedicated to the site, RS3d 
discussion, tuts and projects to share. The fully rendered room would be 
too difficult to maintain, a forum would be more dynamic.


Next on the list are the entrance to an underground world at the hatch 
in the cellar, the Alchimech game room, and of course the first floor 
with galleries. Planning to have all that ready around August...


Oh, and sign the guestbook, so I can test if that works!

enjoy,
Mark H


--
www.athanor3d.com

Re: DynAtomic to be Released soon, and it will be FREE

[Mark Heuymans]

Dear Realsoft3D users,

After many years of crunching we at DynaDream comes to a conclusion: 
DynAtomic  for 
Realsoft3D  will be released as a FREE version 
during the next week. While some features are omitted, this version is 
fully functional and the license allow for commercial uses.


More informations to come.

Best Regards,

Carlo Lanzotti

DynaDream- Dynamic Laboratory

http://www.dynadream.com






That's great news, thanks for your generosity! It really makes RS more 
comnplete.
First thing I'll do is try to recreate the trebuchet in this final 
version (also works with V6 I hope?)


-Mark H

--
www.athanor3d.com

Re: Pixar & Disney libraries, plus Ptex

[Mark Heuymans]

I found these links on Hacker News 
(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2486841):

http://graphics.pixar.com/library/
http://www.disneyanimation.com/library/list.html

Many fascinating papers!

Also, information about Disney's open-source Ptex texture mapping system, which 
has some advantages over UV mapping: http://ptex.us/

Amir



Thanks for the links!
Much reading to do, ptex for example sounds like something 
interesting... never heard of it, I must admit.


-Mark H

Re: About calling external program from javascript.

[Mark Heuymans]

Hello list.
I am looking for an alternative to the following features.
I want your advice.
Best regards,
K-UDA

var url ="http://tepco-usage-api.appspot.com/latest.json";;
var doc = new ActiveXObject("MSXML2.XMLHTTP");
doc.open("GET", url, false);
doc.send();
var aStatus = eval("(" + doc.responseText + ")");




I went deep into pre-V4 RPL but Javascript for V6/7: no, sorry...

Can't help anyway but what's the question?

regards,
Mark H

Re: Good old time

[Mark Heuymans]

Ahhh, Real3d 1.4 on the Amiga, that's how I started 3d... (Rayshade not 
counting)
When I just got Real3d I completely lost track of time and missed a 
whole day, missing important appointments!


we're getting old,
Mark H



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMAQC5mp8xk

Jean-Sebastien Perron
www.NeuroWorld.ws

Re: (Future...) Key word is full-featured btw.

[Mark Heuymans]

I hope that this company will keep their promise in the future which 
is: "*full-featured 3d software...*". that's what i am looking for and 
what i will always be looking for. The key word is "full-featured"...


Best regards,
Juha M.




You are harsh here Juha, it is 'full-featured' in the sense that it's a 
general tool packed with features, not a specialized tool.


Your expectations are just too high, you can't expect a general tool to 
be as good in all specialized areas as the specialized tools that devote 
all their development time to this one area. For example: procedural 
skies and landscapes will never be rendered as convincingly in RS as in 
Terragen2 or Vue, because a landscape renderer is specialized in this 
area and has its own unique algorithms, and it took the  teams years to 
develop and refine them.


There are areas where RS excels, like architecture, industrial design, 
SDS (I saw some requests, needs updating?), the overall philosophy of 
openness, total flexibility and 'power under the hood', and many more...

There are also areas where RS is infuriating ;)

And by the way, RS GI is /real/ GI - but slow...


my 2 cts,
Mark H

Re: SDK/ sites down/ frustration/Realsoft

[Mark Heuymans]

Now I´m really hoping for a comment of one of the Realsoft crew to shed some 
light on this.


Martin


Hi Martin

Very interesting thread you initiated, thanks!

RS is usually especially silent when subjects like promotion and policy 
pop up... it's good that there are now video tuts, but man it's about 
time... I share your concerns about the near future of RS and the lack 
of progress the last few years.


On the other hand, I'm with Neil, except thet I am an oldie ;)  (started 
on an Amiga with V1.4)
RS can be a very fast and productive tool to me, I've used it as a main 
tool for commercial stills and animation since 2005 and made a modest 
living with it. Things have gone downhill since the credit crunch but 
that has more to do with my bad business skills than the toolset I'm 
working with... now I'm doing low-level 'zombie' work to pay the bills 
and have little time left for 3d (but Athanor3d still exists in a 
dormant state).


I did make an attempt to switch to 3dsmax and really wanted to like it, 
but couldn't. RS fits me like a glove - and I'll probably stick with it 
for a while. It would be great if innovative new developments were 
announced but my hopes are dwindling.


If I can do anything to help within my limited available time I'll be 
happy! There's a RS dedicated empty room in my virtual office waiting to 
be filled but man it's so much work...





PS:

Regarding my shader-try I should post a separate mail.
Cause as it seems I could really need some help on that.
I´ve already "converted" the formula into VSL-objects (most notably variables and 
"operation" objects), but it doesn´t do what it´s supposed to. And doing this by hand 
was, well, simply painfull.
I practically wasted a day for something that could be written in code in a 
matter of minutes.
So I wanna try scripting, but my problem is that I don´t really understand the 
syntax.
I´ve found some general mathematical javascript commands but RS3D seems to use different 
ones; which I think to have found out by now, only to find that there don´t seem to be 
floatingpoint commands like sine and cosine? I can´t really believe that, especially not 
since they are implemented into the VSL "operation" object.
Another problem for me is that I don´t know how to plug equations like that 
into the engine.
For example I need the input of Light: Ray and Surface: Ray, and don´t really 
know how to get the data out of these channels to be used in the equations to 
then pass the outcome on to the Surface: Illumination channel.
Oh, plus I don´t know how a VSL material would in general support mathematical 
formulars written in a (java)script. Would the resulting material be useable as 
a standalone VSL material or would it always need the script to be useable at 
all?

However, I think I´ll just post a new message regarding that, as I wrote 
several lines ago now. ;-)




The formulas have to broken down in bits, like you say VSL does offer 
functions like sin, cos in Operation and most things in RS are floating 
point double precision. Just post the formulas and I'll try to translate 
it into VSL!


regards,
Mark Heuymans

Re: Video Tutorial Section added at RS site

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all..

I saw by a chance yesterday, that 7th of october, RS site had added a 
Tutorial section with some Video Tutorials, and more to come.


Take Care
Best Regards
Stefan Gustafsson ( Beg-inner )
A Proud Owner and User of Real3D and Realsoft3D..



That's great news! I hope they extend it with spoken commentary.

Thanks for pointing out!
-Mark H

Re: Just a GPU heads-up

[Mark Heuymans]

 Op 4-10-2010 19:10, Vesa Meskanen schreef:

Hi,

...an interesting article about GPU processing solutions which, as a 
networking attached device, has potential for cross-platform render 
engines...


Thanks for the link, Lee. It is an interesting article.

Best regads, Vesa



Yes nice link Lee!

Running RS3d on a 960-core Tesla supercomputer would be very... interesting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8FUmS1h-5U


Good luck with V8 GPU-optimized ;)

-Mark H

Re: Dynadream lookalike (4 try)

[Mark Heuymans]

Many thanks for the replies.

You are all right... It worked and work, just found this old DynAtomic 
test anims (2002-2005  circa):


http://bit.ly/9L8fau

Thanks again for the support.

P.S. This is the 4rd try sending this mail...

Best Regards,

Carlo Lanzotti

DynaDream - Dynamic Laboratory

http://www.dynadream.com





In the end, all your mails arrived!
Thanks for the links, there were a few animations in there I hadn't seen 
yet. (or failing memory?)


There is so much potential, with a little bit of effort RS3d could have 
a hugely improved simulation tool set: fully functional hairs, cloth, etc.


For example hair. RS3d offers very advanced hair (nurbs curve) 
rendering. But this is only useful in static scenes; as far as I know 
RS3d can't lattice map the starting points of a set of  hair curves to a 
hand-animated surface and simulate the hair tails. I can't even animate 
a face on which I projected stubbles... let alone long fur.



-Mark H

Re: Dynadream lookalike?

