The 3DCG Thread: Revenge of the NURBS

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The 3DCG Thread: Revenge of the NURBS

«‹›482 »

EoinCannon: Aug 29, 2008; Grimey Drawer

Ratmann posted:

Can't teach yourself?

I'd have to agree, sometimes a part time job and studying at home is the only option you have. It worked for me.

# ? Dec 22, 2009 02:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 14, 2024 11:54

tuna: Jul 17, 2003

cubicle gangster posted:

This is excellent, i'd love to see more of your tests

You also reminded me how badly I deluded myself into thinking I knew particles.

Thanks man, I really don't know much about particles here but after seeing a few examples and messing with a few systems it can be easy to get good results for your own personal needs.

Here's a small step I did today for raycasting snow and frost collection on the suit. The good thing about using raycasting in ICE instead of baking a texture, is that I can get realtime feedback and use the generated weightmap to not only drive texture mixing, but also generate particles for effects. It's also nice and easy to keep consistent between shots, which is a problem I've been trying to think around.

I basically raycast from any sort of geometry, here I've just used a grid, its nice because it can cast "shadows" as if the snow is blowing from a certain angle:

I then generate a weightmap on each object from these raycasted points:

This weightmap is used to mix frost texture onto the suit here, turned low on left and high on right:

And I then emit particles on the suit (well, a matched suit mesh, driven by ICE as well) based off the weightmap, to get rid of the uniform dots per vertex the raycasting was giving:

Next step will be to get those emitted particles simulated to fall off for effects like if he shakes his arm, snow flies off. This is simple but there's a lot of cleanup and organizing to do first

I'm looking forward to getting all of these individual tests and systems all compiled into one animated scene for my first full shot test, but that's maybe a few weeks off yet.

# ? Dec 22, 2009 08:59

Moist von Lipwig: Oct 28, 2006; by FactsAreUseless; Tortured By Flan

Just came here to say that I find all of the work you guys do, especially Eoin, to be really inspiring. I'm trying to break into Modelling myself, even though it isn't necessary in my field (Graphic Design).

Also, I just switched from Blender to Blender x64 and it's one of the first times I've seen a 64 bit program that actually significantly outperforms and is more stable than it's 32 bit version. Is 3DS Max like that as well?

# ? Dec 23, 2009 03:14

Vaerai Archon: Jan 4, 2007; by Y Kant Ozma Post

Trying some stuff with cell shading

I think the face came out reasonably well, gonna be doing the rest of the body parts eventualy.

Vaerai Archon fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Dec 23, 2009

# ? Dec 23, 2009 03:31

tuna: Jul 17, 2003

Moist von Lipwig posted:

Also, I just switched from Blender to Blender x64 and it's one of the first times I've seen a 64 bit program that actually significantly outperforms and is more stable than it's 32 bit version. Is 3DS Max like that as well?

Most 3d apps are pretty much the same when it comes to 32/64bit speeds, but some (such as Cinema4D) saw big speed increases when going to 64bit because they could strip out a whole load of legacy junk for older CPUs.

# ? Dec 23, 2009 03:50

ceebee: Feb 12, 2004

Last time I used Max the 64bit version was a bit more unstable than the 32bit version.

# ? Dec 23, 2009 04:03

EoinCannon: Aug 29, 2008; Grimey Drawer

I haven't noticed any stability issues with max 64, but going back to max 32 feels really slow to me. Heavy scenes definitely work faster in max64, also rendering with large maps is way more stable.

# ? Dec 23, 2009 04:26

cubicle gangster: Jun 26, 2005; magda, make the tea

Going from 32bit to 64bit max made a huge difference because I spend a lot of time working on massive 8mil+ landscapes and architectural work.

I remember some of the issues we had before the upgrade, got to a point where some scenes would only open after a restart and closing every single process that wasnt needed. Open the scene once, and thats it until you do it all again.

Crashes less when rendering and speeds up renders with vray proxies 10 fold.

# ? Dec 23, 2009 14:37

John Blaster: Aug 2, 2006; I can't fall asleep without thinking about killing people.

Hey guys. So I've got an object in my scene here in maya which has a transparency map on it. It's a piece of cloth and the transparency map adds tattered edges. When I render my ambient occlusion pass, the transparency obviously does not work. I tried creating a new ambient occlusion shader with that alpha transparency plugged into it and applied that only to that particular object - nothing happened. Anyone have any ideas for what I could try next?

