MikeB

I've been running VWA10/RW thru the paces for a couple days now. Here's some things I'd really like to see in the future. 1. The ability to set a background image is great, could we expand this to be a background environment that would wrap 360 degrees around the viewer so the environment would show up in the reflections of the model. I usually fake this with some billboard behind the viewer, but you have to be careful with these because they can interfer with the lighting, particularly directional lights. 2.More shader options, including the ability to make an object into a lightsouce. (to make realistic flourescent tubes) 3. Perimeter mapping for nurbs 4. Cameras with OIP editable attributes. 5. Radiosity, I know its slow, but for interior renderings it hard to beat. 6. Distance blurr or also known as focal blurr. The fog is OK, but to be honest the fog can be easily done in Photoshop, one diappointment is that the ground fog dosent extend below the ground plan, so in one of my VW 9 models I translated, the low spots in the site didn't get any fog. I have the say the solid modeling/NURBS tools are much more reliable and faster, so thank you NNA

You could select the lines that make up your enclosed area and use the compose tool to make them into a polygon and then hatch that. Good Luck

Well, I tried again last night and had a problem, The acr swept fine, but when I tried to convert to a nurb it took forever, when it finished there was a line for the bottom of the sweep, and then one line extending from the bottom of the sweep to the apex of the arc, it wouldn't render and then it crashed befor I could save. So something funny is going on.

Well, you know, there's always more than one way to skin a cat. If I was going to put that on a wall, I'd extract the curve form the bottom of the ellips, duplicate it 5' below the first one, loft them together, then add it all together. I've found that with VW, sometimes you have to come up with some fairly creative solutions to get your geometry. In this image the full ellipsoid dome was an arc swept, then converted to a nurb and squished into an ellips. It seemed to work fine. There must be something fundamental your doing different. [ 10-07-2002, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: MikeB ]

I'm having a hard time following what your asking for, but maybe this will work, Create an ellipsoid with the correct dimensions for the object you want to create. Then create a sphere, snapping to the center of the ellipsoid and using the widest dimension of the ellipsoid as the diameter of the sphere. convert the sphere to a nurb, then use the 2-D selection tool to snap the sides of the sphere to the shape of the ellipsoid (does that make sense?). Then switch to a side view, snap the center of the now oblong sphere nurbs object to the center of the 2-d ellipsoid and then reshape the sphere again. At this point you can spit it anyway you like and it will still render. Here's what I got, Is this close to what you want? By the way, I got my VWA/RW 10 over the weekend. Solid operations and nurbs are much faster and more reliable. Good Luck

Well, I almost let this rest but I just noticed something else In this image the reflective nurb sphere is in front of a red primitive sphere, but you can see the red through the reflective sphere. Something dosen't seem right here.

One last note, the image above was rendered with one light, The reflective material is simply the default mirror settings.

quote: Originally posted by Katie: If you could be so kind as to email the file/files you are working with where this problem exists, I'd be happy. Katie: If thats all it'll take to make you happy, you must lead a very joyous life Whats your address? Also, heres a summary image of what I've been doing. And in wire frame [ 10-03-2002, 10:58 AM: Message edited by: MikeB ]

Alright, last one, this started as the same primitive pictured above, then I subtraced an extruded rectangle from it. the result was a subtracted solid that VW converted to a nurb in the subtraction process. While there are some artifacts in the subtracted area, there is nowhere near the distortion of the primitive that was manually converted to a nurb by me in the first image. I hope all this is helpful to someone, I just find it kind of interesting

I don't think so, VW Architect 9 has a solar animator, It's the main reason I bought the architect package(that and the DTM). It will generate a quicktime movie of a single view as the sun passes overhead, its pretty cool. Probably the only way to do it in 8.5.2, would be to render the individual frames and adjust the light inbetween each frame, then use another app to compile the images into a movie. Then again if you really understood VectorScript, you could probably write your own solar animation tool. Good Luck

Was it fixed in VW 10? Thanks

Well now I'm a little confused, this is a primitive with the same texture as the image above. But I don't see the facets that I see in wire frame. What happens to a primitive when you render it?

Here's another example. this is a sweep converted to a nurb, with the default mirror settings. The Sphere is about 6' tall

quote: Originally posted by MikeB: I haven't tried a sweep converted into a nurb yet, I'll try that next. That didn't work either.

OK, I've messed with this some more today. It seems the "Artifacts" appear after I convert the sphere primitive into a nurb. What I'm after here is a perfectly smooth reflective sphere. If I render the primitive sphere with a reflective texture I can see the facets, when I render the primitive converted to a nurb with out the reflective texture I get a perfectly smooth sphere, its when I apply the reflective texture to the nurb that the artifacts appear. I haven't tried a sweep converted into a nurb yet, I'll try that next.

The objects are spheres converted to nurbs They show up under the final Renderworks, and custom renderworks with mapped shadows/transparency off.

I used the Conductor Shader Ambient - 2 Diffuse - 2 Specular - 8 Mirror - 10 Roughness - 1 Refraction Red - 0.13764 Refraction Green - 0.128079 Refraction Blue - 0.156556 Absorption Red - 3.75 Absorption Green - 4.33 Absorption Blue - 2.33 The settings aren't really specific, I just kept tweeking them until it looked right. The texture uses the Object Color which is White. There are 2 point lights. I can send you the file if you want. I've seen this with other textures too. They seem to only occur with reflective shaders. [ 10-02-2002, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: MikeB ]

I've been doing some expirments lately with material and reflections, this was done in VWA/RW 9.5.3b2 on a Mac G4 733. I was a little disappointed to see the black speckles on the Silver ball. Has any else seen this, is it a bug or me?

I don't know if anyone else noticed this but if you use the glass shader, even if you turn the transparency off in the custom RW options, you still get a transparent texture when rendering with the custom RW option, apparently the transparency option in the custom RW options is only tied to the transparency shader not the reflectivity shader. Strange but cool.

Thanks again, Did you find out anything on the Distance Blurr?

Thanks, I guess I should just order my copy and see whats there

You need to look at useing the mask transparency Here's a link http://www.nemetschek.net/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=17;t=000108 It's refering to people, but you can handle trees the same way

I'm sorry, I got it wrong, It's RPC. It stands for rich photo content. It's a plug in for lightworks that will insert photoinformation onto a polygon. As you rotate around your view the polygon also rotates to stay facing the viewer, at the same time the photo information is updated to show the correct side of the object. Archivision sells packages of people, trees, cars, and office stuff. They now even have animated people, so you can have someone walking through your scene in your animation. Its pretty cool stuff, and because it's a plug in for lightworks, there should be little or no work for NNA to impliment it. Their web site is www.archivision.com, they have lots of examples.

Bump

4. Are the "Image Props" mentioned accually RCP technology from ArchVision or is it something else?