Global Ripple
22 messages in this thread
Ok, In Steve Worley's Imagine book he makes the comment that one can
"animate" a global picture. This puzzles me. Does this mean that I need to
load a new global picture for each rendering in an animation? Apparently fx
effects do not work on grounds – is there a creative way around this
problem. I'd like to be able to ripple etc. the ground. Any suggestions?
Margaret,
if F/Xs don't work on a ground, how about creating a huge, two-triangle
plane?
Blaq!
Will that change the way the spots look?
Margaret,
try rendering the same plane with the texture axes rotated. The spots
will certainly look different, I'm sure. Now if our friend added a texture
to an object, the new default axis placement may have gone unnoticed; if,
on the other hand, he simply re-used the same objects without modification,
then I'm clueless as to why the spots aren't the same size.
Blaq!
Obviously the only way to check this out is to try it. Still some of these
processes take so long to "check" that I'll take some advice. I think I'll
work on ripple first instead of memory hog wave. However, since ripple
displaces the surface, a two triangle plane would not ripple much.
Margaret –
The ripple effect is not constrained by the polygon count of the object
being rippled. I've gotten great looking wave propagation across a
2-triangle plane (20-30 waves from edge to edge). Just give Imagine a
wavelength and it'll do its thing – it is perfectly happy to create surface
perturbations inbetween polygon edges.
– Joe
Oh great. I've been experimenting with a 20X20 polygon plane. I've tried
various travel distances which has interesting possibilities.
Margaret,
Yeah, there's no need to use more than a 2-triangle plane unless of
course there are specific details or feaures you need to incorporate. I've
done wave anims where I set the travel distance to be exactly 1 (or a
multiple of 1) wavelength, so that I can loop it. This can be extended – I
did one where the scene was static (except for waves rolling along), then
objects rise out of the water (great reflection effects!), then remain
static with new objects visible and new reflections in rolling waves – all
timed using multiples of wavelengths so that each segment is seamless to
the next. Really nice effect, but VERY RAM hungry.
– Joe
This I will have to play with more. I want to start experimenting with
global pictures and using 2-D morphs from Image Professional. It is too bad
it takes so long to test out some of these effects.
I sadly agree. There are many, many ideas I would like to try out, but the
realities of rendering times (even on a 33 MHz '030 machine) dictate that
many, many of them get left by the wayside. I remember after first getting
Imagine V0.9 I needed to figure out just how the disturbed texture worked
and how each parameter affected the results. The manual was no help, and
dear old Mike H. at Impulse said "just experiment, then you'll understand."
Yes, many hours and dozens of traces later I understood exactly what a
half-page of clear instructions would have revealed. The Imagine universe
is so vast that I am grateful for the efforts of those like Steve Worley
who are sharing their hard-won knowledge so that the rest of us can save
some precious time and put the power to work for us.
Good luck with your explorings. Let us know what you find.
– Joe
Margaret,
oops — I guess I had my threads crossed. You were the one complaining
about F/X and grounds, while someone else had problems with dot size. Hmmm.
Now I'm more confused than ever.
Blaq!
It's all interrelated.
FX DO work on the Ground I've gotten Rippling Water using the Ground
Primitive ya simply need 2 copies of the ground with different FX settings
and Morph and Voila'
Maybe I'm a little dense here but you say two copies of the ground with
diff FX settings? So you are applying a texture to ground #1 and then the
same texture to ground #2 and then morphing…. or are you using FX
settings in the Action editor?
using FX in action Editor and morphing or ya can use Textures with 2
different Settings 1 for each model version and morph to attain nice
rippling water
Margaret –
I don't know about grounds, but I have had great success applying the waves
texture (Imagine 2.0) to a plane primitive. You just have to make sure
that the boundaries of the plane are outside your field of view. The
result was truly spectacular, but incredibly memory hungry (12 MB of RAM
for a 120 frame HAM sequence).
– Joe
Well one thing the Imagine 2.0 manual has that Worley's book does not is a
ballpark estimate of ram hogginess. Apparently "wave" eats your memory.
Unfortunately neither manual talks about FX memory requirements unless I
missed it. I'll try both wave and the ripple FX and see if I have enough
ram to do it. 12megs eh?
I don't have a feeling for how much RAM the wave texture eats while
actually rendering. The reason for the finished animation taking 12 MB is
mostly a function of the large number of pixels (almost all of them)
changing from frame to frame, so that Delta compression is essentially
worthless.
– Joe
What size rendering were you working with?
Margaret –
As I recall, rendering was HAM overscan at 352 X 440 using Imagine. The
problem is simply that when looking at rippling water, particularly if the
lighting and reflections are significant (full ray trace), then the odds
are that a very high percentage of pixels is going to change from frame to
frame. Presto, delta compression is highly ineffective (and can even result
in delta files LARGER than the IFF frame files themselves) and the anim
becomes huge. I should point out that in the stuff I rendered, the rippling
water was framed so as to completely fill the screen (looking sorta down
into it). If, on the other hand, your scene had water in only a portion of
it, and something else like sky in the rest, then the size of the anim will
be reduced accordingly. Still, in general I would say it's a rather
expensive effect in terms of RAM consumption, but it's really a nice one,
too.
– Joe
I've pretty much given up on full ray traces unless the scene really
warrants it. You can get a lot of interesting pictures without it. I did do
one that I really like, a 320X400 that is in Amigaarts called Finnies.jpg <
I think I jpegged it. Anyway the trace created reflections that I never
would have expected and I have to look at it a long time to figure out what
it really is reflecting. As I recall it "cooked" all day.
I agree – I dread the effect of tracing on rendering time. And for some
applications it is indeed overkill. But for some of the stuff I'm working
on, the full impact of the anim just won't come across without it. I am
however interested in experimenting with reflection mapping. I've never
tried it, but from what I understand it just might convincingly fake it in
some cases. So little time to experiment…but here's a case where a
little experimentation might reap great dividends in reducing rendering
times.
– Joe \exit