Re: Weird warning
this will help. http://xsisupport.com/2011/12/21/ christian On 03.07.2013 06:10, Daniel Kim wrote: I exported model and imported it into a new scene, then the error messages no more pop up. I guess my scene file has been corrupted or something. Thanks Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Matt Lind *Sent:* Wednesday, July 03, 2013 12:25 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Weird warning Could be a number of causes, but basically the rug was pulled out from under the uvspace (texture projection) leaving it orphaned in the scene. Softimage doesn't know what to do with it, so it spits out the warning. Matt *From:*softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Daniel Kim *Sent:* Tuesday, July 02, 2013 5:22 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Weird warning Hi guys. I get weird warning from Softimage ' WARNING : 3000 - Save: [3] objects were not saved normally ' WARNING : 3000 - -- [uvspace1279] was saved, but is disconnected from the scene. (Floating object) ' WARNING : 3000 - -- [uvspace1008] was saved, but is disconnected from the scene. (Floating object) ' WARNING : 3000 - -- [uvspace1259] was saved, but is disconnected from the scene. (Floating object) I've never seen this one before. One of my team mates get this message, but have no idea where and what to check. If anyone know, please post. Thanks Daniel
Re: Weird warning
Take a look here: http://xsisupport.com/2011/12/21/warning-3000-objects-were-not-saved-normally/ On Tue, Jul 2, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Daniel Kim dani...@magicboxandapps.comwrote: I exported model and imported it into a new scene, then the error messages no more pop up. I guess my scene file has been corrupted or something. ** ** Thanks Matt ** ** *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Matt Lind *Sent:* Wednesday, July 03, 2013 12:25 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* RE: Weird warning ** ** Could be a number of causes, but basically the rug was pulled out from under the uvspace (texture projection) leaving it orphaned in the scene. Softimage doesn’t know what to do with it, so it spits out the warning. ** ** ** ** ** ** Matt ** ** ** ** ** ** *From:* softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [ mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.comsoftimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] *On Behalf Of *Daniel Kim *Sent:* Tuesday, July 02, 2013 5:22 PM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Weird warning ** ** Hi guys. ** ** I get weird warning from Softimage ** ** ' WARNING : 3000 - Save: [3] objects were not saved normally ' WARNING : 3000 - -- [uvspace1279] was saved, but is disconnected from the scene. (Floating object) ' WARNING : 3000 - -- [uvspace1008] was saved, but is disconnected from the scene. (Floating object) ' WARNING : 3000 - -- [uvspace1259] was saved, but is disconnected from the scene. (Floating object) ** ** I’ve never seen this one before. One of my team mates get this message, but have no idea where and what to check. If anyone know, please post. ** ** Thanks Daniel ** ** -- -- IMPRESSUM: PiXABLE STUDIOS GmbH Co.KG, Sitz: Dresden, Amtsgericht: Dresden, HRA 6857, Komplementärin: Lenhard Barth Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Sitz: Dresden, Amtsgericht: Dresden, HRB 26501, Geschäftsführer: Frank Lenhard, Tino Barth IMPRINT: PiXABLE STUDIOS GmbH Co.KG, Domicile: Dresden, Court of Registery: Dresden, Company Registration Number: HRA 6857, General Partner: Lenhard Barth Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Domicile: Dresden, Court of Registery: Dresden, Company Registration Number: HRB 26501, Chief Executive Officers: Frank Lenhard, Tino Barth -- Diese E-Mail enthält vertrauliche und/oder rechtlich geschützte Informationen. Wenn Sie nicht der richtige Adressat sind oder diese E-Mail irrtümlich erhalten haben, informieren Sie bitte sofort den Absender und vernichten Sie diese Mail. Das unerlaubte Kopieren sowie die unbefugte Weitergabe dieser Mail ist nicht gestattet. This e-mail may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error) please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this e-mail is strictly forbidden.