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Mark and all,

Were you and Arjo part of the beta test team?
Does anyone have any work they can show from testing, such as your 
references to Arjo's work with pigs :)



Hi Brandon,

Yes, here is some of the stuff I've done as a DA beta tester:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Athanor3d#p/u/3/q7gt4CyS9dk
http://www.youtube.com/user/Athanor3d#p/u/4/CqhzFzsuvq4
Many more test anims on the harddisk.


I thought we were all just waiting for Carlo's plug-ins to be 
finished... sound like it was basically done but never released?  ... 
would love to use them if available.


Brandon



I don't know why it wasn't released, only Carlo knows... to me, 
Dynatomics was good enough for release at the time!



This is Chrono:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Athanor3d#p/u/11/xWGpqZCvikQ

and native RS3d simulation, it's pretty decent if you know how to tweak 
it (great tip from Garry: increasing motion blur also increases sim 
accuracy):

http://www.youtube.com/user/Athanor3d#p/u/8/16mSHG3_UKk
http://www.youtube.com/user/Athanor3d#p/u/7/kIGPuKj3Ty0


Hope this helps,
-Mark H

Re: Dynadream lookalike?

[Mark Heuymans]

I am waiting since the release of RS4.5 for Carlo to release the Dyna 
software. It was very ready IMHO, but Carlo decided otherwise and for 
good reasons too I am sure.


But, it has also been very quiet on the developers side for that matter L

Robert



Yes, at a certain point it worked very well, in 2005 I managed to make a 
fully functional trebuchet with it, but with later version this didn't 
work any more. Arjo made insanely complex rigs with inflatable pigs etc, 
great fun!


Please finish this, too much work went into it to drop it! Or maybe sell 
the code to RS so they can make it a native part of the software???


Nowadays, you see more and more advanced simulation in movies... it's 
crucial to CG animation. We don't even have animated hair :(


Luckily, we do have Chrono but I seem to be the only one who used it 
besides Alessandro...



-Mark H

Re: {Spam?} rs3d 5

[Mark Heuymans]

I cant for the life of make this work
clipmap loaded from the library my own texture loaded then preview
either shows a white ball or dissapears when I play around with clip 
from and clip to

what am I doing wrong?
tia
Alasdair


Hard to tell without more info... do you want to clip the white or the 
black?
In my standard clip material (V6) "clip from" = [0 0 0], "clip to" = 
[0.3 0.3 0.3] and the black part is clipped out, works as expected.


You can use the Fade channel instead in a simple (but maybe slower to 
render) material by something like

Fade = Texture (MapCoords) or to get more control

Variable Clipvalue
Clipvalue = Texture (MapCoords)
If (ClipValue) < [0.01 0.01 0.01]
 Fade=1


good luck,
Mark H

Re: Ray tracing is the future and it will always be

[Mark Heuymans]

It is really really easy to make RS compatible with anything.
If RS would sign a NDA with me I could show them everything.
As long as they credit me for the finding.

On the other hand the "solution" involve a lot more responsibility on 
the user : sudden unlimited power is difficult to manage.


Jean-Sebastien Perron
www.NeuroWorld.ws



I'm pretty confident I won't cause an armageddon... please go for it!

TIA,
Mark H

Re: Fryrender plugin support

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for all the feedback.  I wanted to engage a conversation about
rendering capabilities and this seemed to stoke the fire a little.

   


Well done Jason! Keep fueling the fire!


What I see is people switching to other apps for their rendering needs and
this is what I wanted to stop.

Hopefully Realsoft will address this, now support for a new solution is
relevant for most users.
   



Yes, a bigger jump than the V7 improvements would be great...
Anybody noticed the (excellent) V3 features that were re-incorporated? 
They must be getting old and lost in nostalgia, like me ;)




Some nice renders here, just a shame they are not from Realsoft.

I made a stab at a slightly different site here for some advertising work I
get contracted for from time to time.  Put some architectural images from
Pixel Perfect in there too to fill it up :), but a couple of new pics maybe
not seen before.  All Realsoft renders in the portfolio section, but in my
mind not competitive enough in render quality/time/production useability.

www.cgillustration.co.uk

Let's see what comes out of the development plan phase in the coming months.

Cheers,

Jason

   


Brilliant work Jason, you are the king of GI interiors!

Thanks for showing,
Mark H

Re: Fryrender plugin support

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Arjo,

I really should have a look at Vray, there even is a Sketchup plugin! 
(never had a look at that, having RS3d)


So many powerful RS features are tightly interwoven with the rendering 
engine... just some more examples from my bare head:
- VSL enhanced nurbs curve rendering (everybody knows Tim Borgmann's 
renderings!)

- VSL-defined Displacement
- blurred reflections and refractions
- material antialiasing
- UV sets
All these things and much more would be lost or would have to be set up 
from scratch in the external render engine. RS is a strange powerful 
beast on an isolated island, despite its basically very open 
architecture...


You are right about VSL´s lack of visual feedback, it doesn´t deserve 
the name `VISUAL shading language` - about time to switch to a node 
based interface! We are lucky RS is so flexible it´s possible to set up 
a better material preview but doing small test renders is the only way 
to judge what you´re doing.


good luck,
Mark




Thank you Mark.

What you write about VSL is what I ment in my first reaction on Jason's
question about a Fryrender plugin.
On the other hand VSL is not the only way to create procedural materials.
With Vray I can build procedural very easily. So procedurals won't be the
problem. What I wanted to say about VSL in general is that it lacks visual
feedback. It's all lines of code which doesn't give any visual idea about
what you're doing. Maybe that's how programmers work, but that's not what
I'm used to.

Booleans is a real problem in polygon based apps. Well only in round
objects of course.

Arjo.

   

Re: fruit anim update

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks guys! I should have shown it earlier.
Time to start work on the RS room, dig up some old projects to share..

-Mark



Hi Neil
Thx..
Its always fun to go through post from the past, and bring them to the 
surface again,
as there are so many gems like this one by Mark and the one from 
Matthias.. and so on

Thx again to Mark.., great work there
Take Care
Best Regards
Stefan Gustafsson ( Beg-inner )
A Proud Owner and User of Real3D and Realsoft3D..

Re: Fryrender plugin support

[Mark Heuymans]

Nice one Arjo! An image of that quality would probably take hours for 
RS, requiring high raycount and low blur...


Many projects of mine rely heavily on procedural VSL materials, external 
renderers are out of the question. My cellar is Boolean, the tiles are 
procedural to avoid repetition (still some remnants of your code in 
there Arjo!). It often takes me only a few minutes to set up a new VSL 
procedural material as long as no new unfamiliar stuff is involved.
I like the RS renderer except its slow GI and difficulty in rendering 
complex scenes (plants). I hope to run RS on a 8-core 64bit workstation 
with 16 gig RAM some day.


By the way, did anyone notice large improvements in the V7 renderer? I 
tried the demo but still cannot render complex, old plants -  that same 
error "cannot allocate ... bytes" pops up :(



my 2 cts,
Mark H



But to give an idea about Vray: the attached image, rendered with very low gi 
settings rendered in less than two minutes on my computer (dual Xeon 5570). An 
image like that as I showed yesterday renders in about 7 minutes at high 
quality settings. How does this compare to Fry or Octane? Do Fry or Octane 
support full animation with flicker free GI? Not that I'm too keen on changing 
again as each renderer will take quite some time to get used to. But I'm still 
very interested in reviews and experiences of other 3D software users.
   

Re: cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Fredrik,

Catching up after a short absence...
Wow, yes please I'll have to study the code now that you put all this 
work into it!

My method belongs in the dinosaur age but hey, it works ;)

Meanwhile I rendered a few more cellar images, I'd like to make the 
navigation more intuitive and add views from more directions.


http://www.athanor3d.com/3dstuff/kelder-enterL24b1.jpg
http://www.athanor3d.com/3dstuff/kelder-enterL25b1.jpg
http://www.athanor3d.com/3dstuff/kelder-enterL26b1.jpg

Thanks,
Mark




Ok, since I had nothing better to do, I stitched the other images back
together too. I think that my copy now shows just about the same as
your original, Mark. But now using the approach that doesn't require
hacking the images to pieces. Feel free to copy the files from here
for further assessment and perhaps use:
http://files.apan.is-a-geek.com/RS3DIC/Athanor/wwwroot/index.html (I
can send them in a zip for you if that is more convenient, let me
know)

Of course, for things like the highligthed models in the expo, you
still need to do some cutting and fine tuning of positions, but I
think it will be easier this way regardless. A little suggestion for
those: I think that using a file format with transparency support,
read PNG, you could use Photoshop or equivalent to use a soft eraser
around the edges of the highlighted images. That way they will blend
smoothly into the background.