# ? Dec 24, 2009 02:24

Alterian: Jan 28, 2003

ceebee posted:

Last time I used Max the 64bit version was a bit more unstable than the 32bit version.

I'm using the 64 bit version of Max 9 on one of my work computers and it always crashes and gives me an error log message when I close it. :doh:

I wouldn't be able to use the 32 bit version for the stuff I'm working on. I'm hoping we upgrade to 2009 or 2010 soon.

# ? Dec 24, 2009 04:48

cubicle gangster: Jun 26, 2005; magda, make the tea

I dont know how long we've been waiting to upgrade.

A guy who works here who's been here a while doesnt like change. He's quite vocal about it, and keeps coming up with reasons for us not to upgrade.

We've got boxed copies of 2009 & 2010, had plenty of time 2 months ago (even shut the farm down for 2 weeks because had no work) and it's still not been done.

Really loving me off now, theres a few bugs I keep hitting which the new vray fixes. Plus I want the new features and modeling tools.

# ? Dec 24, 2009 11:39

ceebee: Feb 12, 2004

The graphite bar :suicide:

# ? Dec 24, 2009 12:30

tuna: Jul 17, 2003

We upgraded XSI a few months ago (on ME2) from 6.5 to 2010 in one fell swoop, it went well and the benefits were fantastic for us animators, fixing bugs and improving performance dramatically. However I think we also tested Max 2010 and stuck with 2009 because Max 2010 is pretty terrible.

Cubicle, you should speak up about it if it's having a detrimental effect on day to day work, IE bugs and performance. Nothing your boss wants to hear less than that he's spent money on upgrades not being used because some pillock is forcing everyone to work worse for whatever personal agenda he has going on.

# ? Dec 24, 2009 12:30

cubicle gangster: Jun 26, 2005; magda, make the tea

It's not really detrimental though, with how used to using workarounds we are it's just 'oh, thatd be nice'. He's well aware anyway - i'm fairly vocal about how we shouldve done it long ago. Another reason he doesnt want to do it is because of rpc's, you have to pay a ridiculous amount for them in the new versions of max.

We've not used rpc's for 2 years.

I dont know! The boss and partner #1 is afraid of things breaking, being unfixable and needing a full 1 week long rollback or something, so upgrades need to be done in absolutley perfect conditions. Then we do it in a few hours and have fuckall work to do for the rest of the day.
Partner #2 & 3 are on my side.

# ? Dec 24, 2009 17:00

sigma 6: Nov 27, 2004; the mirror would do well to reflect further

John Blaster posted:

Hey guys. So I've got an object in my scene here in maya which has a transparency map on it. It's a piece of cloth and the transparency map adds tattered edges. When I render my ambient occlusion pass, the transparency obviously does not work. I tried creating a new ambient occlusion shader with that alpha transparency plugged into it and applied that only to that particular object - nothing happened. Anyone have any ideas for what I could try next?

The AO is technically a texture, not a shader. At least you plug it in like a texture. What are you plugging the AO into? I had some alpha transparency problems which were fixed by using a blinn shader in the past.

I prefer Max 09 to 2010. However it is more because of the crappy interface "upgrade" with 2010. Truthfully, I haven't had much time to explore the new graphite / polygon boost tools. Feels like 2010 runs slower, but that could be just because our dept. refuses to upgrade to a 64bit OS. They got burned too bad by vista to want to upgrade to windows 7 it seems.

Can anyone tell me WHY DID ZBRUSH DO AWAY WITH THE ZMAPPER PLUGIN IN ZBRUSH?!? Sorry for the caps but it has caused a lot of hell since the upgrade to 3.5. All of the normal maps exported out of zbrush now have wacky problems in max. This used to be fixed by using the max export preset in zmapper. Any ideas?

Also, anybody know a good idiot proof guide to setting up network rendering with Max 2010? Our IT dept is total hell to deal with and I would prefer to set up as much of it on our side as possible.

Tuna: Really cool stuff!

sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Dec 24, 2009

# ? Dec 24, 2009 17:36

John Blaster: Aug 2, 2006; I can't fall asleep without thinking about killing people.

sigma 6 posted:

The AO is technically a texture, not a shader. At least you plug it in like a texture. What are you plugging the AO into? I had some alpha transparency problems which were fixed by using a blinn shader in the past.

