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ceebee
Feb 12, 2004
For Tablet PC's you want to stick to Fujitsu, Toshiba, and occasionally HP. http://www.tabletpcreview.com is a good site to check up on news and product reviews.

I like my Toshiba M700.

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The Monarch
Jul 8, 2006

That mudbox preview was dope as hell, especially when he was editing while in the pretty graphics mode.

Battle Bott
May 6, 2007

I've been trying to render pixelart in 3ds max, and I have yet to come across settings that I like.

Here is a very rough Eiffel tower that I made:
(Default Scanline)


I'm trying to get the pixel art look. So far I'm using ink and paint materials, an orthographic camera, at the psuedo isometric angle that pixel art uses.
To remove the antialiasing, I used mental ray, 1 sample per pixel, and a 1x1 box filter.


Doesn't exactly turn out as well as I'd hope.
I tried to add some outlines, but the ink does not do a very good job even with width 1 and quality 3. Shrinking the lines helps, but not much.


Anyone know of a good way to get a clean pixel art effect?

NINbuntu 64
Feb 11, 2007

Ah, poo poo, I should install max again and see if I can dig up my old Ink n' Paint materials. I had one for tjust that sort of thing.

Sock Puppet
May 21, 2001
Nap Ghost
You can do a couple of things to get it looking a bit more like pixel art:
In your Customize>Preferences>Rendering tab, check the option for 'Don't antialias against background' and that will give you a clean outside edge, if thats what you're after, while still antialiasing the inner parts of the tower.

Or, in your general render settings, turn off antialiasing completely and see how that looks. The angle you are rendering from is quite important to ensure the lines are nice and even and step nicely without breaks. You could do some quick tests just rendering a box or something in a User viewport to get the angle right.

In the image you posted with the outlines, instead of using black as the outline colour, try using a similar but darker colour to the beige. You could also change the settings for the outlines to be just outline - turn off the other ones. This will give you fewer lines and stop them looking blurred together when you have a small section with outlines on every edge.


You could always pixel-push it using your model as a base image :)

Battle Bott
May 6, 2007

I'm trying to go for completely aliased, but I have not found an option for that in mental ray. I did find it in the scanline renderer.


Also, mostly unrelated but still vaguely 3d question.

HOW DO YOU MAKE AN ANIMATED TRANSPARENT OPTIMIZED GIF?!?
(In GIMP)

I have been trying to do this for too long. Hours and hours.
I made a simple clackers animation, reduced it to 3 colors + background, and rendered as a 125x125 gif. Trying to make an avatar. Thus I need to get it under 30k.

My problem is that if I have a transparent section, the previous frame just shows through, and I end up with this:

35.7k
(Ignore the shadow, in newer versions it has been removed. Without it I believe the image would be small enough)

I can fix this using the (replace) option, but that removes any optimization.
Here it is unoptimized with (replace)

51.7k
and here it is optimized with (replace):

10.1k
I have even made a custom python optimization program!
Here is all the image data I need to make this animation. Red means no change, green means make those pixels transparent, and other colors mean make it those colors.
What bothers me the most is that the below image is 11.3k, and has enough information to render it correctly, but the smallest I can make it is 50.1k.

13.5k
Gifs work by overlaying new data on the old, but how can you overlay transparency? Is it even possible?

Sorry for all of the images :(

Sock Puppet
May 21, 2001
Nap Ghost


I don't know GIMP im afraid but I managed to get your gif to 28.2k - there are a lot of frames and the only way to get it under 30k was by making it greyscale. Luckily its grey anyway, so no probs :)

Related bitch:
I used to use Imageready a fair bit and although I found it a pain to use sometimes, it got the job done and had the features required for this kind of stuff. I upgraded to CS3 a few months ago and haven't used it to do gif work (I vaguely heard that Imageready had been folded into PS so I didn't give it much thought).

After browsing a bit trying to work on your gif, I found someone bitching and it turns out that Adobe's official solution is to use Fireworks.
It turns out that they have in fact folded parts of the funcionality into PS but the other parts of it are now in Fireworks. I don't even remember seeing Fireworks let alone using it.