I might have made som mistakes in page titles and alternative image
texts, you might want to check those in the respective HTML files.
Also, I hope that I am correct in assuming that the pages for the
"RS-room" and the exhibition of "Rechts" aren't ready yet and that
this is why the links are broken.

Oh, I admit that I got a bit lazy about the rotated arrows. Of course
you can make any number of various rotations of the arrow, just use
one of the arrows I used, with transparent background, and rotate that
if you want to make the appearance exactly like your original.

Best regards,
Fredrik


   

Re: fruit anim update

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Stefan,

Yes, the editing was done by Michiel Los (Dynamisch in Beeld). This 
material is copyrighted but I guess I can show a sneak view

http://www.athanor3d.com/3dstuff/herofruit.wmv
So list, please don't spread or save it.
There's still a tiny chance there will be a followup. I hope all this 
work wasn't done in vain... so much work in only a few seconds, and in 
the end many shots were not even used! But character animation is great 
fun, even in RS ;)


enjoy,
Mark






Hi Mark..

Just had a look through of some list mails..and found this one again..

Just got curious.. did you finish that anim ?, did you post it on the 
list and I missed it ?

would be very cool to see it...

TIA

Take Care
Best Regards
Stefan Gustafsson ( Beg-inner )
A Proud Owner and User of Real3D and Realsoft3D..

Re: cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks for the offer Fredrik! I can't ask you to do the whole site but 
we can try this out for the Realsoft-specific room (second one at the 
right in the hall)!
Why not make this a kind of collaborative thing among RS users, we can 
put all kinds of public projects in there. Materials, models, tuts... 
maybe the full 3d approach is too much work for this though.


cheers,
Mark




If you send me the uncut images, I could have a go at simplifying the
HTML. I might even make an effort to get the hidden buttons I made
work in MSIE. ;-)

/ Fredrik

   

Re: cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Neil,

I made a lower resolution version, you can now pick between full size 
and small size on the new startpage www.athanor3d.com.

It's only five minutes of extra work for a node, so why not.

I also tried your suggestion to make all tables and cells 100%. This 
works in principle, but in full screen mode on my system the re-scaling 
can cause some fuzziness and aliasing in the resolutions I now have. 
Also, a scrollbar appears (depends on individual OS settings). I 
rendered everything slightly wrong for this, width is too low and height 
too high... so I;ll stick to my current workflow for a while.


No time to learn advanced 2d web stuff for now...  But the 3d part I 
find more interesting and it's infinitely more work! More cellar updates 
following, the Alchimech game room in the cellar at the left should be 
ready later this week - preview attached :)



Hope it works for you now,

Mark




Sorry Mark, but havent got to the cellar link yet.

The first hallway, into room/s image had a slow download here.

My thought was, that rather than use the whole screen just use a much 
smaller rectangle image in the centre of a black background.


It could be presented as an image in a screen or framed picture but 
total images split in tables would be about 600pixels across maybe.


My own web skills do not include CSS and I would use links from a 
table. So I would use TABLE WIDTH 100% and TD WIDTH percentages for 
the cells.


But the download main full screen image as I checked it out, was 
crippling.


Sorry to hear about the downtime in your studio!!

Neil


<>

Re: cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

I'll have to do some learning here, my webskills are very limited...
But the 3d part is much more work anyway.
I'm glad I finally got this far after years of postponing! The only bad 
thing is that I now have so much free time to do it :(


thanks for the tip Fredrik,
Mark H




Did you consider using CSS for positioning the buttons, as I
suggested, rather than breaking the images apart into a table? I think
that the absolute positioning can work with percentages as well, then
you could use CSS to scale the images as well - they will still have
the same download time, but would work in smaller windows.

/Fredrik

   

Re: cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

Ah, thanks for the tips! I´ll keep this in mind for a future overhaul.
Nice room with the spiral stairs, a RS rendering I hope.

-Mark



maybe use javascript to scale the images
like the backgrounds here: http://sesw.the-final.ws/
(ok is under construction, too ;-)
needs some rework for ie7
and load the other rooms via ajax :-?
Dummy fast coded here:
http://the-final.com/ajax-webpage/

Matthias

   

Re: cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 30-6-2010 14:17, Beg-inner schreef:

Hi Mark..

The site really comes along very nicely !
Very cool mood to hall and cellar, and cool valve arch shapes in that 
cellar..


Looking forward to those prjs and tuts.!

Maybe abit outlandish..
but how about having visible hightech "Teleporters"  , instead of 
those hidden arrows, to move around..?

Or did you do those hidden ones deliberately ?

Take Care
Best Regards
Stefan Gustafsson ( Beg-inner )
A Proud Owner and User of Real3D and Realsoft3D..



Thanks Stefan,

I didn't want to make it too easy on the visitors, a bit like a game ;)
Maybe a short introduction page with some tips, like F11 for full 
browser screen.


Cheers!

-Mark

Re: cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 30-6-2010 9:01, Matthias Kappenberg schreef:

Hi Mark,

really impressive :-)
Maybe make the images smaller
and work with some fades between
the rooms/images :-?

Matthias
   


Thanks,
I was hoping that most of the visitors use 1280x1024 or higher, I'm too 
lazy to make multiple resolution versions or fancy fades... more to follow!


-Mark

cellar update

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

I did some work on the cellar. You can now walk into the hall and at the 
end down the stairs into the cellar. Surprises are waiting there... I'm 
working on the Alchimech room in the cellar, dedicated to this obscure 
board game.



Top priority now is to fill that RS3d room with freely downloadable 
projects and tutorials! I have some things to say about the Building 
tool, for example ;)


Everything here was modeled and rendered with RS3d V6. The hall and 
cellar use Global Illumination, V6 works wonders compared to previous RS 
versions.



Forever under construction...:
http://www.athanor3d.com/hall1/hall1.html


enjoy,
Mark Heuymans

Re: QuickTime Mov file - latest episode.

[Mark Heuymans]

Wow Neil, I can hardly believe you pulled that off on your own! The 
storyline eludes me a bit but it's great to see such an epic animation 
done completely in RS. The moving platform is a clever choice - making 
the robot walk would be a huge task indeed, more work that everything 
else put together.


I can also hardly believe you don't render to frames. There can always 
pop up a few frames with artifacts that have to be re-rendered separately...


Keep up the good work, cheers!

-Mark H

Re: website WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

I had some Portals planned already, anything can happen in Cyberspace :)


How about when the go go through the door, they get to someplace 
completely other. A space craft store room with models as holograms on 
the shelves along with mops and stuff. A moonscape with the models in 
orbit ... dunno ... Lol.

Re: website WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 26-5-2010 2:45, Jean-Sebastien Perron schreef:

Wow, it's beautiful. That's the style I like (bright and colorful).

It's slow, but that was expected with that much graphics.
That was worth the loading.

I don't know if it can help, but I did a website in full 3D like that 
3 years ago for one of my client.



Do you have a link? I'd like to see it if it's still online!


The trick I used was to put  the full image at once as a background of 
an invisible *table* (centered on the page). Then divide that 
invisible table in *cells* and then copy/place an *invisible gif* 
inside the cell over the "detection point".  You only have to place an 
action on the invisible gif. That is so you don't have to split the 
image in small pieces. The menu of www.CombadZ.com use this technique. 
It is more easy to manage like that.


Jean-Sebastien Perron
www.NeuroWorld.ws




I used a totally outdated version of Photoshop, but it already had the 
powerful Slice tool. Very quick and efficient in combination with an 
equally ancient Dreamweaver and Swap Image behavior. I'll have to have a 
look at your method, but no way I'm making everything all over again! ;)


Much more effort goes into the 3d part, and the pre-3d 'conceptual' 
part... it's hard to get from a vague idea to real result.


