This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (362 messages)
Michael: I'm sorry that I left the impression that I expected that the rendering times on the two machines would be the same. What I was getting at was that there was very little difference between the two frames in question so, **everything else being equal *** there should be…
Thanks, I'll take another look at the cooling in my system. The thing that makes me doubt that this is my problem is that if I hide a chunk of the scene it will render just fine. If I unhide all of the geometry the system crashes on the next…
David: I've got a whole set of hide keys clustered at frame 0 and another set between frame 600 and 605. The only piece of the geometry that moves is a set of elevator doors that open and close at the very end of the sequence – about frame 1100…
Dave: In fact, I have a number of hide keys in an attempt to simplify the geometry enough to keep my main 486 machine from blowing up. There are a set at frame 0, and another series at frames 600-605. Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 02-Mar-1995 @ 23:01:43 Using: Windows…
Bob: There are 3 shadow casting light sources in the scene, one outside acting like the sun and two inside the basement of the building in one of the interior rooms. I've turned off the two inside lights so there should be only one shadow casting light – at least…
#Interesting results
Message #157888
I've been rendering a big animation at work and have finally got network rendering to mostly work. I got an interesting result that I thought that I would share: 486DX2-50, 32 MB RAM, 22MB swap file renders in 15 min. Pentium 66, 16 MB RAM, 42MB swap file renders in…
#Shadow Masks
Message #157434
I'm working on a large architectural model and it is taking a **long** time to render (about 90 min/frame). I've been looking at the manuals to see what I can do to speed things up, but I did notice something that I was wondering about. In the model the only…
Jonas: Thanks. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know. I'm in a bind right now because my current CPU board is maxed out at 32 Mb and its hard to argue for a new CPU card and 64 Mb of memory while we're talking about a $5B budget…
#More on Parity Errors
Message #156993
I've been working on my big model again and have several more (apparrantly bogus) Parity errors. Usually they occur when the full model is displayed on the secong attempt to remder the scene. They also occur when I try to drop into the new fast preview mode and, this evening,…
Mike: I described this problem to Gary Yost here on the forum and he told me that a situation where you have RAM filled and are using a **lot** of swap space it puts a lot of stress on your system. He says that it requires a really high degree…
#154634-
reboot during render
Message #155083
Mike: Do you get a message when the system reboots? My system at work has 32 MBy of RAM and when I render one of my really big models (for the second time, usually) my system stops on what looks like a bogus parity error. It tells me I have…
Thanks! I've been doing memory tests and haven't found anything so far, so it is quite possible that it is either a mapping or controller problem. I've tried to swap up to a 64 MB system, but I haven't been able to get anybody to pay for it yet! The…
I asked because it looks to me to be a bogus error – there is no address shown on the message, and I've seen programs that generate bogus parity errors (or actually, end up in the BIOS, generating a bogus parity message.) I am more suspicious of a memory mapping…
#Parity Errors
Message #151855
I'm running 3DS4 with a couple of large models of some new construction we are supposed to be doing at work. My animation system has 32 MB of RAM, and rendering often uses all of it and sometimes up to 18 MB or so of swap space. Once in a…
I'll try it. Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 31-Jan-1995 @ 22:08:37 Using: Windows NavCIS PRO 1.25
I had essentially the same problem. I've created the new faces to patch in the missing ones, but my real problem was the size of the model. There were so many missing faces that finding and patching them became a major job. In some extreme cases I ended up creating…
Thanks. I'll have to try that on my next big model. Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 28-Jan-1995 @ 20:12:18 Using: Windows NavCIS PRO 1.25
Gary: Thanks. I got close and then face flipped and edited in 3DS. I tried to use Visual Link to make a 3DS file directly but only the doors would come over and its a strange building with doors but no walls or floors… Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 26-Jan-1995…
Phil: I SOLMESHed for **DAYS** trying to get everything done. The DXF file was 32 Meg long and it imported into a .3DS file less than 5 MB long. I typically started the conversion when I went home from work for the day and it was finished by the next…
Michael: I think that on the last iteration I turned Unify solids and weld vertices off and that helped a lot. There are still some objects where the faces just aren't there at all. Luckily, most of them are not going to be visible anyway – they are the back…
Gary: I'm familiar with the flipped normals problem, but this isn't it. The models are essentially all AME solids so their normals **should** be ok. The normals are **not** flipped in my model – the faces aren't there at all. I've done all of the normal things like turn on…
Michael: I don't think that I had the 64K face problem. I had a lot of objects but they were on a lot of layers. I ended up getting all of the objects, but many of them had faces missing – a lot of one-sided walls, for instance. Chris -…
One thing that I've had to do on a number of occasions is to Boolean subtract out holes for windows in a wall. That is where I've tried joining all of the window hole objects into one object and then subtracting it from the wall. The other is that I've…
Gary: Yes, I've thought of exporting the DXF in pieces. I'm too far along in the current project to try that now, but I'll probably try it when I get done. I have tried joining objects and then doing a boolean, but it dosen't seem to impact on the tendency…
#Another wish
Message #148153
One of the things that I would really like to have in 3DS is a limited undo – I realize that making a general purpose undo is a problem, but it should be much simpler to allow an undo for deleting an object, for instance. It would only have to…
Phil: I had started to play with import settings but the DXF file I was working with was about 32 MB long and I needed to (and still do!) get the model ready to render so I dodn't play with it as much as I would like to, Once I…
I've had problems with importing DXF files where most of the geometry was done with AME solids. I had a lot of missing faces – not just flipped normals but entire faces gone. Mostly I have been building things like a set of complex internal walls for a building with…
Dennis: The problem with my floors is that there aren't **enough** hilights. I don't think that there is any solution to the metapattern problem – even a random tile map will end up being a **repeated** random tile map. You need to generate maps that are randomized over the entire…
Dennis: The problem is that when you look at the floor, you see the tannish-yellow tile, the seams between the tiles – at least for the tiles close to the camera – and, as the distance increases you begin to see bright but irregular reflections in the same color as…
#145080-
#Materials (How to make?)
