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BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

cubicle gangster posted:

Learn this from memory, and develop a photographic memory for all the images: (start at the plugins section...)
http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/

I'm not even joking, either.

Goddamnit I want VRay for Maya. MentalRay is such an utter clusterfuck of a program.

And I'm sorry but everything in Maya/mentalray is labeled so retardedly. It's like they have nobody working on UI workflow/funtionality.

"What's 'maximum irradial tangental magnitude functional awareness' do?"

"Controls the brightness."

"Why not just loving call it 'brightness' then?"

It's like it's artificially made harder just so you can have "specialists."

There's no reason for the labeling to be that obtuse.

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cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea
Why dont you get vray for maya?

It's in the public beta, and has been for a while.
Standalone vray is floating around in testing now too - although only the exporter for blender is about, and it's very young.

I cant wait till the standalone becomes final and on the same level as the max version. It's meant to be a hell of a lot more efficient for network rendering, especially when switching jobs.

edit: Started, may as well cover it all. Interactive vray is coming along pretty well now too - it's still got a while to go, but builds are being updated nightly and theres some serious progress going on now. It's already pretty quick and far more robust than it was.

cubicle gangster fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Oct 8, 2008

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

cubicle gangster posted:

Why dont you get vray for maya?

It's in the public beta, and has been for a while.
Standalone vray is floating around in testing now too - although only the exporter for blender is about, and it's very young.

I cant wait till the standalone becomes final and on the same level as the max version. It's meant to be a hell of a lot more efficient for network rendering, especially when switching jobs.

edit: Started, may as well cover it all. Interactive vray is coming along pretty well now too - it's still got a while to go, but builds are being updated nightly and theres some serious progress going on now. It's already pretty quick and far more robust than it was.

How stable is the Beta? I had heard about it, but thought it wasn't worth it yet. Plus we just finished a big show last week so changing renderers wasn't an option until now.

sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

Last Vray for Maya I heard of was for Maya 7. Is there a free beta compatible with Maya 2008?

I don't hate Mental Ray as much as the rest of you and I find Vray to be more difficult to use. On the other hand I don't work in production environments . . .

Boz0r
Sep 7, 2006
The Rocketship in action.
I'm trying to get started on ZBrush and I'm looking for a good/cheap digitizer pen in the 100-150$ range. Any recommendations?

Elentor
Dec 14, 2004

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
After half a year without properly touching 3D I decided to model a landscape :)



I need tips for the terrain. I'm gonna be adding rocks/props/doodads around, but any tips on how to improve the shader? I want it to look more "dusty", am I bound to use particles/post-effects?

Also tips for the color scheme would be appreciated.

I'm using 3DS Max 2009 with Mental Ray.

Kirby
Dec 2, 2005

Low Altitude Flyer
okay this is going to sound really convoluted and silly but here it goes.

I've got a shot where a character is looking at himself into a mirror.
but due to the cameraangle/staging/animation, it's not really ideal to have him actually standing and facing absolutely dead on into the mirror.

so what i need is to have something that is facing front on to the character that will output the image i need to fake the reflection.

So to do this in maya, im guessing I need to do some rig where I either hava another piece of geo that is reflecting and output that into the 'actual' mirror, or something like a camera projection where the camera is projecting a render of it's self.

has anyone done anything similar :shobon:

if none of the above makes sense, I guess the closest example to this i can think of is as if, say in real life, you have a camera that is on and recording while outputting onto a tv. I need to do that.

Kirby fucked around with this message at 05:50 on Oct 10, 2008

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

Kirby posted:

okay this is going to sound really convoluted and silly but here it goes.

I've got a shot where a character is looking at himself into a mirror.
but due to the cameraangle/staging/animation, it's not really ideal to have him actually standing and facing absolutely dead on into the mirror.

so what i need is to have something that is facing front on to the character that will output the image i need to fake the reflection.

So to do this in maya, im guessing I need to do some rig where I either hava another piece of geo that is reflecting and output that into the 'actual' mirror, or something like a camera projection where the camera is projecting a render of it's self.

has anyone done anything similar :shobon:

if none of the above makes sense, I guess the closest example to this i can think of is as if, say in real life, you have a camera that is on and recording while outputting onto a tv. I need to do that.

Angle of Incidence?

Synthbuttrange
May 6, 2007

Well holy crap.

Take a look at this:
http://vimeo.com/1669862

Sketching out models.

BonoMan
Feb 20, 2002

Jade Ear Joe

SynthOrange posted:

Well holy crap.

Take a look at this:
http://vimeo.com/1669862

Sketching out models.