These miniature models in the Expo room presented some time consuming 
problems. Obviously, these miniatures are scaled down and simplified 
versions of the original projects. But there are some caveats if you 
shrink projects:
* VSL stuff like bump height, distance and other geometry related 
parameters don't shrink with the project. They will have to be adjusted 
manually.
* The same goes for raytraced Nurbs thickness, these will end up as 
ridiculous clumps if you don't adjust them manually
* Light source range: same story. Deleting all lightsources in the 
miniature is safest, or they might spoil the light in the whole project.


In the meantime I added some new stuff in the expo room, just two more 
2d portfolios to go! The last action in this area will be to replace the 
'Under Construction' with something more positive :)


I want to start work on the Realsoft3d section. The idea is to show free 
RS projects as example models on shelves in a 3d room (end of the hall 
at the right). For example, you see a small pile of ceramic tiles on a 
shelve. Click on it, download the tile project (the same tiles I used 
for the website), maybe read a mini-tutorial... this 3d approach is 
probably too elaborate if I want to keep it dynamic - interactive and 
up-to-date. Suggestions are welcome!



-Mark H

Re: website WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks for all the nice comments! I'll keep in mind the suggestions for 
improvement and hopefully I won't get sidetracked ;)


cheers,
Mark H

website WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

I finally put some serious work into my site, the expo part is nearing 
completion - only Abuja has a pop-up portfolio but the rest will follow 
in a few days.

No need to mention that everything 3d was made with Realsoft3d ;)

At the end of the hall I'm planning a big room dedicated to Realsoft3d, 
with lots of free projects and hopefully some new tutorials.
And the gaming cellar will be very interesting with lots of boardgame 
Alchimech material, there's also an entry into a huge cave system...

A lot of work to be done but I'm in the groove now.


http://www.athanor3d.com/

Expo room of commercial work:
http://www.athanor3d.com/expo/expo-overview.html


Best regards,
Mark H

Re: {Spam?} Re: My lastest picture

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 14-5-2010 22:27, Neil Cooke schreef:

Cool,

Whatever on the red sun, obviously you're happy with it.

Yep, I use absolute white for objects that are meant to be seen as 
light emitting. I need to show red lights and other coloured lights 
now and then of course, but desperately search for contrast ambiences 
to make them sensible to viewers. Therefore in the case of your sky I 
think I might try the red star as showing light modelling from the 
white star and probably only that crescent, since the brighter 
atmosphere would kill darker objects but I'm guessing of course.


Thanks for your notes there.

N.



We are not limited to white R,G and B = 0-255! In VSL 0-255 integer RGB 
is translated to 0.0-1.0 floating point double precision, RS is high 
dynamics internally!
I usually make my unshaded light-emitting shapes RGB = 2.2 , 2.1 , 2.0 
or something like that, roughly twice as bright as plain white and 
slightly warm. This will show up better in reflections and is generally 
more realistic than low dynamics.


-Mark H

animated nurbs material

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

Here's the material I promised a few days earlier, it's applied to nurbs 
curves. The project contains only objects, materials and channels.

It's a kind of lightshow, a pattern that moves along the curve.

Size and speed of the pattern is controllable, even per curve 
individually! I did this by adding two channels: 'individual time' and 
'individual flowsize'. You can find these channels in Attribute under 
the Col tab of the Property window.


If you set 'Start Raytrace' to Continuous Rendering (View 
properties/Render tab) you can play the animation almost realtime and 
see the effect easily.



Enjoy and feel free to tweak!
-Mark H



animatednurbsmaterial01b.r3d
Description: Binary data

Re: My lastest picture

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 11-5-2010 22:46, leee schreef:

My latest picture:

http://www.spatial.plus.com/Realsoft3D/im_AlienLandscape-000-000-003.jpg

Realsoft3D V6.1 for Linux.

It actually just started off as an experiment with vsl volumetric
clouds (there are two cloud layers, one noise based and the other
cell based, in addition to a ground-level atmosphere) and to devise
a vsl material for the horizon hills.  No texture maps were used,
but it does use AO.

It could certainly use a little more tweaking, and a few extra
details/features, but as it took the best part of two days to
render on my network of now obsolete hardware (due to the three
transparent atmosphere&  cloud layers, plus the glass tubes, I used
a recursion level of 15) I can't see myself revisiting it any time
soon.

LeeE

   


Nice image, quite high render settings I suspect, no wonder it took two 
days! The AO is a rendertime killer in RS, combine that with volumetrics 
and you're in trouble...
I always like to see new procedural materials. Fiddling with VSL during 
the quiet evenings is my favorite pastime - with the occasional curse 
thrown in ;)  The earth material looks nice and disappears smoothly in 
the distance without noise, well done.


Did you make use of the Map object in your volumetric VSL? If not, there 
may lie some room for optimization. I rendered HD animations with 
volumetric shadows with no trouble, I'll dig up the project if you want.



Congrats, can't wait to see more!

- Mark H

Re: Ignore Test

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 9-5-2010 21:39, Neil Cooke schreef:

Lol

I ignore everything and everything ignores me. It's neat the way that 
works. So no real need to request that particular service. :-)


And here is some more to ignore ... a press release I guess  
almost there on the stereo 3D 10 minute movie which is only going to 
be about five or six minutes. Two or three more takes and the title 
and end credits to do. Took about a month. Will post a 2D of the full 
thing later in the year when the "client" side of clears. Total fun, 
1920 x 1080.


Neico



Great to hear Neil, that's not something to ignore! Can't wait to see 
it, but how in 3d...


I'm finally back to RS after some months of back (and feet-) breaking 
low-end production work to pay the bills... just finished a 3d job in 
which I used an animated VSL material that crawls along a nurbs curve 
like a lightshow, I'll share it later this week after a bit of polishing 
and a small tut.


Congrats,
Mark Heuymans

Re: Stereoscopic panoramas + my 1st opensource project

[Mark Heuymans]

I hope that will work out well, Riven is still an inspiration to me! 
Even my rudimentary website (but big in my head :) ) is based on 
pre-rendered games like that. I hope your code will support html and 
Javascript, so that we can make online games/websites.


Thanks for the link, interesting stuff

- Mark H



Op 1-3-2010 1:35, Jean-Sebastien Perron schreef:
I am working on a project that will be made public this year (read 
open source).
I found a way to create adventure games "a la Myst" easily without any 
editor.
So everyone will be able to make it's own game or just to navigate in 
a virtual world made of prerendered images.
But with way much more interactions than previous technologies (read 
walking normally like most realtime videogames).


The concept is a "node player" that support stereoscopic, joystick, 
sound etc...

Kind of a web browser but for 3D navigation based on rendering or photos.
I cannot tell you more for now, but the whole idea fit on a single page.
And no, it is not similar to quicktime.

In the meantime this is an interesting way to make 360 stereoscopic 
images easily.

http://www.ben-ezra.org/omnistereo/omni.html

Jean-Sebastien Perron
www.NeuroWorld.ws

artificial evolution

[Mark Heuymans]

Stumbled upon this, about evolutionary simulated bodypart control
http://www.ted.com/talks/torsten_reil_studies_biology_to_make_animation.html

Reil was probably inspired by Karl Sims
http://www.karlsims.com/

John Holland is also a pioneer in the field.


Imagine something like this: Chrono controls the bodyparts. Chrono is 
controlled by a brain/actuator system that has 'learned' how to perform 
the 'task' optimally. The brain is all Javascript, including the 
evolutionary part... just a wild thought ;)


-Mark H

Re: Four Episodes sorted.

[Mark Heuymans]

Wow Neil, a huge project - hard to imagine these are just trailers!

Thanks for the inspiration,

Mark H



A couple of you wanted any updates on my efforts.

Four trailers now posted and some improvements here and there. Sound track
in the background - very basic but it helps. New logo brand which I think
is a bit more active than before.

These are QuickTime .mov's and are timed at about 3 minutes of the 8 to 10
minute "episodes".