Re: White House Down
Thanks a lot for this, Mathieu! Always nice to hear when Softimage is used on such high profile titles. That prooves a lot technically, and it is good for the spirit, too... Autodesk wants to use this for advertising... Also, what you say about Fabric Engine instead of Nuke is amazing. If I may ask, which version did you use, and how many seats? Any serious trouble you ran into? So you built your own crowd system... what's the reason for not using the built-in system? Am 02.07.2013 18:19, schrieb Mathieu Leclaire: Hi guys, I just wanted to share some information on the shots we did for White House Down. First off, there's an article in fxguide that explains a bit what we did : http://www.fxguide.com/featured/action-beats-6-scenes-from-white-house-down/ And here is some more details about how we did it : We built upon our ICE based City Generator that we created for Spy Kids 4. In SK4, all the buildings where basically a bunch of instances (windows, wall, doors, etc.) put together using Softimage ICE logic to build very generic buildings. ICE was also used to create the streetscape, populate the city with props (lamp post, traffic lights, garbage cans, bus stops, etc.), distribute static trees and car traffic. Everything was instances so memory consumption was very low and render times where minimal (20-30 minutes a frame in Mental Ray at the time). The city in Spy Kids 4 was very generic and the cameras where very high up in the sky so we didn't care as much about having a lot of details and interaction on the ground level and we didn't really need specific and recognizable buildings either. The challenge in White House Down was the fact that it was Washington and we needed to recognize very specific landmarks so it needed to be a lot less generic. The action also happens very close to the ground so we needed to have a lot more detail on the ground level and there needed to be a lot of interaction with the helicopters that are passing by. So we modeled a lot more specific assets to add more variation (very specific buildings and recognizable landmarks, more props, more vegetation, more cars, etc.). We updated our building generator to allow more customizations. We updated our props and cars distribution systems. They where all still ICE based instances, but we added a lot more controls to allow our users to easily manage such complex scenes. We had a system to automate the texturing of cars and props based on rules so we could texture thousands of assets very quickly. Everything was also converted to Stand-Ins to keep our working scenes very light and leave the heavy lifting to the renderer. Which brings me to Arnold. We knew the trick to making these shots as realistic as possible would be to add as much details as we possibly could. Arnold is so good at handling a lot of geometry and we where all very impressed by how much Arnold could chew (we where managing somewhere around 500-600 million polygons at a time) but it still wasn't going to be enough, so we built a deep image compositing pipeline for this project to allowed us to add so much more detail to the shots. Every asset where built in low and high resolution. So we basically loaded whatever elements we where rendering in a layer as high resolution while the rest of the scene assets where all low resolution only to be visible through secondary rays (so to cast reflections, shadows, GI, etc.). We could then combine all the layers through deep compositing and could extract whatever layer we desired without worrying about generating the proper hold-out mattes at render time (which would have been impossible to manage at that level of detail). In one shot, we calculated that once all the layers where merged together using our deep image pipeline, it added up to just over 4.2 billion polygons... though that number is not quite exact since we always loaded all assets as lo-res in memory except for the visible elements that where being rendered in high resolution. We have a lot of low res geometry that is repeated in many layers, so the exact number is slightly lower then the 4.2 billion polygons reported, but still... we ended up managing a lot of data for that show. Render times where also very reasonable, varying from 20 minutes to 2-3 hours per frame rendered at 3K. Once we added all the layers in one shot, then it came somewhere between 10-12 hours per frame. We started out using Nuke to manipulate our deep images, but we ended up creating an in-house custom standalone application using Creation Platform from Fabric Engine to accelerate the deep image manipulations. What took hours to manage in Nuke could now be done in minutes and we could now also exploit our entire render farm to extract the desired layers when needed. Finally, the last layer of complexity came from the interaction between the helicopters and the environment. We simulated and baked
updating from 2012 to 2014 sp1
Hey guys, seriously considering updating to 2014sp1, would there be any major gotchas to look out for, bearing in mind I wouldn't be using arnold for now or exporting strands (maybe rendering them in mental ray though). Wondering about speed of ref models, any shader incompatibilities, or ice tree differences? Does melena still work ok? Links into royal render ok? Any wisdom appreciated! Matt -- www.matinai.com
Caching Geometry attributes
Hi, does anyone have experience of caching out ICE attributes on Geometry, for example, a changing scalar value, to ultimately drive a weight-map on the read mesh. I have no trouble with point clouds. could anyone confirm that it is im/possible please? Paul
[Syflex ICE] develop custom custom Syflex force?