Battle Bott
May 6, 2007

Sock Puppet posted:



I don't know GIMP im afraid but I managed to get your gif to 28.2k - there are a lot of frames and the only way to get it under 30k was by making it greyscale. Luckily its grey anyway, so no probs :)

Related bitch:
I used to use Imageready a fair bit and although I found it a pain to use sometimes, it got the job done and had the features required for this kind of stuff. I upgraded to CS3 a few months ago and haven't used it to do gif work (I vaguely heard that Imageready had been folded into PS so I didn't give it much thought).

After browsing a bit trying to work on your gif, I found someone bitching and it turns out that Adobe's official solution is to use Fireworks.
It turns out that they have in fact folded parts of the funcionality into PS but the other parts of it are now in Fireworks. I don't even remember seeing Fireworks let alone using it.

Could you go through how you made this? Or point me to a tutorial? I'm wondering if it is missing features in the GIMP, or just a process I don't know.

Laser Cow
Feb 22, 2006

Just like real cows!

Only with lasers.
Anybody here have any experience with 3D connexion mice and Max? I have the space explorer one at work for solidworks and love it but they didn't use to support Max or Maya and now apparently they do. Worth the purchase for just Max though?

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

z

Synthbuttrange fucked around with this message at 13:17 on Jan 16, 2017

Battle Bott
May 6, 2007

SynthOrange posted:

http://www.vimeo.com/1513129

This makes me want to jump for joy and also kill myself over how much time I've lost to rotoscope masking.

I want to know how much longer until it is available.

Also, will they sell this to Adobe or something, and we won't see it unless we buy Adobe After Effects Super Pro for $2999.99? Or will it be like that liquid rescale, where they release a terrible (but free) GIMP plugin?

Handiklap
Aug 14, 2004

Mmmm no.

SynthOrange posted:

http://www.vimeo.com/1513129

This makes me want to jump for joy and also kill myself over how much time I've lost to rotoscope masking.

Holy poo poo @ the image stabilization. It was...flawless. It seriously made Joe Cameraman's footage look like it came off a boom setup. Fuuuuck.

DefMech
Sep 16, 2002

Mickey Eye posted:

Anybody here have any experience with 3D connexion mice and Max? I have the space explorer one at work for solidworks and love it but they didn't use to support Max or Maya and now apparently they do. Worth the purchase for just Max though?

If you use it in Solidworks and really love it, you'll probably love it in Max. I got one as a doorprize a while back and use it occasionally. It's helpful for some things, but overall I'm pretty indifferent about it.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

Battle Bott posted:

I want to know how much longer until it is available.

Also, will they sell this to Adobe or something, and we won't see it unless we buy Adobe After Effects Super Pro for $2999.99? Or will it be like that liquid rescale, where they release a terrible (but free) GIMP plugin?

Honestly....it'll probably never see the light of day. I hate to be a Debby Downer, but I'm assuming that video came out of SIGGRAPH and holy gently caress I have seen way way way too many awesome industry changing demos only for them to completely disappear and never be heard from again.

This is usually because the idea is sound but implementation rarely is. Or relies on very specific parameters like very little motion...no fast motion...no blurring. Things like that. Or that it takes 14 days to apply the effect to one video or something. You know..things that aren't immediately noticeable in the demo video.

You never know, but I wouldn't get my hopes up :(.

Sagacity
May 2, 2003
Hopefully my epitaph will be funnier than my custom title.
According to the site, the research code takes 5 minutes to render a single 800x600 frame, so it's not particularly realtime :) Also, I agree with BonoMan that these things always work nicely for demos, but for 'real life' footage it'll still need gobsmackingly large amounts of manual tweaking.

Not to say that the algorithms can't be useful though, but I think there are plenty of companies (Foundry, 2d3) working on systems that are available and useful *now*, and they are doubtlessly also looking at these papers and trying to figure out how to apply the novel ideas to their existing products.

Alternatively, they might be having money-fights, I'm not sure.