Neil Cooke

   

Re: stereoscopic imagery

[Mark Heuymans]

My friend got a headache too but I did not, despite my bad eyesight. 
Yes, maybe it has to do with the difference between eye focus and camera 
focus that's fixed in the image.
Holography would be the next step but that's probably far away, 
especially holographic rendering (does that exist already??). But 
nothing beats a good script ;)


-Mark




Hi Mark,

I saw Avatar too in Imax format. But I must say this stereo projection gave
me a headache too.
Not just me, but my son and daughter were complaining too.
I think I had problems with focusing on the subtitles and the image at the
same time.
Furthermore, because of the 3D effect, you get the idea you can choose to
focus on background or foreground.
But that's not possible of course.

Arjo.
   

Re: stereoscopic imagery

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 7-2-2010 20:19, Neil Cooke schreef:

Two cents worth ...

Stereoscopic entertainment history shows it as a fad type of thing. It 
comes along gets all hot and fired then fades to zero.


Yes, like quadraphony. Maybe this time it will break through, hard to 
tell. But it will double render times and make post processing much more 
complicated. Cameras, both real and virtual are much more complicated 
because they need to replicate every movement of the human eyes. (nice 
project to set up in RS, also for mono renders!)




Only one of the seven or so ways the brain deciphers depth in a view 
is dependent on the stereoscopic event ... the fact that the left view 
is 64mm offset from the right view  and as Jen-Sebastien points 
out, actual near and distant eye lens shift for focus is absent. The 
other factors are intellectual . place in the field, overlap, 
known and relative sizes, colour tone strengths, etc.


Yes, but I once tried to play tennis with one eye shut - totally impossible!
Sure, it doesn't add much to maybe 99% of all productions, it's 
worthwhile only for visual spectacles like Avatar and Coraline (great 
stop motion movie btw!).


Nice and quick replies guys, I'm checking out the tips! Shutter glasses 
are maybe an option but I doubt if my LCD monitors are fast enough.
I was just wondering if I could view RS stereo animations in stereo. I 
have two identical LCD monitors, maybe I can set up something with mirrors.


Thanks,
Mark H

stereoscopic imagery

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

I saw Avatar in 3d last week, wow - total immersion!

Rendering stereo images with RS is easy, but viewing it comfortably is 
another matter. You can view the attached image by crossing your eyes 
until the two images merge and 'click', but it requires some practice 
and it can cause headaches.


Wouldn't it be great if we could watch our own RS animations in 3d! 
Projection in theaters uses circular polarization filters if I'm not 
mistaken. A home setup with two identical beamers equipped with these 
filters would be possible, but how to synchronize them perfectly? I 
guess it's out of reach until the first 3d screens will appear, and 
these will be expensive at first...


The red/green filters destroy color, that's just not good enough any more.

Any ideas..?


-Mark H

<>

Re: internal reflections

[Mark Heuymans]

for me the trick with all abstract and semi-abstract graphics is 
whether it connects. I have seen shows with walls of empty abstraction 
and yet one, one of the pieces will do it for me. The issue in one 
case was when I asked the folk I was with to rate the exhibits without 
consulting me or each other, and without exception there was the one 
pic that was ahead of the rest. I guess I had to wonder why the artist 
felt a need to show the other dozen images.


Anyway, three machines busy rendering here, so a break for coffee 
here. A fabulous Summer's day!!!



N.



Wise words, but here it's the harshest winter in recent memory! ;)


Happy rendering & please post the results,

Mark H

Re: internal reflections

[Mark Heuymans]

Op 27-1-2010 20:43, Charles Henry schreef:

Hi Mark,
Nice color!! ... that's what has interested me in Realsoft back in 1995
and ever since. The ability to visualize the impossible-to-build geometries
gives us the ability to make discoveries about the relationship between
geometry and numbers and ourselves.

I've been working with the spheres recently ... developing a new way to
reveal the human form as I did at: www.people.vcu.edu/~chenry . This new
work is directed at printing (BW&  Color) and I haven't put any on the web
yet.

Keep up the good work!!
Cheers, Chuck
   


So much to show yet, I'll make a Room of Mirrors in my new office 
www.athanor3d.com (maybe up the stairs at the left).
Can't wait to see your new work Chuck! I'll share many of my projects, 
maybe you can do something with the VSL.


Neil, I can imagine some find this cold, it's a matter of  'turning the 
knobs' until something interesting or complex appears, rather than 
really designing or modeling something. The main human element is 
control over the color scheme... to me it's more about exploration and 
VSL practice than a pre-determined idea of a certain result. 50 
recursions indeed! ;)


thanks all,
Mark H

internal reflections

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

In 2009 I've been revisiting internal reflections and 'Wada basins' 
(thanks and cheers to Charles Henry of course!).

One example, scaled down from 3000 pixels wide.:
http://www.athanor3d.com/pub/restore03c1small.jpg

These things are too impractical to do in real life, but RS is the 
perfect simulation tool because of its mathematically perfect analytical 
spheres and VSL!

Much more in the archives...

-Mark H

Re: Fw: Trailer Number Two - Quicktime

[Mark Heuymans]

... a single person to model, light, animate and edit


 this seems to me to be the point. A complete storyline of about ten
minutes run time, laid down in two weeks. No sound and not the final 
render
format but my idea here is that I have a viable promotion .avi/.mov to 
sell

from in the market place. I will be testing this after a couple of more
"episodes".



Hi Neil,
Two weeks is fast, you must have worked your socks off!! And then the 
rendering...
I know what it's like, during some crazy deadlines the RS interface was 
the only thing I saw for weeks.
But I have trouble keeping the pressure on like that for projects of 
myself, like demo reels and websites...




The trailers, of course, are only teasers.
My work systems are getting more and more efficient so I expect to get 
far
more comfortable within the two weeks than the massive hours I'm 
putting in

at the moment. But then again, it's a lot of fun working all hours on
something like this!!!

Thanks again for your encouraging words!!
Neil Cooke



Yep, RS is very fast and productive once you get into it! An allround 
powertool.

Good luck with the rest, keep us posted!!

-Mark H

Re: strange error: Pointwise object property...

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi,


With V7 on the doorstep it's no big deal - hopefully...


That's right, v7 will fix this error :) We are just building a new 
version, and hopefully it will be the actual release.



Kind regards,

Vesa



Great! I hope in 2010 I can run V7 on a beefy 64-bit system.

Thanks & good luck,
Mark H

Re: strange error: Pointwise object property...

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Frank,

Unfortunately I can't share this project, it's something 'official' but I've 
seen it pop up elsewhere.

No scripting involved. Indeed it's something in the render engine.
Trouble is, Í can't put my finger on it, it seems random. Some more 
detective work needed, I prefer consistent reproducible errors any time ;)


With V7 on the doorstep it's no big deal - hopefully...

thanks for the reply,
Mark



---

hi mark, any example to send here ?
r3freng belongs to rendering engine

"#include  /* rendering engine */
   #include  /* BMP file format */
   #include  /* system which binds renderer to the final output 
(bmp, in this case) */

   #include  /* sphere geometry */
   #include  /* hierarchy level */

   R3RegisterFREngineClass(app);
   R3RegisterOutputClass(app);
   R3RegisterBmpSettingsClass(app);
   R3RegisterSphereClass(app);
   R3RegisterLevelClass(app);"

do you are using perhaps any scripts in your example with channels / post 
processing ?
maybe the default rendering setups are missing something. you say it's even 
when your aren't edited sds objects. better send one simple example to check 
it for errors.
sorry, I didn't know this kind of error yet. last year I have done a lot of 
vsl rendering and post processing examples without problems. I am using win 
xp, sp2 ;)


bye, frank 

strange error: Pointwise object property...

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone else is familiar with this error:
"Pointwise object property for unknown channel: SDSFaceUVchn0 (Error: 
r3freng: 404  "  and then a crash.
It sometimes pops up out of the blue when rendering or post processing 
starts, even when I didn't edit any SDS objects.

Any workarounds or ideas?

Tia,
Mark Heuymans

Re: The Field Evaluator again

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Mark..

Did you see this...?
Its handy for placing things on the Displaced surfaces and so on..




Yes confirmed, it works - I never would have thought the Lattice Paste tool 
takes displacement into account, this is undocumented as far as I know! And 
even without the FE ;)


Thanks, great tip,
Mark H

Re: cave WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

I checked out the 3d Coat demo and at first glance it looks awesome. After 
fiddling a bit I could produce crazy complex stalagmites in minutes that would 
have been impossible or  at least very time consuming with the RS SDS toolkit. 
SDS is great for modeling many, many things but not everything... so, 3d Coat 
is #2 on the to-purchase-in-the-near-future list (after V7 of course!)