Eh. Demos like that are always kind of "well that's cool as poo poo!" but rarely translate into anything useful (usually you try to use it yourself and lo and behold it's ten times clunkier than you were led to believe!). It is pretty sweet in a sketchup kinda way and I liked a lot of the UI methods (scribbling things away and that cool stuff), but ultimately I don't think it's useful for any detailed work.

DefMech
Sep 16, 2002
I think it'd fit in really well with something like Moment Of Inspiration. However, I'm skeptical of if or when it will ever see the light of day. There have been a bunch of really awesome demos shown this year and I hate getting all excited over them when there are no concrete plans to make them public.

DefMech fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Oct 13, 2008

Kirby
Dec 2, 2005

Low Altitude Flyer
I think it would only sit well with things like car and industrial design, if at all. they would still probably rather just a pad and pencils.

Pumaman
Dec 2, 2006

Are you an onion?

Kirby posted:

I think it would only sit well with things like car and industrial design, if at all. they would still probably rather just a pad and pencils.

That's the truth. I like the symmetry this offers, but it will never replace hand rendering, and you just can't achieve tight detail on tablet like you can with a good, sharp pencil.

EoinCannon
Aug 29, 2008

Grimey Drawer
Hey folks, I've been lurking this forum for a while and thought I'd post.
It's been slow at work so I've decided to start doing speed models to get better at human anatomy and sculpting in general.
This is my really dodgy likeness of Dave Letterman done in 2 hours on a slow day. I just used one photo to see how I went from limited reference. Max for the base meshes and Zbrush for all the sculpting. Couldn't be bothered rendering it so this is straight outta zbrush.

EoinCannon fucked around with this message at 13:01 on Oct 14, 2008

Alan Smithee
Jan 4, 2005


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

Enthusiasms, enthusiasms...

EoinCannon posted:

Hey folks, I've been lurking this forum for a while and thought I'd post.
It's been slow at work so I've decided to start doing speed models to get better at human anatomy and sculpting in general.
This is my really dodgy likeness of Dave Letterman done in 2 hours on a slow day. I just used one photo to see how I went from limited reference. Max for the base meshes and Zbrush for all the sculpting. Couldn't be bothered rendering it so this is straight outta zbrush.



nicely done, but from my non-technically proficient mind, the forehead is a bit exaggerated, not sure if that's what you're going for...

wasabimilkshake
Aug 21, 2007

North Carolina votes yes.
I'm taking a class that includes a Maya project, and being accustomed only to Max, I'm having to go back and forth a lot between the two. I can't stand polygon modeling in Maya, and I don't know how to UV map in Maya, so I've been doing those things in Max and importing each asset as an OBJ file into my Maya scene. It's worked just fine so far on the technical side, but I've just imported my first UV mapped/textured prop and I'm having some display issues in Maya.

It's not a very glamorous model, but this is what it looks like in both:


To reiterate, I modeled and unwrapped it in Max, and the texture worked fine. After exporting it as an OBJ (default settings, quads) and bringing it into Maya, the geometry, normals, and UVs seem to be preserved. But when I create a new material with my texture map and apply it to the object, it starts looking all wonky as you can see above.

I know next to nothing about materials in Maya, so it could be some mundane detail related to that. I hate to pollute the thread with my noobish Max->Maya transition questions, but if anybody knows how to fix this problem I'd appreciate the advice.

edit: I saved the texture again without transparency and that solved the transparency issues. A few of the faces were still showing up half-black and the normals were set the right way, so I think it's just a weird geometry issue resulting from exporting and importing OBJ multiple times. I think I'll try using FBX from now on.

wasabimilkshake fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Oct 15, 2008

Big K of Justice
Nov 27, 2005

Anyone seen my ball joints?

wasabimilkshake posted:


I know next to nothing about materials in Maya, so it could be some mundane detail related to that. I hate to pollute the thread with my noobish Max->Maya transition questions, but if anybody knows how to fix this problem I'd appreciate the advice.

This happens with obj, some software packages will invert surface normals and vertex normals and you have this happening.

Happens all the time with obj/obn formats porting between max/maya/houdini/etc.

Some packages don't support vertex normals as well which adds to the confusion [ie you end up with black non shaded models in some rendering software]

Basically you can invert the vertex normals in maya [I forget how, it's been 5 years since I used Maya extensively] and the problem will go away.

Saw A Dog Die
Feb 11, 2008

I read through the previous thread and this one. Are there any riggers out there? I'm in school and about to start on a rigging demo reel, I haven't heard from many people who have rigged in any kind of production (other than the odd internet interview from the big guys like Schleifer).

