#HIDE and UNHIDE
9 messages in this thread
To Anyone,
I have 2 questions concerning 3dsr2.
1. Is there anyway I can HIDE and UNHIDE objects while rendering a flic.
For example: If I was rendering a flic of someone driving, where there
are trees on the side passing. As the person passes the last tree and
that tree in not in the scene anymore, can you hide it automatically in
the Keyframer or somewhere else. Also can trees be UNHIDEN coming from
the distance? This way 3ds does not have to work with all those vertices
and faces for the objects that are not seen at all.
2. Is there any way to take an object and perform something to reduce the
number of vertices and faces, and at the same time, retain its general
shape, somewhat?
Any suggestions on either question is appreciated. THANKS!!!
Mike C.
Michael,
1. There is no such capability, but what I have done in the past is
stop the rendering at intervals (every 20 frames, for example) and
delete everything the camera has just passed and merge anything that
needs to be seen in the next 20 frames. Deleting will actually help
more than hiding, IMHO, because those faces/vertices/objects don't
have to be considered at all anymore. To gain the maximum benefit,
delete the faces/objects you don't need anymore, save the animation
as a temp project, quit and come back in to 3ds and then your memory
will have been cleared out and you will probably require less memory
than you did before. This technique can potentially shave many
minutes of each field/frame time in big scenes and probably will give
better results than just hiding objects since hidden objects still
take up memory, too. For more info check the 3ds installation &
performance guide re. memory usage.
2. You just need to make several copies of the object in different
detail levels and hide/unhide at the appropriate time. A low, medium,
and high version would suffice. The low version can be just an
outline with simple material, the medium a simple outline with a
texture map gleaned from "snapshots" of the final highly detailed
geometry, fully textured mapped version. A cross-fade in video post
may be necessary to smooth the transition from one to the other.
Feel free to ask any more questions.
Martin
Martin-
PMJI, just wanted to see if you got my email message.
You know, didn't miss it till I needed it.
Thanks
Carl
Carl,
yes I got the message and immediately sent the file to you. That was about 2
days ago. However, I sent it to the original ID I had for you which is:
71221,3063. Don't you use that one anymore? If it's no good anymore let me know
and I'll e-mail it again.
Martin-
Thanks for sending the timer out so fast. That other id is useable, I just
don't get on C$S with it much any more, company time, you know.
I really apprieciate the help, I'm am making a backup as soon as I get off of
here.
Thanks again
Carl
Carl,
glad to be of help.
Hi Martin, Thanks for the response. But I do not understand the second answer.
I wanted to know, if you were able to take a tree with 30,000 faces and perform
something on it to delete, say 15,000 faces, but at the same time retain its
general shape, without making one from scratch. Thanks. Mike C.
Michael,
No there is no routine, that I know of, that will do that once you
have the object in the 3d editor. That's why I gave you the
information I did. However, if you built the shape in the shaper and
lofted in the lofter then you could reduce the steps in the path and
in the shape and retain the overall shape or you could simply click
on the low, medium, or high path and shape buttons during the
lofter's object/make process. Once in the 3d editor then it's WYSIWYM
(What You See Is What You Modeled) unless you get into deleting
faces/vertices and rebuilding which is quite painstaking and not what
you had in mind, I don't think.
Martin
Hi Michael,
It's true what Martin says about there not being a routine to do what
you want, but I just had a thought that might work, depending on the
structure of the model. What if you were to select the entire
object, and do a Modify/Vertex/Weld on all the vertices? Then,
experiment to get your desired results by changing the Weld Threshold
option in the options menu. Keep changing, and welding until your
face count is low enough. By deleting vertices that are in the same
general area as others, the overall shape should be retained. Again,
I can forsee problems depending on your geometry, so, more than
likely some manual retouching will be necessary. Overall, though,
this seems to be a feasible workaround for having to do the whole
thing manually.
Aaron