Thanks,

Mark H




  I see more displacement than actual modeling to realize this scene.
  And the only way to do justice to your magnificent painting is to paint 
directly on object.
  That would be a perfect project for a voxel modeler like 3D coat.

  Will RS support voxel object/rendering soon?

  Jean-Sebastien Perron
  www.NeuroWorld.ws

Re: The Field Evaluator again

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all and the RS-Team ;-)

Marks scene is another good example
for the usage of the field evaluator.

Placement of the mushrooms.
My idea is:
Drop Mushroom in a level.
Move the mushroom level over the ground
with "draw on surface snapping" and let the
field evaluator add the given displacement
from the displacement map to the offset of
the mushroom.
Should give a hassless flexible placement.
Good idea, isn't it :-?

Matthias



Late reply, sorry - sounds like a golden tip! I'll have to postpone work on 
the cave scene for a few weeks but this is something I'll certainly check 
out, it seems I underestimated the potential of the Field Evaluator.


Matthias, Stefan, thanks for the input,

-Mark H

Re: Simple QT ;-)

[Mark Heuymans]

I think you are right about the RealRangeZ plugin. Try to change a 
thousand
objects manually, that's a boring task... an essential script, I'll dig 
that

up too.



Found it:
http://www.catmtn.com/rr/realgreeblez/real_rangez_examples.html

Thankz,
Mark H

Re: cave WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

I overlooked that animation - thanks for the reminder!
Nice to know its output (.obj I assume) is useful to RS, on paper it's ok but 
you never know how it turns out in practice.


Thanks and great work with the flipbook too,

-Mark H

  Hi Mark,

  have a look here:
  http://the-final.com/privates/realsoft/
  ->Displacement Test folder
  XVid Avi

  As mentioned before, maps done with 3D Coat.
  It's working very well with 3D Coat.
  The build in UV-Generator of 3D Coat works like a charm ;-)
  Z-Brush, too, but Z-Brush is more expensive.
  Z-Brush is faster, much faster on my machine,
  but on the other hand the 3D Coat voxel sculpting is very funny,
  and the result of the voxel sculpting can be exported
  as a  perfect quadrangulated poly surface.

  Both programs are the money worth in my opinion,
  but if you need only displacement maps, maybe 3D Coat
  is enough at the moment for you.

  My 5 Cents.

  Matthias

Re: cave WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments!

Very interesting tip about 3d Coat, software like that or Zbrush would be great 
for modeling complex shapes like those stalagmites! The mushroom's gills are 
hard to model too... they are still very sketchy.
I'll have a look at the demo, hopefully it can export something useful for RS.

-Mark H

  Incredible painting, you should use your talent in painting for texturing.

  I see more displacement than actual modeling to realize this scene.
  And the only way to do justice to your magnificent painting is to paint 
directly on object.
  That would be a perfect project for a voxel modeler like 3D coat.

  Will RS support voxel object/rendering soon?

  Jean-Sebastien Perron
  www.NeuroWorld.ws

Re: Simple QT ;-)

[Mark Heuymans]

btw..
I have always wonder if one vsl material could be set up to give completly
new variations of it, to each object in a level.
I mean if you have a level with a lot of objects and apply one material to
that level, then something in the material do so it applies differently 
for

each object, making them uniquely rendered.
Instead of having to apply a material to each and every on of the objects.
(If you know what I mean)



This is possible! I did it a few years ago by setting identifiers of 
individual objects to different values and interpret these values in the 
VSL. I think I used it to scale patterns, and one of Zaug's scripts was 
involved to set the identifiers of a large number of objects at random.


I'll try if I can find the project and posts in the archive (I must have 
posted it here!), some deep digging to do ;)



-Mark H

cave WIP

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

Here's a flawed preview of a cave animation I've been working on, a biggie 
at 32 MB, HD 1280x720

http://www.athanor3d.com/pub/testflight17b.avi

At the last moment I decreased the displacement of the rocks in order to 
speed things up a bit, but forgot to adjust the positions of the mushroom 
lights, so they float above the rocks here and there. That's a disadvantage 
of displacement: it doesn't show up in realtime.
Also, some 'black edge' displacement artifacts show up in some frames, I 
hope they solve that old bug in V7!


I'll wait with the final render until I have my rendering power back, it's 
been reduced to a third for some weeks now. The AA undersampling 'cheating' 
shows in the flickering ;)



Happy rendering!
-Mark Heuymans

Re: input plane vs. view window

[Mark Heuymans]

Where are view ports and their behavior described in
detail, where in the manual. This seems such a basic thing for me to
not understand...manual page?




Reference Manual / Realsoft3D / Models / Geometric Objects / Geometric 
Primitives / Input Plane , quote:


"Input Plane
The input plane object is a plane in 3D space. It stores the orientation of 
a modeling plane (=view's input plane) and the grid origin. You can place 
input plane objects to those areas of the scene where modeling actions are 
happening frequently. You can then set the modeling orientation and grid 
origin quickly by drag and dropping a suitable input plane object from the 
select window into a view window. You may also apply the auto focus tool to 
zoom into the region defined by the input plane square.


For example, when modeling a room interior, it may be a good idea to put an 
input plane object on the ceiling, on the walls and on the floor.


The input plane property sheet contains controls for plane orientation (HPB 
angles) and the position of the grid origin included in the plane. The 
Current property is used whenever a view window is set to Lock to Input 
Plane state. When the current input plane is modified, the view updates 
automatically. "




and from Reference Manual / Realsoft3D / Windows / View :

"View Camera
Every view window owns a private 'camera'. A view camera stores attributes 
which are familiar from real world camera: position, aiming direction, focal 
length etc. Thanks to this view camera concept, you can 'take pictures' i.e. 
render images on a view window without creating an actual camera object into 
the scene hierarchy. A view camera is identical with the camera objects in 
the scene hierarchy. You can easily assign all settings from a view camera 
to a camera object and back.


Input Plane
The input plane is a flat, infinite 2D plane in the 3D modeling space which 
you see through the view windows. The mouse pointer position is projected to 
the underlying input plane. This way 2D coordinates from the mouse become 
translated into 3D coordinates.


 the input plane is, by default, connected to the view camera so that 
it always remains orthogonal to the camera. You can also unlock the input 
plane and model in a perspective manner. For example, you may want to view a 
room scene using a final camera view, place the input plane on the floor and 
move people inside the room along the floor to obtain an optimal 
composition.


 The input plane becomes visible when you activate grid drawing. The 
input plane always matches the space division into grid snapping intervals. 
You can move and rotate the input plane using the view controls, numerically 
from the view property window or using the popup menu.


 Most geometry creation and modify tools read their coordinate input 
from the input plane position. Certain tools (those using object handles) do 
not rely on the input plane, but project the mouse input to circular 
handles, axis systems etc. directly. For example, when you edit SDS object 
faces, input plane may be irrelevant. "


 end quotes




I used custom input planes when modeling on a hexagonal structure. It worked 
but I keep forgetting the details - but that's probably me... most of the 
time the RS tools fit me like a glove, but this is not one of them.
A little more attention to this important subject in the manual would be 
welcome!




as a side note what if I wanted to move those selected points
numerically in X direction by a certain amount of units? Move/
translate numerically comes to mind, where is that?

Holding x, y and z while dragging does affect things nicely, thanks, I
believe it was you that gave me that

Dean



Open View / Numeric Window from the menu. While moving the object (or 
rotating or whatever) hit 'n' and you can enter a value in the Numeric 
window. I use it all the time!


hope this helps,

Mark H

Re: Opengl view

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks, it's a heavy render job, I'm at frame 100 out of 400 now...
My quadcore broke down last week after only a year of usage, so I'm back at 
one third of the rendering power until it's back :(

-Mark


> Hi Mark,
>
> Nice atmosphere in that image. Curious how the animation is going to look
> like.
>
> Arjo.
>

Re: Opengl view

[Mark Heuymans]

> Hi
>
> Why the objects in the OpenGl View are not correct ?
>
> The render is ok but objects show me a lot of crease in the OpenGl View 
> ...
>
> Phil


Even despite improvements since V6, RS has never been the best at realtime 
shaded view... analytic booleans often don't show up in a useful way. For 
architectural work, I'm in wireframe mode more often than shaded...