Hey there, currently evaluating Syflex in ICE - and trying to work around a few annoying things... Is it possible to develop my own custom Syflex force? It would have to be a custom ICE node with an output of the custom type syForce. I've stumbled over the Syflex SDK for XSIhttp://www.syflex.biz/free.html - but this seems to be for the standard version of Syflex. Any ideas/experiences out there? That would be lovely... Thanks in advance, Martin -- Martin Chatterjee [ Freelance Technical Director ] [ http://www.chatterjee.de ] [ https://vimeo.com/chatterjee ]
Re: Caching Geometry attributes
yes its possible, I do it all the time. remember to aggressively store the attribute value with an attribute display before caching otherwise 9 times out of 10 it will not be stored otherwise On 3 July 2013 11:30, p...@bustykelp.com wrote: Hi, does anyone have experience of caching out ICE attributes on Geometry, for example, a changing scalar value, to ultimately drive a weight-map on the read mesh. I have no trouble with point clouds. could anyone confirm that it is im/possible please? Paul
Re: Caching Geometry attributes
Ah. Thanks that works
Named parameters on a long command
Hello, I have a custom command with 10+ parameters and each of these parameters has a name and a default value. Right now I'm forced to use something like MyCommand(cube, 1, 20, , , , , , , true); This approach, however is very cumbersome and error-prone. I was wondering if there is a way to call the command by setting the parameters by name and not by their order. Basically, I would like to be able to do something like this: MyCommand( objName = cube, type = 1, someOtherThing = 20, yetAnotherThing = true); Is it possible to do this in Softimage? Thanks, Mihail
Re: Named parameters on a long command
You can set default values in command definition(plugin registration). But you cannot specify argument name and value when you are calling the command. On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 7:43 AM, Mihail Djurev mihail.dju...@chaosgroup.comwrote: Hello, I have a custom command with 10+ parameters and each of these parameters has a name and a default value. Right now I'm forced to use something like MyCommand(cube, 1, 20, , , , , , , true); This approach, however is very cumbersome and error-prone. I was wondering if there is a way to call the command by setting the parameters by name and not by their order. Basically, I would like to be able to do something like this: MyCommand( objName = cube, type = 1, someOtherThing = 20, yetAnotherThing = true); Is it possible to do this in Softimage? Thanks, Mihail --
Re: Named parameters on a long command
Could you wrap the command in a python function? def myFunction(arg1=Default, arg2=1, arg3=True, arg4=String): xsi.myCommand(arg1,arg2,arg3,arg4) myFunction(arg2=3, arg4=String2) Eric Thivierge === Character TD / RnD Hybride Technologies On 03/07/2013 7:43 AM, Mihail Djurev wrote: Hello, I have a custom command with 10+ parameters and each of these parameters has a name and a default value. Right now I'm forced to use something like MyCommand(cube, 1, 20, , , , , , , true); This approach, however is very cumbersome and error-prone. I was wondering if there is a way to call the command by setting the parameters by name and not by their order. Basically, I would like to be able to do something like this: MyCommand( objName = cube, type = 1, someOtherThing = 20, yetAnotherThing = true); Is it possible to do this in Softimage? Thanks, Mihail
Re: updating from 2012 to 2014 sp1
The biggest gotcha I can think of is [SI_DEFECT-0073] which is about the ICE SDK being extra slow. That is, if you're reading attributes via scripting (or the C++ API I believe), it's apparently much slower than it used to be. I know you said you weren't using Arnold, but that's where you would notice it the most -- when trying to export a scene with ICE stuff. I think a fix is on its way, but not out yet. On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 5:15 AM, Matt Morris matt...@gmail.com wrote: Hey guys, seriously considering updating to 2014sp1, would there be any major gotchas to look out for, bearing in mind I wouldn't be using arnold for now or exporting strands (maybe rendering them in mental ray though). Wondering about speed of ref models, any shader incompatibilities, or ice tree differences? Does melena still work ok? Links into royal render ok? Any wisdom appreciated! Matt -- www.matinai.com
Re: Named parameters on a long command
Thanks Eric, that will do. Mihail
Re: updating from 2012 to 2014 sp1
