This is an archive of CompuServe forum messages from 1985 to 1995, as saved in transcripts by John Foust.
Search Results (74 messages)
>>I liked that cover Thanks >> I assume Lucas has all the Star Wars characters as 3D objects. Well, we've got just about all the ships now (check out Rebel 2 in a while), characters just started showing up with that Storm Trooper for Dark Forces. – Ron
>> Has anyone had experience creating a still with high enough resolution that it could be blown up to a 3ft. tall poster? Bruce, I did the TIE Fighter (game) cover/poster in 3DS at 2325×2963 and it worked great! (300 dpi for the box art, at 7 3/4 x 9…
Ahh. Yes, that would be it! (Ooops!) Thanks, – Ron
#Alpha & Matte objects
Message #190084
Hi, When I rendered a scene with a background of Matte objects, the alpha channel is white where my "target" object is (correct) and a solid medium grey where the matte objects are.(?) I had expected the matte objects to show through to full transparency. Anybody have any experience with…
#Max Render Farm?
Message #190071
Does anyone know if there is any information on whether 3DS MAX will still render on a non-workstation machine without a dongle? (free render farms) TIA – Ron
Here's a (poor?) explanation of your problem from a message I sent a while back. . . . _____ After I noticed this, I decided to test blurring a Bones Pro animation with extra frames saved out and it worked fine. Just scale the number of frames in a file…
>>I don't understand what you say about 'object motion blur', can you explain ?
#Key Factory 1.81
Message #188913
Serge, From the "simple.3ds" file that you uploaded, it looks like you took care of the wild subframe rotation problem in Key Factory. The one that didn't let object motion blur work properly on rotation because of the axis used. Is this the case? And, are you planning on adding…
Reza, I have used something else for planets actually. A flat ring around the planet (that has to be animated to always face the camera) can be mapped with a very nice falloff of your choice. Even a nice color transition in the atmosphere. It does take some tweeking though.…
Autodesk has announced that a patch modeller will be shipped free to owners of R4 as part of their continuing support for 3DS Classic. Apparently they felt bad for you. – Ron
Thanks for the info Dave. – Ron
Wishin' well
Message #188038
From a message I just sent to some one . . . . . . A change in the surface's opacity according to how parallel or perpendicular that surface is to the view. . . . Just like Trans.Falloff _does_, right? Except that 3DS doesn't make it to completely transparent.…
>>How do you make a transparent material with only a little opacity on the outer edge? . . . . What i must have is mostly full transparent all over with gradual opacity near the edges only and as it stands i cannot do it with 3DS. Any ideas?
#Shadow-Bias-Abs.
Message #188036
Hello all, I just noticed that a strange "banding" on most objects in my recent renders was caused (?) by the .set file's Shadow-Bias-Absolute=ON/OFF choice being changed to ON. Has anyone else seen or know about this shadow artifacting? TIA, – Ron
>>What release of KF do you have ? The current is 1.81, with the big nice manual made by Dan Bean from 4DVision (SCHREIBER)>Oops ! If you don't have 1.81, you miss the full color 3D preview and new wind and magnet force field with SPLINE based intensity…
#DMM vs KeyFactory?
Message #187569
Is anybody using DMM willing to discuss some of the abilities of each package? I use Key Factory a bit and though it works great for most simple situations, I have been disappointed when I get to trying something complex. I looked at the new file uploaded to the IPAS…
#Rendering Programs?
Message #187470
>> I wonder if there is any other modeler in existance that even *approaches* this sort of flexibility? Haven't played with Prisms, huh? SESI's Prisms and, I hear, Wavefront have some similar "crazy" procedural/mathimatical abilities like we're seeing show up in MAX. (I love it!) – But Prisms isn't layed…
Mitch, Yes, motion blur is a cool thing! I discovered that Bones Pro blur "feature" a while ago and explained it here (though not as well as you). It is also a problem when trying to use scene motion blur when you have animated maps in your materials! When doing…
Hi Lee, I've used that cloud technique a few times, almost exactly as you are. I expect you've already put the cloud map in as an opacity map, but you don't want to use it as a texture map because the clouds will start to darken where the map fades…
Thanks David. – Ron
20 Mach. Limit
Message #182834
OK, I'm back. The 20 machine limit is on MCS files! I can't find anything in the Advanced Users Guide on how to deal with splitting machines over MCS files. Right now we're just creating a different Network directory for each set of 20, but this leaves us with 2…
#Wish
Message #182015
Submit previews to the network queue. – Ron
>>Well, I rendered the animation from video post with no background and alpha turned on. I then loaded a background and rendered a single frame of the object with scene motion blur to a GIF file. I then composited the background along with the prerendered images using the GIF as…
I, almost exclusively, do 320x200x256 graphics in 3DS and it can look very good. Palette is important, and if you use too many colors in an animation the 256 colors will not be enough. Keep using 3DS and you'll probably figure it out, and there are plenty of people around…
Hi Jonas, You can call me Ron, I just never change my name when I join forums. >> Were you seeing the crawling effect while viewing *.tga video output or in the *.flc file. If it was in the *.flc file, did you use a custom palette? >Scene motion blur…
>>it'll be a long time before paletted displays are obsolete.
