#Crisp VS Mushy
19 messages in this thread
Dear Bob – the story command does somewhat cover 'tweening, although not as
easily as I would like 🙂 However, thank you for bringing it up, since I
just started using story to extrude stuff, IT WORKS GREAT ! I can draw the
outline of a cornice line for a wall, draw a path which defines the outer
perimeter of a building, and attach the cornice outline to the path,
extrude by story, and Voila !, instant building facade ! I saw this done at
school on a DEC running Gand then came home and gave it a whirl on my lowly
AMIGA, great fun.Now, if only I could punch in some doors and
windows….(rev. 4, please ?) Kevin
Impulse assures me they're working on this feature and whole lot more for 4.0
due early next year (I hope).–Rick
Kevin, I recently got a program called Digiworks 3D (by Access
Technologies) that creates 3d shapes from IFF images, and imports directly
to Silver or Sculpt. With it, you can create your walls with windows and
doors, and then extrude them with Story, if you don't extrude them in the
Digiworks program. It's a really fine utility for use with Silver; sort of
like creating 3D Silver stencils. I've been sort of on an extruding frenzy
at work, where I use Silver for logos and commercials, since getting the
Digiworks. Don
Don, if you have TurboSV, you can turn the grid function on, draw your
walls, etc. in line mode and extrude the whole thing with the mold command.
–Rick (Don't you wish Digiworks had a zoom function?) 🙂
Rick, Yep…a zoom function, a different color for points that are only
connected to one edge, and more accuracy on the initial drawing. In fact,
the ideal combination might be Digiworks and Interfont Designer tools (I
know…different companies; it'll never happen). But, till something better
comes along, it's one heck of a utility for Silver.
Agreed.
Rick, By the way, let me put my two cents in on the "crisp vs mushy"
controversy that started this thread. Silver may tend to look softer in
part because: 1) Silver defaults to smooth. Sculpt defaults to facets.
2) Silver defaults to anti-aliasing on. Sculpt defaults to it off. 3)
Sculpt pictures are often looked at first in paint or sketch modes, which
have no anti-aliasing or softening of the picture. Silver's "lowest end"
mode (solid modeling) has antialiasing and smoothing. As you can see, much
of the situation can be reversed by changing the settings.
Don, it goes beyond that. It really is the way that Sculpt interprets
lights. In Silver, you have a lot (almost too much) flexibility with lamps
or suns, shaded or bright, etc. All Sculpt lights are exactly the same
intensity and all cast shadows. If you look at most Sculpt images, the
lighting is very harsh and the specular spots very intense. Silver's
renderer is much softer (how's that for a non-technical description?
YUCK!). –Rick
That's precisely why I bought TS instead. I don't LIKE Sculpt's
output. Strange freckles between hard edges. Blechh.
Actually Rick, Sculpt lights are NOT all the same intensity. One can have
different values for light (and colors too) just like Silver. Sculpt will
NOT, however, let you set the 'sun` vs. `lamp' parameter, if that is what
you mean. This feature is invaluable in the great lighting one can tweak
out of Silver. One can get nice lighting effects out of Sculpt, but the
difficulty (as well as rendering time) are costly.
How do you set the intensity of a Sculpt light? –Rick
Rick, first you set the lamp. Then choose EDIT MODIFY LAMPS. You get a
requestor that lets you choose intensity, color, or blending. You can set
all lamps at once, or just the indicated lamp. As you mentioned, however,
Silver lets you set the brightness 'fall-off' by specifying 'sun' or
'lamp'… can't do that with Sculpt. –jp–
Thanks, jp. I've primarily used Sculpt for its text input feature. Then I
render in hi-res, so lighting isn't critical either. The other nice thing
about the lights in Silver is that you can select whether or not they will
cast shadows, which can significantly slow down trace times.
re you comment that Silver lights can cast shawdows… what do you mean?
Are you refering to the SOLID MODEL mode? (which doesn't cast shawdows), or
is there a way in full trace to turn shadows off? (Sculpt SCANLINE render
will not cast shadows or do reflections, and is pretty darn fast too..)
–jp–
In a full trace, if a lamp is set to bright, it will not cast shadows. If
you set the same lamp to shaded, it will cast shadows and rendering time
will be lengthened somewhat. Ditto for suns. Solid model doesn't take
either setting into account. –Rick
Dear Don – Thanks for the suggestion ! In fact I do have Digiworks, and
agree that what you describe is indeed possible, I have used this method on
occasion – However, I still can't get adept enough at using the Silver
editor to put the walls together cleanly and accurately, not to mention
roofs, floors, etc. Actually, Caligari looks to have potential for
architectural use, IF the rumored "radiosity" feature is added. Architects
have more use for 'radiosity' type renderings than raytracing, I believe.
Kevin, Mike Halvorson from Impulse told me that they considered adding true
radiosity to Silver and figured that renderings would take more than a week
on most machines. Caligari doesn't offer smooth shading in any of its
modules (consumer or pro). There is a new ($3495) version called Broadcast
Renderer which requires the Targa 16, 24 or 32 and a bridgeboard. This
might be the version you've heard about, but I doubt it will have
radiosity. –Rick
Dear Rick- Thanks for the info on radiosity ( and thanks, Mike H ! ) I
don't want to wait weeks for a rendering, if I did, I would still be using
*another* raytracing product 😉 As for Caligari, I assume the radiosity
feature is a RSN item. back to radiosity-although the inital calculations
would take longer, I think once your scene is rendered, you are able to
move around your eye position about the scene, i.e. a rendered building,
without having to recalculate the light beams, where as ray tracing depends
on the viewers position to calculate the light coming from a light source,
off an object, and back to the viewer. I know this is not a very tech
explanation,but the point is that for some things, radiosity may in the end
be *faster* than raytracing, esp. for animation,walkthrus, etc. Any REAL
techies please correct my simplistic ramblings 🙂 Kevin
Adding to the above reply, I should clarify that, if you extrude an object
with a window, the window will extrude, too. However, you can then delete
the points that form the window extrusion. The main thing is, it makes
creating odd-shaped object or objects with holes in them very easy.