Try (in Properties/Wire) increasing shaded quality and Texture quality of an 
object.

Also, in shaded OGL mode things like range of the lightsources are are not 
taken into account, making things too bright. Switching off realtime 
visibility of every light except the main source can help.

Shift-doubleclicking on an object sets it apart from the rest of the scene, 
if View properties are checked to draw root level only, it makes editing SDS 
objects in OGL mode easier.



Hope this helps,

-Mark H

Re: Revolution 4D and Chrono

[Mark Heuymans]

> Hi
>
> What about Revolution 4D and Chrono development for 7 release ?
>
> thanks for the answer
>
> Phil (New old user of Realsoft 6.1)


Good question, I'm one of only a few Chrono users.

And how about Dynatomics, is it ever going to see the light? Years ago, as a 
beta tester I built a fully functional trebuchet. Arjo made a brilliant 
'chain of events' animation... etc, etc, it's just a great plugin. Such a 
waste if this would never see the light!



-Mark H

Re: V7 release date yet? Field Evalutator..

[Mark Heuymans]

>
> I had a fast look at your Fade issue.. and it seems buggy.
> Though materials and rendering is not the area I am good at (if any hehe=)
> Here is what I found out..
>
> Yep you only have to move (or scale or anything that change so at least 
> some
> surface part of the two objects differs) the 2nd sphere a fraction then 
> the
> entire cross renders...
> The issue you having (as far as I see) is only happening when ALL surface 
> of
> the two overlapping objects is exactly in the same space ! (When you use 
> two
> or more object that is..)
> So if its a bug showing at that criteria, or it might be an accuracy thing
> similar to Boolean operations that you shouldnt have exact space of two or
> more objects, since you get artifacts...(z fighting..=)
>
> Though it dont seem to be only a two object in same space problem..
> Do this in your fade prj you attached
> 1. Delete the sphere2 level
> 2. Duplicate the spherical Mapping in the Sphere1 level so you get this..
> Sphere1Level
>  Sphere
>  SphereMap1
>  SphereMap2 (Rotate this 90 deg)
> (The same problem here, only the effects of the 2nd SphereMap is giving
> result)
> 3. Multiselect the two SphereMaps and use the 'Average' map thing on it 
> and
> you get
> Sphere1Level
>  Sphere
>  Average
>SphereMap1
>SphereMap2 (Rotated 90)
> (Now you at least gets the whole cross to render, but not what you want, 
> as
> its not unified rendered.. its additive illuminated where they overlap and
> more faded where they dont,.,
>
> Well I am no guru on VSL or materials in general... but those are my first
> and fast takes on this fade issue  =)
>
> Take Care
> Best Regards
> Stefan Gustafsson ( Beg-inner )
> A Proud Owner and User of Real3D and Realsoft3D..
>


Thanks Stefan (some very thorough debugging there!) and Matthias for thread, 
I'm a bit in lurk mode lately but still work a lot with RS3d and follow the 
list.
I'll try to confirm these findings and report back! Never worked with the 
Field Evaluator, it's one of the more mysterious features...

-Mark H

Re: The end of the development of Realman.

[Mark Heuymans]

Sad news. I dabbled a bit with Realman but always got my hands full with 
straight VSL - it's difficult and deep enough by itself! Only when you hit 
the boundaries of VSL you need something like Realman, and there are few 
people who manage that ;)

One of the highlights that spring to mind is the Mandelbrot shader. It was 
great fun to do that procedurally within RS!


Thanks for sharing the news, and hats off to Richard Swingwood,

- Mark Heuymans



PS looking forward to V7, nice to see improved particles

Re: Real3d project import ?

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Jason,

Do you end up with an error message stating you can't load it, or do yo get 
corrupted projects or strange artifacts in rendering, or even a crash? I mostly 
end up with the middle one: artifacts ;)

V 1.4 was my first version on the Amiga... I often use parts of old projects, 
even from this ancient version, so it should be possible. I have a V5 version 
of my very first R3d 1.4 project of my Russian MBU-4 microscope lying somewhere 
;)
The main problem I encountered had to do with extruded objects, I had to 
reverse something ( a nurbs trim curve if memory serves) to get it more or less 
working. Anyway, to gain the advantages of the newer versions, a lot of manual 
conversion work would be required...

Good luck, maybe upload an example file so we can test it,

-Mark H



PS get V6, it's made for architectural work!





  Afternoon

   

  Just wondering if anyone can remember what versions of Realsoft after Real3d, 
could actually load old Real3d project files ?

   

  I have Realsoft v4 and v4.1 installed, but cannot get most of my old Real3d 
files into it.

   

  If anyone can remember I would be grateful.

   

  Many thanks

   

  Jason

   

Re: Update on my website and complaining

[Mark Heuymans]

> For more infos on my future software i added a Project Status section at
> the bottom of the previous text for the curious.
> www.CombadZ.com
>
> While further reading about renderman, I found that Realsoft has many
> similarities.
>
> Please tell me if you find me annoying about my software.


Hi Jean-Sebastien,
Of course not, can't wait to try it! But I still have no clue about how it 
works, obviously you can't explain too much about it at this stage. It all 
sounds incredible...
Man, you 're making some claims, it'd better be good ;)

Good luck!
-Mark

the Building tool

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi all,

Quiet here these days, but to me RS is alive and kicking as ever, I've been 
spending many hours with it lately!

Been using the Building tool a lot, it's great but it has some quirks.
Some remarks and questions:

* If you copy and mirror a Building, the left/right orientation of the wall 
is switched. Therefore, the copy is shaped differently from the original. 
So, keep this in mind: after a mirror transformation, go to the building's 
wall and flip Side.
Something similar happens to normals in SDS objects: they are flipped if the 
object is mirrored - you have to select all faces and flip them again if you 
want to keep your object intact.

* SDS walls in Buildings are always generated Phong shaded, which can cause 
trouble if you mix them with analytics or non-phongshaded walls. The edges 
are visible because the shading is different. to prevent this, you have to 
de-activate the Building (to prevent it from refreshing the subobjects every 
time), or CTRL-drag the wall SDS object to another level and make the one 
inside the building level invisible. Cumbersome.

* It would be great to be able to make cylindrical holes for cylindrical 
windows. Now, I have to deactivate the Building and use a Boolean cylinder 
to drill a hole in the wall, the Building tool's hole method is much more 
convenient! It's problematic if you want to modify the building afterwards 
and have to re-activate it: new walls are generated.

* I had some trouble making Rooms in certain Buildings. No walls, floors or 
ceilings were generated, it remained empty. I fiddled a bit, and suddenly it 
worked again as it should. Can't pin it down, no idea what did the trick... 
?


Anyway: it's a brilliant tool, not just for simple buildings!

-Mark H

Re: Updated scripts

[Mark Heuymans]

>>
>>> All of the Realsoft Reserve scripts have been updated!
>>> Details here:
>>> http://www.catmtn.com/rr/realgreeblez/download.php
>>>
>>> Any and all testing results and feedback would be greatly appreciated.
>>>
>>> Zaug
>>
> Jason, Bernie and Stefan,
>
> Sorry so slow to respond.
>
> Thanks for the nice words; hope you guys can get some use out of them.
>
> Zaug


Hi Zaug,

I forgot to thank you for your great work! Some really clever and practical 
tools.

Cheerz!

-Mark

Re: ivygen to rs3d

[Mark Heuymans]

>
> Hi all :)
> thank you for your help - at last my ivy look like ivy Woo Hoo
> Alasdair
>

Thanks for saving it from the void Chris ;)
Please show some results when ready Alasdair!

-Mark

Re: ivygen to rs3d

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Alasdair,
My previous reply didn't make it, probably because of an attachment. So here we 
go again:

It can be done! Other users and myself worked with this great little program 
last year with convincing results after a bit of trial&error.
Unfortunately I forgot the details, I'll have another look at it because it 
just works great with RS.
Something I do remember: when importing the obj, one of the UV directions had 
to be switched to get correct leaf orientation.