Message #145420
Dennis: I use an aluminum that is really a metal shaded light gray with a reflection map. I'm still not completely satisfied with it, but it looks OK. I'm sure that you've noticed that different "shiny silver" metals look different – the main difference being the exact color of gray…
Good idea! I didn't think of freezing it. I'll try it. Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 06-Jan-1995 @ 23:12:29 Using: Windows NavCIS PRO 1.25
#Suggestion
Message #145046
I whis that there was a way to constrain vertex or face selection to a particular object. I'm working on a model now where I have to adjust one object to be next to another by moving vertices around. It would be nice if I could tell 3DS that I…
Thanks. While we're at it, being able to input relative coordinates would be nice to. AutoCad uses the @ symbol for this – when it asks for a coordinate you use the @ to mean "this far from the last point". Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 24-Dec-1994 @ 22:00:28 Using:…
#R5 Wish
Message #143217
I've got a wish for R5. I work in an old office (built in '46 or '48, I think, that is **SERIOUSLY** "under-amped". We've got at least 5 computers, a couple of laser printers, a little refrigerator and a microwave all on one circuit and there isn't room for any…
Sure. I hope it helps. I've been interested in radiosity for a while, but it looks like it is still too expensive ((in terms of computation time) for general purpose work. Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 20-Oct-1994 @ 20:37:42 Using: Windows NavCIS PRO 1.25
Actually, radiosity is not usually part of a raytracer. Raytracers do a really good job on specular reflections and refraction, but not a very good job on diffuse reflections. In a raytraced image of an office, for instance, you end up with intense shadows under desks and shelves – any…
#128933-
NEW USER TO 3D STUDIO
Message #129101
Glenn: I've got two single frame to video systems, one at home and one at work. My work system is a "classical" animation to tape system with a Targa graphics board, a 300 MBy on a side 5.25" magneto-optical disk drive, a Lyon Lamb animation controller, and a Sony VO-5850…
Jonas: I called my local Autodesk Multimedia dealer to ask about the 3DS R4 upgrade and found out that my dealer wasn't an Adesk dealer any more. Do you have a listing of who **are** dealers in the Cleveland, Ohio area? Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 15-Oct-1994 @ 20:50:07 Using:…
Mark: I don't think that it is either fair or smart to withhold comment on the one issue that **I** want to hear about – what future operating system(s) is 3DS going to run under? I know that they don't want to talk about what kind of things are going…
#123189-
Future OS
Message #123444
Pierre: I just don't want to end up buying into an operating system and then find out that 3DS dosen't run, or dosen't run right, or that there is a new native-mode version of 3DS coming out for a different OS.
#123148-
#Future OS
Message #123443
Ok, thanks. It **would** really help me (if no one else) if you could encourage somebody there to make some kind of statement about future operating system support for 3DS. Specifically, please let us know something **BEFORE** we have to make a decision about what post-DOS OS to move to!!…
3D Studio Output
Message #114475
Kevin: Ok, I didn't remember precisely. There **is** some color printer that uses SCSI, I think – maybe I'm confusing it with something else. The ethernet connection option for a Tek printer should provide pretty fast data transfer, too. Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 26-Jul-1994 @ 18:33:12 Using: Windows NavCIS…
Kevin: I don't remember my Tek printers that well, but does the Tek II SDx have a SCSI port and, if so, can you use it to send data? Some printers can, others can't. It would speed things up, I think. Chris – Chris Johnston, Written 23-Jul-1994 @ 19:18:34 Using:…
Yeah, I know somebody whose computer room sprung a small water leak under the raised flooring and their under floor air conditioner turned it into a very large iceberg! I think that they ended up drilling a small hole in the floor to let the water out… Chris – Chris…
I understand – I've been through the mill in attempting to estimate the heat load of a room full of instruments so they can figure out how much AC to put in. The computer room that I mentioned is **BIG** – about two stories high and a couple of hundred…
We've got a large computer room in the main computer facility where I work. It has two Crays, a couple of Vax clusters, a couple of Amdahl mainframes and a whole lot of other stuff. A sizable fraction of the heat generated by the systems gets used to heat the…
Good Luck! Chris
To paraphrase a famous comedian, accuracy is the key – when you can fake that, you've got it made… Chris
Bill: I've done screw threads with a bump map and it looked pretty good. I found that a bump map with a series of vertical lines (actually vertical greyscale gradients) worked better than one with diagonal lines intended to create the spiral thread. I was having trouble with aliasing on…
John: I certainly agree, as do most of the people that I work with. I think that the consideration on the earlier mission wasn't in terms of trying to hide anything, just that it was considered too hard to make the science understood to the average taxpayer. I think that…
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