Hey Alan, thanks for the reply, that puts me at ease a bit. Have been testing it today and had no major issues, might try a mini-rollout. There's a rather large thread on si-community concerning 2014 but most of those problems seem to stem from paths/older plugins, will be a good time to cull the unused stuff from the workgroup. On 3 July 2013 14:53, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote: The biggest gotcha I can think of is [SI_DEFECT-0073] which is about the ICE SDK being extra slow. That is, if you're reading attributes via scripting (or the C++ API I believe), it's apparently much slower than it used to be. I know you said you weren't using Arnold, but that's where you would notice it the most -- when trying to export a scene with ICE stuff. I think a fix is on its way, but not out yet. On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 5:15 AM, Matt Morris matt...@gmail.com wrote: Hey guys, seriously considering updating to 2014sp1, would there be any major gotchas to look out for, bearing in mind I wouldn't be using arnold for now or exporting strands (maybe rendering them in mental ray though). Wondering about speed of ref models, any shader incompatibilities, or ice tree differences? Does melena still work ok? Links into royal render ok? Any wisdom appreciated! Matt -- www.matinai.com -- www.matinai.com
Re: updating from 2012 to 2014 sp1
Syflex got an upgrade but there are still some workflow and nodes that may be a bit unstable. Use at your own risk and test, test, test. Eric Thivierge === Character TD / RnD Hybride Technologies On July-03-13 11:57:09 AM, Matt Morris wrote: Hey Alan, thanks for the reply, that puts me at ease a bit. Have been testing it today and had no major issues, might try a mini-rollout. There's a rather large thread on si-community concerning 2014 but most of those problems seem to stem from paths/older plugins, will be a good time to cull the unused stuff from the workgroup. On 3 July 2013 14:53, Alan Fregtman alan.fregt...@gmail.com mailto:alan.fregt...@gmail.com wrote: The biggest gotcha I can think of is [SI_DEFECT-0073] which is about the ICE SDK being extra slow. That is, if you're reading attributes via scripting (or the C++ API I believe), it's apparently much slower than it used to be. I know you said you weren't using Arnold, but that's where you would notice it the most -- when trying to export a scene with ICE stuff. I think a fix is on its way, but not out yet. On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 5:15 AM, Matt Morris matt...@gmail.com mailto:matt...@gmail.com wrote: Hey guys, seriously considering updating to 2014sp1, would there be any major gotchas to look out for, bearing in mind I wouldn't be using arnold for now or exporting strands (maybe rendering them in mental ray though). Wondering about speed of ref models, any shader incompatibilities, or ice tree differences? Does melena still work ok? Links into royal render ok? Any wisdom appreciated! Matt -- www.matinai.com http://www.matinai.com -- www.matinai.com http://www.matinai.com
Re: White House Down
Hi Eugen, which version did you use, and how many seats? Any serious trouble you ran into? You're talking about Fabric Engine' Creation Platform? We have a site license so we can do deep image processing on about 120 machines if we chose to. For Nuke, we have 20 or 25 licenses (I'm not sure anymore). So by using our Creation Platform site licenses, we can use many more machines to process the data without having to buy more Nuke licenses. But the speed gain is not only because we can now use more machines, our CP based deep image tool is much faster then Nuke, though it's hard to say how much faster. It's relative to a lot of factors and we are still working on optimizing our version. We've noticed certain operations that can be over 10 times faster, while others can be longer then Nuke, but we are still putting in a lot of work and hope to improve performance even more as we learn to use CP more and more. Creation Platform is a lot to take in so all the trouble we ran into was mostly a normal part of the learning curve that comes with adopting a new development platform. I don't remember on which version we started implementing this tool, but we've adapted with each new release of the platform. So you built your own crowd system... what's the reason for not using the built-in system? We created a crowd system for the French movie Jappeloup where we delivered 404 crowd shots in about 3-4 months last summer. This happened before Crowd FX was released. I remember having discussions with Autodesk while they where still working on Crowd FX, but we had to deliver shots way before their system was to be complete and