Well it's a surface shader with AO plugged in as the color. I added a transparency to the surface shader. So when that didn't work I tried both lambert and blinn with AO plugged into the color and the transparency plugged into the transparency inputs and that didn't work either. It made the object almost black (however, it was correctly transparent, but the actual occlusion shadow was still that of the original object.

# ? Dec 24, 2009 23:28

cubicle gangster: Jun 26, 2005; magda, make the tea

sigma 6 posted:

Also, anybody know a good idiot proof guide to setting up network rendering with Max 2010? Our IT dept is total hell to deal with and I would prefer to set up as much of it on our side as possible.

Are you coming from never having network rendered before? Do you want to use backburner, or something more stable?

Backburner is piss to set up (hint: it's already set up, you just dont know it) but it's shakey as gently caress. Small-med scale (30-50 machines) it's fine though, give me a pm next week when i'm back in and i'll see what I can dig out to get them to stop whining.

# ? Dec 25, 2009 03:24

Flex Mentallo: Mar 14, 2001; BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Travakian posted:

A few pages ago I asked about (in Maya/MEL) using a locator to manipulate y-positions to 'dip' things; I got that sorted, but I'm looking at the next stage of what I want to do and I really can't get it sussed.

How to best do the rotation depends so much on exactly how the locator moves. There isn't really enough info here to help you find the best solution.

In general if you want to keep script separate but call it from an expression you can make a procedure like so

code:

global proc myDumbProc()
{
  print ("Frame: "+`currentTime -q`+"\n");
}

Then in the expression just enter myDumbProc;

Another way is to use a script node, its basically a node with some script in it thats saved within the scene file and you can have it execute automatically at various times.
Go into the expression editor and "select filter" - "script node name".
Here you could enter a new node name and the script code and tell it to run every time time is changed.

I think having a script thats run on every frame and setting new keyframes seems like kind of a hassle to deal with, but i modified your script to do what you wanted, i think. Just create a new script node and paste it in.

code:

vector $pushPos = `xform -q -t "MAIN_LOCATOR"`;
string $object;
string $objectList[] = `listRelatives -children -type transform "moveGroup"`;
int $frame = `currentTime -q`;
float $range2 = 10;

for($object in $objectList)
{
	if ( $pushPos.z >= (getAttr ($object+".translateZ")) && (getAttr($object+"_dd.distance") <= $range2) && (size(`keyframe -q $object`)==0))
	{
		setKeyframe -time $frame -v 0 -at rotateZ $object;
		setKeyframe -time ($frame+20) -v 90 -at rotateZ $object;
	}
}

note that i just assumed you used my other distance-node+driven key example to deal with the pushing of cubes. So it just checks with the distance-nodes created by that script ("objectName"+"_dd"), if you used some other method to calculate the distance you will have to do/access that from this script too and check vs $range2 instead.

The size(keyframe) part is there to check that no other keys are set for the objects you want to rotate, in your code example it would have kept trying to set new 0/90 keys for every frame that stuff was in range etc (which is why i think it might be a bad idea to have a script creating new keys during playback). If you also have other keyframes on the cubes you need to do some more advanced check to make this work.

Flex Mentallo fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Dec 25, 2009

# ? Dec 25, 2009 03:25

sigma 6: Nov 27, 2004; the mirror would do well to reflect further

John Blaster posted:

Well it's a surface shader with AO plugged in as the color. I added a transparency to the surface shader. So when that didn't work I tried both lambert and blinn with AO plugged into the color and the transparency plugged into the transparency inputs and that didn't work either. It made the object almost black (however, it was correctly transparent, but the actual occlusion shadow was still that of the original object.

I can't seem to get the transparency to work with AO in the surface shader either. Seems to work fine with a blinn shader however.

cubicle gangster: I have never set up network rendering before. It would only be for 2-3 classrooms (12-20 computers each). I will PM you next week. Thanks!

# ? Dec 25, 2009 05:11

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

Looks like Eoin got himself onto the top row of the ZB forums. Good stuff.

# ? Dec 29, 2009 03:43

Alan Smithee: Jan 4, 2005; A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

SynthOrange posted:

Looks like Eoin got himself onto the top row of the ZB forums. Good stuff.