DefMech
Sep 16, 2002
Just got a test 3D print done for a big house we're finishing up. The image quality isn't too great thanks to being shot on a phone, but you can still make out the detail pretty well. Compared to the render, you can get a good idea of the resolution that's possible at this scale on the Z Corp printers(that's a quarter there, for reference). We could have probably gotten smoother columns and retained some of the small window detail if we went with an FDM print, but the cost was way too high for the client. It's going to be awesome to see the final print of the entire home.


Click here for the full 1067x800 image.


Rendering that the print is based on:

Click here for the full 1000x533 image.

International Log
Apr 3, 2007

Fluent in five foreign tongues!
Grimey Drawer
Here's an animation i made for work, the GI isn't baked, so hence the flickering. Also the window still materials are crap, but good ones are being made now. Interior is yet to be designed..
http://www.vimeo.com/1557118

Sock Puppet
May 21, 2001
Nap Ghost

Battle Bott posted:

Could you go through how you made this? Or point me to a tutorial? I'm wondering if it is missing features in the GIMP, or just a process I don't know.

There's not much of a process. The stuff you mentioned trying in GIMP like disposal method used to be available in Imageready but in CS3 all you get now is 'Optimize animation' which does redundant pixel removal and cropping.

After opening your gif, I just went to the Save for web and devices dialogue and tried different settings for dithering and so on. Almost all the options still saved at around 51k as you found - dithering generally increased it. After I chose greyscale for the colour palette, it crunched down to the version I posted. It could be made quite a lot smaller by messing with the 'Lossy' setting but that basically destroys the image.

One thing you could maybe experiment with is Paint Shop Pro. I expect they still have a trial with their current version and it will probably have a gif animator you could try out. There are also a few programs out there that just compile gifs:

http://www.gamani.com/ - GIF Movie Gear! I haven't used this since 2000 or so, but it looks to work in the same way I remember.

Hinchu
Mar 4, 2004

Please keep a watchful eye out for hinchus. They are very slow and dumb, and make for easy roadkill.


I used some 3d CG for our next event logo. I think it's rather fun. The pumpkin and the fish are both 3d objects, while the rest are all 2d. The text and bubbles were done in Illustrator.

Steelcore-01
Aug 4, 2008

by angerbotSD
Hi, I am a 2D artist and 3D is kinda afterthought for me. I usually design stuff with pen and marker and paint them on Painter.

I am not saying that I will make any career move in 3DCG, but I am kinda interested in 'casual' 3D stuff. I design tons of robots and sci-fi props and sometimes I want to make them in 3D. Actually, I gave up 3D ten years ago after struggling with buggy version of MAX and Softimage with really lovely modeling functions. I was really discouraged from studying any 3D stuff.

But I want to learn MAX and Modo because I want to model my own designs, just for fun. I'll be starting my internship next spring and I'll relocate to Downtown LA. If I get an internship in Burbank, I can attend Glendale Community College at nights and on weekends. They have introductory MAX class on Saturday.

Is it really an OK idea to study MAX as a hobby? I am concentrating on digital painting and sculpting is not my thing. (I got an A for a figure sculpture class at a community college, though.)

And...How do I rig articulated machines like robots? I heard about the basic concept of rigging organic creatures but what about robots with joints? Is the principle same?

Hinchu
Mar 4, 2004

Please keep a watchful eye out for hinchus. They are very slow and dumb, and make for easy roadkill.
I think casual 3d is fine, but just realize that full blown amazingly nice CG images take a lot of time and knowledge to do something really nice. For day to day design stuff for me I find the 3d CG stuff occasionally helpful and fun to do stuff. Just like with the pumpkin above it was easy to just throw together, light the way I wanted, and have a fun image at the end.

Robots are probably easier than a lot of things to model because it tends to be fairly mechanical and can translate well from 2d renderings. All you have to do is model the shapes, make sure they are bevelled and fit together properly. Then you just throw on some ambient occlusion, some kind of metal shader, and your 75% to a nice image.

As far as rigging robots it's the same process as doing organic rigs, you just don't have any bends in the geometry of the model. In the end you are setting up a mechanical skeleton for an organic figure.