There was a thread about this last year, it should be in the archives 
somewhere...

Hectic times here, I'll get back to it ASAP!

-Mark H



  Im going out of my mind; no matter what I do I cant get 
  rs3d to load the obj file produced with ivygen with the textures 
  in place to render - the object comes with 4 textures that are 
  blank so I build the textures with the texture, bump & clipmask 
  and assign these to the relevant point sets defined in the obj 
  yet I usually get the branches appearing with no leaves 

  HELP !!

  can anybody give me a step by step guide how to do this - I know it works cos 
Ive seen examples and they were superb

  rs3d does not seem to produce or use the mtl file associated with the obj 
file, why not?

  Alasdair

Re: animation

[Mark Heuymans]

Arjo, thanks for the detailed explanations, this mail goes into the archive!
I'll have to invest in software to keep up...

-Mark




  Thank you all for the kind words!

   

  @Mark:

  Motion blur has been done with the ReelSmart Motion Blur plugin for After 
Effects.

  This is a very nice plugin, no need to render subsamples per frame.

  And you can adjust the amount of blur interactively.

  This plugin can create motionblur based on the movement of pixels inside the 
image sequence.

  But you get best results when you've got a motion vector image.

  With this image RSMB knows how much to blur in which direction.

  Unfortunately Realsoft cannot output such files at the moment.

  I already suggested support for such output ;)

   

  AA was at its standard (best) setting, no scaling. Well, for this mpeg it was 
scaled down from 720x576 to 512 x288.

  Anyway I'll show two images as they were rendered (rendered with a 1.422 
pixel aspect ratio):

  www.xs4all.nl/~joly/temp/autostill_Rend.jpg

  www.xs4all.nl/~joly/temp/autostill_AE.jpg

  [snip]

Re: animation

[Mark Heuymans]

Nice, very smooth and detailed animation! Motion blur, excellent AA... Was it 
scaled down?
I wonder if this would be renderable in RS, or is it too slow...

BTW the mill you showed earlier is great too :) forgot to congratulate you...

-Mark


  Hi,

   

  Some of you asked to show the animation with the road and trees.

  I made a short movie out of it. It's still 15 Mb though.

  www.xs4all.nl/~joly/temp/n50project.mpg

   

  Arjo.

Re: trees

[Mark Heuymans]

Wow Arjo, very realistic! The Plant tool is so sophisticated that we're now 
using RS as a plant generator to use in other software (which sw did you use to 
render this, if I may ask?).
Can't wait to see the animation!
 
The only problem is the typical boring Dutch landscape ;)

-Mark


  Hi,

   

  First time I used the trees in a real project.

  www.xs4all.nl/~joly/temp/road.jpg

   

  The road behind the trees and the viaduct are new, but that's not so 
important here.

  I'm curious what you think about my trees. They're a bit low poly on purpose, 
as I needed many and had to use them outside Realsoft.

   

  I'll show an animation in which they are used later on. There's some 
technical discussion about the road I have to wait for.

   

  Arjo.

   

Re: movie

[Mark Heuymans]

Thanks for the tip, interesting stuff and excellent quality!

Coincidentally, I just picked up working with internal reflections inside 
Platonic bodies and spheres, really crazy complex fractals!

-Mark H


  ...a friend sent me a mail about his educative
  math movie...very interesting  >>>
  ***
  Besides www.josleys.com, there is now also www.dimensions-math.org, the 
companion website of a two-hour film of mathematical animations.
  From this website, the entire film can be downloaded for free, or you can 
order the DVD at only 10€.
  You can view the website in English, French and Dutch..

  You are most welcome to come and have a look!

  Jos Leys 

  http://www.josleys.com

  
***

Re: old musicvideos - done with real3d - amiga4000

[Mark Heuymans]

> Hello list,
>
> i found some old musicvideos on youtube, all done by me (not the music, of 
> course) in the late 90s on my old amiga 4000/60 (and some other amigas)
> with the good old real3d v3:-)
>
> maybe somebody have fun watching this historic stuff:-)
>


Seriously good work Tijai, nice to see you're still on this list! (and 
working with RS I hope)

Real3d V3 was (still is) very powerful, I ran it on a humble 4000/030 and 
later a 200 MHz PC. I always loved it and occasionally still open it to 
export old project parts and breath new life into them with v6.

Cheers!
-Mark

Re: New Chrono released

[Mark Heuymans]

> Hello,
>
>
>> I noticed the new version is almost half the size of the old, should it 
>> be
>> installed
>> over the old version or is it a "complete" version and a fresh install is
>> possible?
>
> The setup includes all required components. A fresh install is possible.
>
> Kind regards,
> Vesa


It works like a charm! (including some little bugs fixed)
I hope Chrono development hasn't stopped. For example, it could use a cache 
like Dynatomics.

Thanks!
Mark

Re: qt: refraction + last little scene with glas/ice texture :-)

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Frank,

I wish VSL would use the more familiar Refraction Index instead of this 
'optical thickness'.

Conversion:
Refraction Index = 1 / (1-optical thickness) or
optical thickness = 1 - 1/refraction index

I found a table with refraction index values for several substances (for 
yellow light):

fluorite: index 1.43  ->  thickness 0.3
canada balsam:  1.53  ->0.346
salt1.54  ->0.351
diamond2.42  ->0.587
flint glass (light)  1.51  ->0.338
flint glass (heavy)   1.65  ->0.394
crown glass (light)  1.51  ->0.338
crown glass (heavy)   1.61  ->0.379
ice 1.31 ->0.237
water 1.33  ->   0.248

So, your values are OK.

However, in the test scene I found that there was no total reflection in the 
prism with values around 0.33, so I just increased optical thickness until I 
got it. Never mind theory, it's the picture that counts ;)

Your ice is looking very nice, procedural bump mapping?

good luck,
-Mark



---
My current question: "theme refraction": Optical thickness for a) glass is 
0.33, for b) water 0.25 and c) ice 0.236? It's right?
A new picture I have added here... rendering times over 24:35 minutes... 
uargh :-D

best wishes, good renderings, Frank

Re: Some QT

[Mark Heuymans]

> Hi Mark and others, I got this information about this work around for 
> getting Chrono to help under v6, I hope it helps. Like I said, I haven't 
> tested it extensively
>
> The current release of Chrono can work under V6, but it requires some
> manual changes to the installation (in fact the directory structure of the 
> Realsoft 3D directory has changed in V6, since there is a new directory 
> 'bin'
> which was called 'system' in V5: libraries like chrono_select.dll and 
> ChronoEngine.dll
> should be moved to 'bin'). Also, during startup there will be some warning 
> messages
> about 'Too many gadget procs'. After this, the plugin should work.
>
> cheers,
> Thom
>


Hi Thom,

Voila, it works! Moving these two dlls from 'system' to 'bin' does the 
trick.
I could even load V5 Chrono projects without problems.

cheers & thanks,
-Mark

Re: Chrono for v6

[Mark Heuymans]

> Hello,
>
> A new, fully v6 compatible Chrono will be release in the near future. It 
> will fix the discussed  installation and program startup errors, among 
> other things.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Vesa


Great, I hope those little GUI issues will be fixed too.

Thanks, it's a great addition to the toolkit!

regards,
-Mark 

RE: Some QT

[Mark Heuymans]

> Just below the bit you quoted:
> "Chrono::R3D is also compatible with Realsoft3D v.6. "
>
> :)
> http://www.deltaknowledge.com/chrono/requirements.php
>


Ouch, completely missed that ;)

-Mark 

Re: Some QT

[Mark Heuymans]

Hi Thom,

>
> It says on the deltaknowledge site that Chrono is working with v6.


Huh? Can't find that, I copy/paste:
"The software Realsoft3D v.5 must be already correctly installed into your 
system!
(We suggest to install also the service pack SP4 for Realsoft3D v.5) "


> I have installed it ok with v6 by changing some directory destinations for 
> a couple of files, but haven't really run Chrono since doing so yet, 
> except to see that it starts...
> What problems did you have?
>


To be sure I just installed it in V6. At startup, there are some error 
messages (a missing dll) and RS starts without Chrono :(
What files did you change then?

-Mark