He's on the cover of a CGArena magazine too http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/ezine/jan10_issue.html

# ? Dec 29, 2009 07:07

tuna: Jul 17, 2003

Congrats, Eoin. Even if it does mean bearded Blender users emailing you to help them on their fantastic game projects that simply need one more modeler before they can earn millions on Steam.

That's the price of fame I'm afraid.

[e] Since I don't really respond much to this thread as much as I jerk off about my own stuff:

I really congratulate all of you regular posters, improving and keeping up with constant works and helping others. Especially as most of you hold regular jobs both in and out of the industry. It takes a lot of effort to do this sort of thing outside of work, and that's what I'm really congratulating you on.

I know as time goes on in people's careers, you find you don't have as much time or desire to put in the effort as you settle down with life. However, to those who do, I really feel like you're putting in such a great effort, you distinguish yourself from those who simply do this 9 to 5 and walk away with a "shared pat on the back" on behalf of their company. They don't know what they're missing.

tuna fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Dec 29, 2009

# ? Dec 29, 2009 14:40

EoinCannon: Aug 29, 2008; Grimey Drawer

tuna posted:

Congrats, Eoin. Even if it does mean bearded Blender users emailing you to help them on their fantastic game projects that simply need one more modeler before they can earn millions on Steam.

Have you been reading my emails?

Thanks SynthOrange and Alan Smithee for pimping my massive internet CG fame :P
I find I get more useful feedback from this thread usually, so thank you thread.

Tuna is right, putting in the extra hours is where it's at (for me anyway). It's personally rewarding making art that you want to make and for some of us it's the only way to learn and get better. Can't recommend it enough.

# ? Dec 29, 2009 22:25

mashed: Jul 27, 2004

Just wait until you get the emails and phonecalls at 4am from guys in India with both dubious job opportunities and pleas for you to be their personal 3D mentor...

My wife freaked the gently caress out when that happened. And I didn't ever get plugged on CGtalk, Zbrush central etc. The school I went to posted my student reel on youtube :argh:

# ? Dec 29, 2009 23:41

sigma 6: Nov 27, 2004; the mirror would do well to reflect further

I just had someone randomly email me, asking me to use his portfolio site to host my work. Really weird. He emailed me first complimenting me on my website, then asked me to "test" his portfolio site by uploading some of my work. Seems pretty shady to me. Could be a legitimate service though.

Generally, I have my students use blogspot.com or carbonmade.com but there is also digication.com.

The site I was invited to test out is http://www.bleidu.com/
Looks legit, but I am always suspicious of random invitations like that.

Thank god I don't get random calls from India like the ones described.

tuna: You are absolutely right and I share your views. It is pretty tough to work on your own work after spending all day in front of computer. We do it because we love to do it.

mashed_penguin: Which school, if I may ask?

Again, anybody know about the fate of Zmapper? Will it be back?

sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 00:48 on Dec 30, 2009

# ? Dec 30, 2009 00:27

mashed: Jul 27, 2004

sigma 6 posted:

mashed_penguin: Which school, if I may ask?

Vancouver Film School. They post a few reels from each class in their youtube channel. I don't have a problem with youtube persay. The inane stupidity of youtube commenters dosen't help though.

It was more that my grad reel cut has my sappy girlfriend thanking credits etc as well as my full contact details with phone number etc. It wasn't really intended for public consumption. The version I put on my website only had an email address.

I have put my cellphone number back on my web reel in the last year but only beacuse that is easy to screen.

# ? Dec 30, 2009 01:46

Odddzy: Oct 10, 2007; Once shot a man in Reno.

My girlfriend got added on MSN after posting a project she did, the dude works somewhere in Beijing and another guy added me in his favorites in my youtube link of the character I did.

I still don't know what to think about that (by the way, I know the quality is kinda bad (it's compression issues! I swear!) but I really didn't get any comments and I was wondering if it is good or not...)

# ? Dec 30, 2009 04:08

Synthbuttrange: May 6, 2007

This is the stuff of nightmares.

http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/

# ? Dec 30, 2009 06:17

sigma 6: Nov 27, 2004; the mirror would do well to reflect further

SynthOrange posted:

This is the stuff of nightmares.

http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/

This is great.

quote:

Client: Can you un-blur the background on this photo?