stable. Our crowd system isn't complex. There's no real interaction between agents. It's a stadium agent based crowd system. It's based on a list of animation clips doing various actions, and the system is all instance based. The system basically randomly choses an animation cycle with a few clever tools to help select the timing and distribution. Since it's all instances, the memory needed is much less then creating unique mesh per agent, but the more varied the action of the agents are, the more memory it takes and it can eventually become as memory heavy as having unique geometry per agent. It was a matter of finding a good threshold where you have enough variations in the cycles so you don't notice they are being repeated, but not too much so it keeps memory low. Our agents are also very high resolution compared to most crowd solutions where agents are very low-resolution. That helps the look of the crowd a lot. It adds a lot of detail to the crowds and really helps sell the shots. With deep composting, we can raise the bar even further and split our renders in many layers without ever having to worry about where the agents of each layer fit in the crowd. The system of White House Down is the evolution of that system. Since the shots have constantly moving cameras and the crowds are motion blurred with individual agents only visible for a limited number of frames, we could deal the crowds as if they where stadium agents where the stadium is basically the streets of Washington. It was only a matter of adding animation cycles of people reacting to a helicopter passing just over their heads. -Mathieu On 03/07/2013 2:44 AM, Eugen Sares wrote: Thanks a lot for this, Mathieu! Always nice to hear when Softimage is used on such high profile titles. That prooves a lot technically, and it is good for the spirit, too... Autodesk wants to use this for advertising... Also, what you say about Fabric Engine instead of Nuke is amazing. If I may ask, which version did you use, and how many seats? Any serious trouble you ran into? So you built your own crowd system... what's the reason for not using the built-in system? Am 02.07.2013 18:19, schrieb Mathieu Leclaire: Hi guys, I just wanted to share some information on the shots we did for White House Down. First off, there's an article in fxguide that explains a bit what we did : http://www.fxguide.com/featured/action-beats-6-scenes-from-white-house-down/ And here is some more details about how we did it : We built upon our ICE based City Generator that we created for Spy Kids 4. In SK4, all the buildings where basically a bunch of instances (windows, wall, doors, etc.) put together using Softimage ICE logic to build very generic buildings. ICE was also used to create the streetscape, populate the city with props (lamp post, traffic lights, garbage cans, bus stops, etc.), distribute static trees and car traffic. Everything was instances so memory consumption was very low and render times where minimal (20-30 minutes a frame in Mental Ray at the time). The city in Spy Kids 4 was very generic and the cameras where very high up in the sky so we didn't care as much about having a lot of details and interaction on the ground level and we didn't really need specific and recognizable
Re: Named parameters on a long command
A handy python wrapper I have around on my library, perhaps it's usefull for you too :-) def pywrap(cmd_name, **kwds): cmd = Application.Commands(cmd_name) if not cmd: Application.LogMessage(cmd_name + doesnt found., 4) return for arg in cmd.Arguments: value = kwds.get(arg.Name) if value: arg.Value = value cmd.Execute() pywrap(Select Object, SelectionList=null) On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Mihail Djurev mihail.dju...@chaosgroup.com wrote: Thanks Eric, that will do. Mihail
Softimage 2014 SP2 released
Autodesk Softimage 2014 Service Pack 2 has been released http://goo.gl/6LWRd Bugs Fixed in this Release SOFT-9094 Caching a Crowd FX simulation is broken SOFT-9089 Very slow access to the ICE attribute arrays *Note: You may need to recompile your plugins, if they were compiled using Softimage versions prior to 2014 SP2.
Re: Softimage 2014 SP2 released
Stephen - I hope you are sending Autodesk a bill every month for your ongoing Softimage support - :-P S. On 2013/07/03 8:21 PM, Stephen Blair wrote: Autodesk Softimage 2014 Service Pack 2 has been released http://goo.gl/6LWRd Bugs Fixed in this Release SOFT-9094 Caching a Crowd FX simulation is broken SOFT-9089 Very slow access to the ICE attribute arrays *Note: You may need to recompile your plugins, if they were compiled using Softimage versions prior to 2014 SP2.