So in the end I would say yes you can have fun and add another dimension to your work but be forewarned that you can get sucked into projects that eat up all of your time if you let them.

Battle Bott
May 6, 2007

Right now I'm just doing max as a hobby.

Rigging mechanical things is great as long as you know your IK (Inverse Kinematics) solvers.

I really enjoy making mechanical things that work on their own once I animate something. Spin the gear, the water pump pumps, the gears grind, the windmill turns etc. I don't like approximating the motion with keyframes, though sometimes it is a lot easier.

spottedfeces
Aug 7, 2004

War is Hell

IHeartBoobs posted:

Let me try to do a screen capture.

edit: I'll get this uploaded later tonight

edit 2: here you go: http://www.mayzis.com/furtutoriallq.mov

That is supremely helpful, thank you!

spottedfeces
Aug 7, 2004

War is Hell


Some objects appear to have outlines, and I have no idea why. I'm assuming it's because of the passes and the black hole matte is somehow marginally larger than the objects, but I don't know why that would happen or how to fix it.

SGT. Squeaks
Jun 18, 2003

Two men enter, one man leaves. That is the way of the hobotorium!


I was laying in bed the other night and had a dream of a submarine out in the middle of the desert. It was pretty surreal, I don't think there is a good reason for a submarine to be out in the desert.

Been awhile since I've done some 3d stuff. This was an excercise to get back in the flow.

spottedfeces
Aug 7, 2004

War is Hell
Another shot:

bring back old gbs
Feb 28, 2007

by LITERALLY AN ADMIN

spottedfeces posted:

Another shot:

Graveyard render

THe last two images you've posted are great, 100% improvement over previous renders.

What are the trees in the background if you don't mind telling. Transparent images on a 2d plane, or are they CG trees?


I've improved on my car match moving, I now own a shiny white Nissan 350z

http://vimeo.com/1472198

spottedfeces
Aug 7, 2004

War is Hell

ACanofPepsi posted:

What are the trees in the background if you don't mind telling. Transparent images on a 2d plane, or are they CG trees?

Transparent images on a 2D plane. Though I'm using two planes, one behind the other, to try to give a little bit of depth.

SGT. Squeaks
Jun 18, 2003

Two men enter, one man leaves. That is the way of the hobotorium!
Spend a bit more time on my Desert Submarine scene. I consider it done, or else I'll end up tweaking it to death and never finishing it, like pretty much every thing else I've worked on.



And here is the progress shots. I rendered out whatever I had done at the end of the night. Took me about eight nights total work.
http://www.uncharteddepths.com/Progress_Shot.jpg

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...
can anyone recommend good tutorials on rigging car/vehicle models in Maya (or any industry standard package)? Gnomon doesn't have any dvds on that subject and the closest Digital Tutors has is rigging "toon" cars

cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea

Alan Smithee posted:

can anyone recommend good tutorials on rigging car/vehicle models in Maya (or any industry standard package)? Gnomon doesn't have any dvds on that subject and the closest Digital Tutors has is rigging "toon" cars

http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads/character_rigs/Spline-Based-Car-Rig-4884.html

You could always rip this apart.

edit: New techniques in camera tracking. The camera projection/photoshop layering technique is so loving tedious, but i've finally learnt how to 'photoshop out' certain objects from moving video! :D

Suprised how well this tracked too, the footage is incredibly high quality and it's turned out solid as a rock.
Before and after, frame 700:


Started work on my showreel again, think i've got enough animation done so that i can be happy with the quality of everything. Might use this as my opening shot.

cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Aug 27, 2008

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

cubicle gangster posted:

Max has a modifier called 'material by element'. It randomises every material in your multi-sub over the elements within your edit poly object. You can also set weightings, so some are more likley to show up than others.

The colour correct script comes in handy here - if you have that under each of your bitmaps you can easily adjust the hue/saturation slightly on each copy of the material.


Also, seeing as i've not posted in a few weeks/months - here's a little job I had on from last week.
Story is I went on holiday for a few weeks, then moved into a new place (still dont have the net at home), and since then (and for a long time now, probably until october) i'm doing work on something I cant show anyone.