Big K of Justice
Nov 27, 2005

Anyone seen my ball joints?
I rigged on a bunch of live action and animated features.

If you want to make a rigging reel, I'd rig a few realistic things, an animal and a decent human.

I say realistic because I see a ton of cartoon characters on demo reels with very complex rigs that don't really show why the rigged needed to be so complex and slow.

Rigging itself is fairly straight foreward. We have ours scripted out to preset skeletons and limbs/body parts with mounting points. It's the deformations that take a while. Thats what we look for on demo reels is complex deformation and how you handle volume preservation/ fat jiggle/ folds, etc.

It's hard to do that when you are rigging a cartoon pencil character, but it's easier to demonstrate when you are rigging a cat or a horse.

The majority of riggers at large studios are hired to do hair and cloth simulation as well as deformation cleanup. Not creating the actual hero rigs per se.

Heintje
Nov 10, 2004

I sing a song for you
Did this little set recently. Pretty boring job but playing around with the lights was kinda fun.

Click here for the full 1400x700 image.

KiddieGrinder
Nov 15, 2005

HELP ME

Heintje posted:

Did this little set recently. Pretty boring job but playing around with the lights was kinda fun.

Click here for the full 1400x700 image.


Are lens flares back in? :devil:

Heintje
Nov 10, 2004

I sing a song for you
For clients like these, gently caress yes. They love em.

Haledjian
May 29, 2008

YOU CAN'T MOVE WITH ME IN THIS DIGITAL SPACE
Little B-52 model I did for a forum, under a 3000 poly/1024^2 limit.

Odddzy
Oct 10, 2007
Once shot a man in Reno.
Certainly not as low poly as it could've been but oh well, I just made a train for an assignment in my 3D animation program. (26 000 polys, the teacher asked us to make the train between 15000 and 30000 polys without any turbosmoothing, my train clocks at something around 18 000 without any turbosmooth)

critiques, advice and commentary given in a constructive manner is greatly welcome ( I know the wagons look in no way as polished as the train though)!

what uses could this model have in any industry?

pistolshit
May 15, 2004

Where is the cab?

Odddzy
Oct 10, 2007
Once shot a man in Reno.
yeah, I actually didn't think about the cab, it wasn't asked for the assignment though (make a train and two copies of a wagon) but I do realise that it's missing now.

Pumaman
Dec 2, 2006

Are you an onion?
I've been looking at packaging design companies lately and I decided to tool around with a clamshell design for a mouse. Pretty basic mouse (replaceable top panel so you can customize a color scheme, probably exists in many forms), but the plastic packaging introduced me to a new world of modeling that I never gave much thought to before. Here's how it looks so far.







I dunno if it's because of the refraction or what, but this kind of material takes AGES to render, even on low indirect illumination.

AntiPseudonym
Apr 1, 2007
I EAT BABIES

:dukedog:
Okay, I've got a weird problem in 3DS Max 2008 on Vista.

For some reason, sometimes when I go around selecting subobjects in an editable poly, the viewport doesn't update correctly. As in, I'll select a vertex/edge/face, and the viewport will update for a split second and then go back to what it rendered previously. If I pan around the viewport it'll update correctly, but it can be really confusing (Not to mention infuriating) sometimes.

Using the D3D9 viewport renderer, running on a 9800GT. has anyone else come across this?

Handiklap
Aug 14, 2004

Mmmm no.

AntiPseudonym posted:

Okay, I've got a weird problem in 3DS Max 2008 on Vista.

For some reason, sometimes when I go around selecting subobjects in an editable poly, the viewport doesn't update correctly. As in, I'll select a vertex/edge/face, and the viewport will update for a split second and then go back to what it rendered previously. If I pan around the viewport it'll update correctly, but it can be really confusing (Not to mention infuriating) sometimes.

Using the D3D9 viewport renderer, running on a 9800GT. has anyone else come across this?

I get this same thing, though I haven't found a fix yet. Really loving annoying in subobject mode.

sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

Recently there was an article in the LA times about the explosion of video game art curriculum.

There is a lot of opportunity for teachers in this field. I know my school is hiring and I am sure many others are as well.

Here is another link you guys might find interesting about generating facial animation through motion tracking:

http://www.mova.com/

Sorry if this had been posted before but I didn't see it. Really cool stuff.

Hopefully both this and the "Ilovesketch" ( http://www.ilovesketch.com/ )
link posted from earlier will be developed more. They both look VERY promising.