Re: Softimage 2014 SP2 released
Seriously man. On a separate topic... holy mother of fast updates. There must have been some big bugs in 2014. On Wed, Jul 3, 2013 at 11:24 AM, Sandy Sutherland sandy.mailli...@gmail.com wrote: Stephen - I hope you are sending Autodesk a bill every month for your ongoing Softimage support - :-P S. On 2013/07/03 8:21 PM, Stephen Blair wrote: Autodesk Softimage 2014 Service Pack 2 has been released http://goo.gl/6LWRd Bugs Fixed in this Release SOFT-9094 Caching a Crowd FX simulation is broken SOFT-9089 Very slow access to the ICE attribute arrays *Note: You may need to recompile your plugins, if they were compiled using Softimage versions prior to 2014 SP2. -- -Gene www.genecrucean.com
Requesting advice about light object
Hello, I've been away from XSi for about two years due to illness, but am back working on a project. So, this may be very easy for you guys to answer. I'm feeling noobness here, having forgotten so many things! I'm trying to make a small sphere look like a light source, illuminating part of the scene, which is only lit by final gathering and a globe HDR object. I'm pretty sure I've done this successfully before, but it's failing me this time...;-) I can't make the sphere a constant material, because I want it to use many of the attributes of the architectural shader. In other words, I want it to be a reflective ball which is glowing and emitting light. I like the simplified emulated reflections i was getting by using optimizations in the architectural shader (also the rendering time advantage). So, I tried putting a point light inside it, which has somewhat fouled up the nice surface I had going with the architectural shader. And there is no 'incandescence' in this shader to make it appear glowing. I don't want to see the actual point light in the render, but I do want the ball itself to be a bit luminous. I'm also having a lot of trouble with the light attenuation using the exponent. Does anyone have any idea how to measure 'Softimage units' in ones scene? Do they relate to say, the sphere radius I am using? Or is that a whole 'nother thing Anyone who can give me some ideas or point me to some info about this glowing sphere light thing, much appreciated... Seems so rudimentary... Thanks, Nancy
RE: Requesting advice about light object
Many solutions, but here's an older simple solution: The object emitting illumination should have secondary rays active, and primary rays inactive. This allows rays to be cast for Global illumination, final gathering, etc..., but not be directly visible by the camera. This allows you to use a constant shaded sphere as the emitter. The object acting as the bulb and visible to the camera should have the opposite settings so it appears in the render, but doesn't block the rays cast by the emitter. You may need to do more subtle tweaking of visibility to account of other situations. For those cases I'll refer you to the 'ray switch' node which can perform the same task at a more granular level. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nancy Jacobs Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2013 3:02 PM To: Softimage Listserve Subject: Requesting advice about light object Hello, I've been away from XSi for about two years due to illness, but am back working on a project. So, this may be very easy for you guys to answer. I'm feeling noobness here, having forgotten so many things! I'm trying to make a small sphere look like a light source, illuminating part of the scene, which is only lit by final gathering and a globe HDR object. I'm pretty sure I've done this successfully before, but it's failing me this time...;-) I can't make the sphere a constant material, because I want it to use many of the attributes of the architectural shader. In other words, I want it to be a reflective ball which is glowing and emitting light. I like the simplified emulated reflections i was getting by using optimizations in the architectural shader (also the rendering time advantage). So, I tried putting a point light inside it, which has somewhat fouled up the nice surface I had going with the architectural shader. And there is no 'incandescence' in this shader to make it appear glowing. I don't want to see the actual point light in the render, but I do want the ball itself to be a bit luminous. I'm also having a lot of trouble with the light attenuation using the exponent. Does anyone have any idea how to measure 'Softimage units' in ones scene? Do they relate to say, the sphere radius I am using? Or is that a whole 'nother thing Anyone who can give me some ideas or point me to some info about this glowing sphere light thing, much appreciated... Seems so rudimentary... Thanks, Nancy
Re: Requesting advice about light object
These all sound like good ideas... I did try out the mia light surface shader, and got a bit closer to what I want, but i'll definitely check all these ideas out next work session. Thanks! On Jul 3, 2013, at 10:42 PM, Rares Halmagean ra...