Me: Unblur?

Client: Yeah, I want the whole image to be super sharp. I don�t particularly care for that whole deep field thing you keep telling me about.

Me: You mean depth of field?

Client: Yeah, whatever. Just unblur it.

Me: That�s impossible.

Client: I�ve seen it done on CSI.

Just great. :xd:

mashed_penguin: At least VFS is a good school. I am actually subscribed to their youtube feed. I often wonder if having your real email / phone number is a good idea to have on your reel. Perhaps have a separate email for job related stuff. Problem with that, is that you often want to know right away if it is a legitimate offer.

sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Dec 30, 2009

# ? Dec 30, 2009 07:32

Jewel: May 2, 2009

SynthOrange posted:

This is the stuff of nightmares.

http://clientsfromhell.tumblr.com/

How dare you make me waste hours of my day :argh:

# ? Dec 30, 2009 09:37

John Blaster: Aug 2, 2006; I can't fall asleep without thinking about killing people.

why the gently caress is my maya crashing during every single render in this scene? It's running out of memory absolutely every time. I've tried changing the memory limits, lowering render settings to bare minimum, doesn't matter. The lovely thing is that it's rendering pretty drat fast, too until it shits the bed.

Click here for the full 1680x1050 image.

I've tried googling those errors and haven't found much of a solution.

# ? Dec 30, 2009 18:28

tuna: Jul 17, 2003

Try stripping materials out and deleting certain objects to narrow down the problem area. That screenshot tells us nothing about the scene or your memory at all so it's a bit hard for us to just guess.

# ? Dec 30, 2009 21:22

mashed: Jul 27, 2004

sigma 6 posted:

mashed_penguin: At least VFS is a good school. I am actually subscribed to their youtube feed. I often wonder if having your real email / phone number is a good idea to have on your reel. Perhaps have a separate email for job related stuff. Problem with that, is that you often want to know right away if it is a legitimate offer.

I think part of the problem is the youtube audience. When you have your reel hosted on your own portfolio site you probably get more legitimate interest.

Youtube is much more the domain of the crazies. Also youtube comments are soul destroying things. I do love getting told what I should go back and fix or "keep it up and you might get a job one day". This on my 3+ year old student reel.

I have no real problem with VFS having put it up. I could have gotten them to change the version up there but its just not that big a deal. I actually teach a class there part time now, which is great, other than having to watch people with no clue and too much of their parents money wasting it all away.

# ? Dec 30, 2009 21:37

le capitan: Dec 29, 2006; When the boat goes down, I'll be driving

EoinCannon: Beautiful tortoise; very inspiring.

Simple pillar I made to practice going from concept to final low-poly. Going to rework the spec and bump a little. It's too rough everywhere and I want more of a worn down look around the corners and the insets. Pretty happy with it though. Texturing is fun and it's also nice to have something near finish.

112 tri's

Click here for the full 805x625 image.

# ? Dec 30, 2009 22:34

ceebee: Feb 12, 2004

le capitan posted:

EoinCannon: Beautiful tortoise; very inspiring.

Simple pillar I made to practice going from concept to final low-poly. Going to rework the spec and bump a little. It's too rough everywhere and I want more of a worn down look around the corners and the insets. Pretty happy with it though. Texturing is fun and it's also nice to have something near finish.

112 tri's

Click here for the full 805x625 image.

That's pretty cool, what engine are you looking to use it in? The only problem I see right now is the silhouette is too boring, you should add 5-10 polys for imperfections around the corners as that will probably be where it starts degrading.

# ? Dec 31, 2009 00:44

EoinCannon: Aug 29, 2008; Grimey Drawer

le capitan posted:

EoinCannon: Beautiful tortoise; very inspiring.

Simple pillar I made to practice going from concept to final low-poly. Going to rework the spec and bump a little. It's too rough everywhere and I want more of a worn down look around the corners and the insets. Pretty happy with it though. Texturing is fun and it's also nice to have something near finish.

112 tri's

Click here for the full 805x625 image.

Looks nice man
In addition to what ceebee said I would mess up the shapes you have used for the carvings so it looks like they were chiselled out and then maybe have degraded and become chipped. Also some more irregular grunge collected in the carvings would look cool.

# ? Dec 31, 2009 01:45