I know someone picked on the left side of the image but that's my favorite part. The extreme left, both the wall and the floor just look great to me. Extreme light angles typically emphasize imperfections in that kind of floor and you handled it just perfectly.

For me the best parts of these architectural renderings are in the corners, in the shaded areas where the image really sells you on the realism. If I saw a crop of just that part of the image, without the wide angle distortion I might not be able to tell it's a render.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

Dick Trauma posted:

I know someone picked on the left side of the image but that's my favorite part. The extreme left, both the wall and the floor just look great to me. Extreme light angles typically emphasize imperfections in that kind of floor and you handled it just perfectly.

For me the best parts of these architectural renderings are in the corners, in the shaded areas where the image really sells you on the realism. If I saw a crop of just that part of the image, without the wide angle distortion I might not be able to tell it's a render.

You're right that extreme light angles bring out imperfections, which are always a nice detail, but the reason I picked on the left side wasn't because there were imperfections brought out, but rather because the imperfections that I'm seeing aren't what I would say are typical to that type of floor (at least in my experience).

You ever have something sticky spill on a floor and then get cleaned up but still leave a slight sticky residue? And then as a week passes people walk all over it and slowly build up track dirt that sticks to just the sticky parts and ends up forming a slightly more matte finish on those areas? That's what I'm seeing as opposed to a normal wear and tear effect on that type of floor.

But that's strictly just in my experience and I'm sure he did his research.

some kinda jackal
Feb 25, 2003

 
 

spottedfeces posted:



The left light-post looks like it's just sitting on a flat plane, so it looks a little odd. Maybe if the terrain had some more definition? The one on the right is partially obscured by the rocks so it doesn't give off the same out-of-place vibe.

But more to the point, I love the mood you've created :cool:

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


A man becomes preeminent, he's expected to have enthusiasms.

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

ACanofPepsi posted:

I am new to 3D Studio Max, and have only really focused on rendering because my primary interest is adding CG to live action. I downloaded the car models from a site I found. If anybody is interested I'll look for the link.

I'd be interested in seeing what links you've used, I'm trying to get into 3D for the same reasons and would love to see how you learned your pipeline

chellesandcheese
Jul 12, 2005

I haven't posted in here in forever, but how many of you guys are animators or have enough knowledge to crit animation? I'm trying to revamp my demo reel with some of the stuff I'm doing at Animation Mentor, but I could use another set of eyes on some of my older stuff to see what to keep. I need to get a job in LA soon. :(

DefMech
Sep 16, 2002

cubicle gangster posted:


edit: New techniques in camera tracking. The camera projection/photoshop layering technique is so loving tedious, but i've finally learnt how to 'photoshop out' certain objects from moving video! :D

Suprised how well this tracked too, the footage is incredibly high quality and it's turned out solid as a rock.
Before and after, frame 700:

In this scene, could you have just rotoscoped the cranes out instead of all that camera mapping sorcery or was that not an option?

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

chellesandcheese posted:

I haven't posted in here in forever, but how many of you guys are animators or have enough knowledge to crit animation? I'm trying to revamp my demo reel with some of the stuff I'm doing at Animation Mentor, but I could use another set of eyes on some of my older stuff to see what to keep. I need to get a job in LA soon. :(

Just post your drat showreel so we can rip it to shreds! :argh:

chellesandcheese
Jul 12, 2005

SynthOrange posted:

Just post your drat showreel so we can rip it to shreds! :argh:

I haven't added any of my animation mentor stuff yet, but you can see my old one online. Sorry, I was just trying to get a feel for how much feedback I could get. :)

https://www.chellescreations.net

I already know my walk and run cycles need to go. I've got newer ones that I can put in there. I'm just not sure which stuff from my old job to keep. They're all playblasts right now, I'm working on getting the final rendered versions from the company.

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cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea

BonoMan posted:

But that's strictly just in my experience and I'm sure he did his research.

Haha. Nope. I just played around with the specular till it looked all dramatic n' poo poo.
You are right about it being unrealistic, but it flattens that side of the image without it... Showed the client both options and they picked that one.

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