EDIT:

Resigned from my position today to go back to just teaching next term. Management just saps your time and creativity away. Anxious to actually get back to producing stuff and not stressing about things like schedules and faculty reviews etc.

sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 01:12 on Oct 22, 2008

ceebee
Feb 12, 2004

sigma 6 posted:

Recently there was an article in the LA times about the explosion of video game art curriculum.[/url]

There is a lot of opportunity for teachers in this field. I know my school is hiring and I am sure many others are as well.

Great, that's all I need is lovely art teachers spitting out lovely art students and flooding employers desk space with piles of poo poo reels/portfolios.

change my name
Aug 27, 2007

Legends die but anime is forever.

RIP The Lost Otakus.

Just doodling, probably gonna texture when it's done though because I finally "get" texturing in zbrush now.



sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

Akaikami posted:

Great, that's all I need is lovely art teachers spitting out lovely art students and flooding employers desk space with piles of poo poo reels/portfolios.

I didn't necessarily say it was a good thing for the industry. It's an inevitable consequence of the amount of money videogames make and the viability of it as a career option.

sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 04:28 on Oct 22, 2008

Steelcore-01
Aug 4, 2008

by angerbotSD
With a program like Silo, will 3D modeling become popular among hobbyists? I am seriously considering purchasing Silo (or Modo) and want to jump into 3D modeling and texturing. (not sure about rigging and animation)

cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea

Steelcore-01 posted:

With a program like Silo, will 3D modeling become popular among hobbyists? I am seriously considering purchasing Silo (or Modo) and want to jump into 3D modeling and texturing. (not sure about rigging and animation)

I know that modo is very popular with hobby artists already, so it's nothing new to get one just to piss around in.

You do need to be prepared to put in some serious hours to learn when first starting out if you're doing it in your spare time though. Once you know the tools you can take your time a bit more, but i'd reccomend 2/3 hours a night at least 3/4 nights a week until you feel comfortable. (maybe a month with good tutorials, which modo apparently has)

I'm sure silo is similar, I just know nothing about it so used modo in my examples.

sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

I don't know if there is a free version of Modo but one of the nice things about Silo and Wings3d is that they are both free. Silo is free for 30 days and Wings3d is freeware.

These packages will get you started with modeling. For anything more you might want to consider jumping right into Max or Maya. There is a PLE version of Maya and there used to be a free version of Max . . .

Correction. Gmax no longer exists but there is a trial version of Max available.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmax

Personally I wouldn't mess around with Modo because I think the learning curve is just steep enough that you might want to jump into Max or Maya or XSI instead.

However, I only played around with very early versions of Modo and it may have gotten a lot easier to use.

I completely agree with Cubicle Gangster about spending several hours a night playing around in 3d. Also Modo does excel at subD modeling, selection sets and UV unwrapping from what I understand.

Boz0r posted:

I'm trying to get started on ZBrush and I'm looking for a good/cheap digitizer pen in the 100-150$ range. Any recommendations?

Never buy anything other than Wacom for this stuff. I suggest the intuos line as they have the most levels of sensitivity.

sigma 6 fucked around with this message at 20:06 on Oct 23, 2008

cubicle gangster
Jun 26, 2005

magda, make the tea

sigma 6 posted:

For anything more you might want to consider jumping right into Max or Maya. There is a PLE version of Maya and there used to be a free version of Max . . .

As a hobbyist though? Modo has a steep learning curve, but once youre in, youre sorted. I'd only reccomend learning max/maya/xsi if you plan to get a job in it.

Modo, you can know within a few weeks/months, as with silo/etc.
5 years down the line, you still find stuff in the big three you never knew before, and as a hobbyist it just makes the software feel scatty.
edit: Yeah. Even if it takes longer to save up for or you have to go second hand, just get a wacom. They are industry standard for a very good reason.

SGT. Squeaks
Jun 18, 2003

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


http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=12022457&siteID=123112

This can't possibly be a good thing.

tuna
Jul 17, 2003

SGT. Squeaks posted:

NooOoooooooOOOOOO!!!!!


http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=12022457&siteID=123112

This can't possibly be a good thing.

This came out of nowhere, holy gently caress. Also pretty depressing news for me to wake up to. God dammit, Autodesk is a black hole, where software inevitably ends up to live in an overpriced shadow of their former glory, assimilated into a coherent mindfuck of viewcubes and a lack of innovation and support.

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sigma 6
Nov 27, 2004

the mirror would do well to reflect further

SGT. Squeaks posted:

NooOoooooooOOOOOO!!!!!


http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?id=12022457&siteID=123112

This can't possibly be a good thing.

Awww hell. That just ruined my day.

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