>>If you have a reproducable case, . . . Thanks, I just put it up to this Library. It is not not difficult to recreate, just render anything still (a fogged background) with VP motion blur. – Ron
Thanks, I'll get back to you when I've re-read that section. – Ron
#Vpost Mblur
Message #181178
Hi, When using Scene Mblur the "Consistant render" is lost. (Consistant render meaning the fact that an unchanged (3D) background will be represented by the same pixelization every frame if no lights (or the camera) are moved.) I'm getting some serious crawl in my shots, and Scene Dithering is set…
#Net Mach.Limit
Message #181177
I was just reading about the 20 machine limit for network rendering and was wondering whether anyone has run into this or has any ideas on how to deal with larger rendering farms. TIA, – Ron
Thanks, Gary. Though I hear now, that the SI for NT thing is actually much further off. I don't have a connection at SoftImage right now, so all that info is heresay. Be seeing you, – Ron
Ooops! I realized the smoke will appear improperly each "puff". Oh well. – Ron
#3DS vs. Alias
Message #179791
>>I am looking into moving to SGI equipment and Alias Power Animator. I use Studio 3d now. I would like some feedback on this move.
If you can afford to turn off special mapping, then you could animate it with a flic texture map. I 've been doing that but I wish I could define a flic to be used as a "special map" (playing for only the last [flic frames #] frames of the…
Static Friction and Static Elasticity buttons make the KF use the Elast. and Friction values from the static object (the floor). I ran into the same problem. There are a few other bugs and simple things that it's missing (like random rotation speed). But for some things it's indespensible. Good…
That's almost exactly what I did for the Storm Troopers in Dark Forces, you do get about half the Anti aliasing on the edge of the objects but it's much more usable than having all of it. If your textures are complex you can speed up the rendering more by…
There is something coming out in a few weeks (I think), but I'm not sure if it's anounced yet so I can't go into detail. If you don't need it right away, wait to see what happens at SIGGRAPH. – Ron
Wishes
Message #178329
Hi Jonas, Well, here's a few more. . . . – Allow for Universal values for Gravity, Wind (animated, of course), etc. That Plug-ins can access so they can, for example, all follow the same "gusts" of wind (like 2 particle systems, a Flame.axp, and a physics calculation in one…
Lights/Spot/Adjust . . . The bottom of the menu has "rectangle" and "circular" buttons. (and turn your caps lock off it looks like your yelling.) – Ron
Ther is also a SEEZ ipas that will output the Z-buffer as an image file. It's here on the forum. Just do a search for the keyword seez. – Ron
Tablet mode doesn't work very well in 3DS, it won't rotate an object more than the tablet length. (You know how you "paddle" with a mouse? -can't do that in absolute mode.) I just use the mouse (relative) mode on mine. I also put the .SAM in my start up…
#Replace segment wish
Message #174884
The abilty to Replace a segment with the Object/Tracks/File Insert type of command. – Ron
Displace Caution
Message #174883
I just discovered how I created an invalid 3DS file with the Displace routine. The "create object" naming field is 11 characters long. Be sure to only use 10! It will not warn you that the name is invalid, and when you save the file, it will be invalid. -…
Gary, I always wondered, why the secrecy over features. The other graphics companies I've talked to have been rather open about upcoming features. Just curious, – Ron
>>RXP for rendering engine plugins I'm with you on that one! And hopefully get access to _everything_, so we can get away from just phong (and metal) calculations (one of the things, IMHO, that I think is keeping "photorealism" a little bit harder to get than it could be). I…
Always more . . .
Message #173630
When Linking an object, 3DS currently "untranslates" the object (in relation to it's new parent), so that it stays where it was, before you linked it. Though usually desired, the ability to turn this function off when needed would be great. The center for the "view area" (and the axis…
#Viewing Images wish
Message #172280
Jonas, When viewing images in a windows (NT) environment, obviously, you'll have a window come up with the image in it. It would be great to have a lot of viewing controls in that window as well: RGB, Alpha, Z-Buffer, size, maybe gamma adjustment, and any else you can think…
Duane, I uploaded a file called OmniSpot.3ds to the "AutoDesk 3D Studio" files library a couple of weeks ago. Although it doesn't have a Dummy object in the file like it says (it's easy enough to add it), it has 6 lights set up to do cubic shadow mapping and…
Rich, Try taking that first step you've got and Copy Tracks (or Insert from a saved file) to all of the other stairs. Then offset the animations of each of the other steps by enough frames to seperate them, and probably "repeat" the animations. – Ron
>>a strength slider for each map? How 'bout the ability to use a grayscale image >>or flic for it instead? Isn't that what the MASK image does? Or am I misunderstanding you? – Ron
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