@rarebrush.com wrote: Another solution Nancy, may be to composite a render of the constant shaded material over your architectural sphere depending on how comfortable you are with approach. Or a simpler solution than the one I suggested earler comes to mind; Use a mix_2_colors node by plugging the architectural shaders out into mix2color base_color input, plug the lambert or constants out into mix2color color 1 followed by mix_2_colors out to surface input of the material node, making sure to dial the constant node contribution via the weight rgba in the mix layer of the mix_2_colors node. That way you maintain the architectural material surface properties and mix in the incandescent property of the constant shader. You may have to play around with the architectural shader diffuse, reflection properties and mix2colors mix layer properties till you get the look you want. gdfdifhb.jpg -Rares On 7/3/2013 8:46 PM, Matt Lind wrote: Many solutions, but here's an older simple solution: The object emitting illumination should have secondary rays active, and primary rays inactive. This allows rays to be cast for Global illumination, final gathering, etc..., but not be directly visible by the camera. This allows you to use a constant shaded sphere as the emitter. The object acting as the bulb and visible to the camera should have the opposite settings so it appears in the render, but doesn't block the rays cast by the emitter. You may need to do more subtle tweaking of visibility to account of other situations. For those cases I'll refer you to the 'ray switch' node which can perform the same task at a more granular level. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nancy Jacobs Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2013 3:02 PM To: Softimage Listserve Subject: Requesting advice about light object Hello, I've been away from XSi for about two years due to illness, but am back working on a project. So, this may be very easy for you guys to answer. I'm feeling noobness here, having forgotten so many things! I'm trying to make a small sphere look like a light source, illuminating part of the scene, which is only lit by final gathering and a globe HDR object. I'm pretty sure I've done this successfully before, but it's failing me this time...;-) I can't make the sphere a constant material, because I want it to use many of the attributes of the architectural shader. In other words, I want it to be a reflective ball which is glowing and emitting light. I like the simplified emulated reflections i was getting by using optimizations in the architectural shader (also the rendering time advantage). So, I tried putting a point light inside it, which has somewhat fouled up the nice surface I had going with the architectural shader. And there is no 'incandescence' in this shader to make it appear glowing. I don't want to see the actual point light in the render, but I do want the ball itself to be a bit luminous. I'm also having a lot of trouble with the light attenuation using the exponent. Does anyone have any idea how to measure 'Softimage units' in ones scene? Do they relate to say, the sphere radius I am using? Or is that a whole 'nother thing Anyone who can give me some ideas or point me to some info about this glowing sphere light thing, much appreciated... Seems so rudimentary... Thanks, Nancy -- Rares Halmagean ___ visual development and 3d character content creation. rarebrush.com
Re: Requesting advice about light object
Wow, here's a duh momentas that's exactly what I'm doing with the 2 environment spheres, with the visible image and the invisible HDR image! So, i'll try it on a smaller scale for this as well. Not familiar with the ray switch mode, though, I will have to look into that. Thank you Matt. With this I wouldn't need the point light either, as I'm using FG anyway. On Jul 3, 2013, at 9:46 PM, Matt Lind ml...@carbinestudios.com wrote: Many solutions, but here's an older simple solution: The object emitting illumination should have secondary rays active, and primary rays inactive. This allows rays to be cast for Global illumination, final gathering, etc..., but not be directly visible by the camera. This allows you to use a constant shaded sphere as the emitter. The object acting as the bulb and visible to the camera should have the opposite settings so it appears in the render, but doesn't block the rays cast by the emitter. You may need to do more subtle tweaking of visibility to account of other situations. For those cases I'll refer you to the 'ray switch' node which can perform the same task at a more granular level. Matt -Original Message- From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Nancy Jacobs Sent: Wednesday, July 03, 2013 3:02 PM To: Softimage Listserve Subject: Requesting advice about light object Hello, I've been away from XSi for about two years due to illness, but am back working on a project. So, this may be very easy for you guys to answer. I'm feeling noobness here, having forgotten so many things! I'm trying to make a small sphere look like a light source, illuminating part of the scene, which is only lit by final gathering and a globe HDR object. I'm pretty sure I've done this successfully before, but it's failing me this time...;-) I can't make the sphere a constant material, because I want it to use many of the attributes of the architectural shader. In other words, I want it to be a reflective ball which is glowing and emitting light. I like the simplified emulated reflections i was getting by using optimizations in the architectural shader (also the rendering time advantage). So, I tried putting a point light inside it, which has somewhat fouled up the nice surface I had going with the architectural shader. And there is no 'incandescence' in this shader to make it appear glowing. I don't want to see the actual point light in the render, but I do want the ball itself to be a bit luminous. I'm also having a lot of trouble with the light attenuation using the exponent. Does anyone have any idea how to measure 'Softimage units' in ones scene? Do they relate to say, the sphere radius I am using? Or is that a whole 'nother thing Anyone who can give me some ideas or point me to some info about this glowing sphere light thing, much appreciated... Seems so rudimentary... Thanks, Nancy
