#Essence & 2.9 Ya Hoo!
6 messages in this thread
I realize that I will get flamed for saying this, but the
Essence textures are just not that fast. They will slow down
renderings considerably, take them off and give the render a try, see
what happens when you replace them with 2.9 textures, if you are up
to that level.
A GRAVE misconseption is that more point and more faces slows
rendering times down, this is not true. They take up more ram, but a
object with well distributed triangles will render faster than a more
simple one with shall we say a bulky look to it.
If you have the ram, dont worry about the render time it will
be faster possibly, especially when you render them in the Stage or
Project editor and you set the world size to 0,0,0 in the size bar of
the globals actor, do this add size thing in frame one only.
Edge level does not do much of anything in Scanline, you are
right about that.
Many people dont understand what an octree is and that is what
governs Imagine. The more the triangles live in a egual system the
faster the rendering goes. The only concern you should have is if
you have enough ram to establish this octree when you load these
objects. Of couse you can always go out and buy a Cray 2 for a few
mill and then this whole thing is just a joke, if you buy one let me
know cause I want to work on it for a while
>> Many people dont understand what an octree is and that is what governs
Imagine. The more the triangles live in a egual system the faster the
rendering goes. The only concern you should have is if you have enough ram to
establish this octree when you load these objects.<<
This is interesting, as I've always wondered about octrees. What do
you mean by the phrase "the more triangles live in a equal
system…"? Does this refer to object construction?
Mike,
I'm not about to flame you for uttering blasphemous words about Essence. I know
it's a tad slow, but I love it nonetheless. My main concern with the 2.9
textures is the interim documentation, which doesn't compare with Essence's
clear, illustrated manuals. I'm sure that will change with the release of
Imagine 3.0. In addition, I've spent a long time daydreaming about Essence
textures, their parameters, and the meaning of life <g>, so I naturally tend to
gravitate towards Essence rather than those 50 lovely new textures in 2.9. Maybe
one day I'll set up 50 versions of a basic object, each one using a 2.9
texture, and set the ole 'puter rendering to laserdisc for a couple of days.
(Hmmm… what a wonderful idea for Rick to include on his new tapes: a video
catalogue of all Imagine textures!)
Mucho thanks for your comments on rendering speed. I tend to be overly cautious
in my computer work, compared to my guerilla friends who try anything, and
often fall flat on their face. We all learn, but using our own individual
styles. Can you tell me what an "object with well-distributed triangles" is?
For example, an Enterprise with cylinders for warp nacelles, having points only
at each end of the cylinder? Would that constitute a poor triangle
distribution, all these big, long triangles, compared to the many small faces
making up (presumably) the saucer? (Assuming the saucer top/bottom had a
graceful curvature, therefore requiring more than one "ring" of triangles to
flesh out their surface from center to perimeter)
Thanks again for the informative message.
Blaq!
Hi Blaq,
>> Maybe one day I'll set up 50 versions of a basic object, each one
>> using a 2.9 texture,
I did this with simple spheres. I placed 12 spheres in one image and rendered
it. It gives a good overview of the textures, but since you can alter the look
of a texture a lot with the parameters it's only a clue.
I wish is was possible to render a small example right in the texture requester
or some other kind of visual feedback.
-David
Mike,
Is it still time for a suggestion? If not, you can consider it for the next
maintenance upgrade.
I'll bet this has happened to every single Imagine user: you create a
finely-crafted group. You put in a lot of time and effort. After rendering, you
realize something is wrong, so you bring the group into the Detail editor. You
select the offending object, make the necessary changes, then save the group
back. You merrily click on "Overwrite existing file? – OK" and go to Stage or
Project to re-render your test frame.
When the image appears, the blood drains from your face. The intricate group
has been replaced by… A SINGLE OBJECT, the one you just modified. You dope.
You overwrote the group while you were still in Pick Objects mode. You just
lost tons of work.
This happens to every Imagine neophyte, and even occasionally to Imagine
experts who might be working too fast, too late at night. Here's an improved
scenario: when the user selects a filename to save, if the file already exists
on disk, Imagine puts up the "Overwrite existing file?" alert. If the user
clicks on "OK", Imagine could read the file and determine whether it's a single
object or a group. My suggestion is: if the disk file is a group, and the user
is saving a single object, Imagine could put up a second alert, saying
something like "You are about to replace a _group_ (on disk) with a single
_object_. (OK/Cancel)" This would be quite easy to code, and would avoid an
irritating situation faced by most users.
Blaq!
Blaq,
good idea with the group/single object alert. But please both
"Yes/No-requesters" should be optional. IMHO the worst PITA on a computer is
that he/she (is a coputer male or female?<g>) always asks "are you sure you
want to do what you just told me to do?". Fortunately the overwriting requester
can be disabled and that's what I did.
But as I said, good idea to check for group/single object first.
-David