Thanks for your words Matthew,

Glad the constant/color material is useful. OT: I really like the fade
material in that folder as well.

>how you manage
> such a large scene?

The simple answer is "painfully". But it's not that bleak. Perhaps the main
feature is to use analytics at every possible point. Surfaces are then
handled with a minimum of bump material work and if reflection and
transparency materials are also held to an absolute minimum so much the
better. Have only one or two lights and only ever have one (main) light with
ray-traced shadows checked.

But where's the fun in that? My current project is as complex as the one's I
pointed you to and it's all SDS and I gave most surfaces a tweaked "brush
steel" material and the folly doesn't end there. I have to render it in
quarters and join it in post but this works superbly in RS so no problem
apart from the days involved. I draw solely in wireframe mode and shift the
viewport ray-trace render to "black and white" with white unchecked for
screen re-draws to see how things are going.

And because I render at fairly substantial pixel counts I follow Vesa's
advice of some time back and play with AA levels, thresholds, etc. Bernie
was shocked that I didnt play with "geo quality" but that was because I
didnt know it existed. And a hint from Chris, I think it was ... keep
TaskManager available because sometimes RS file updates during modelling,
etc, work can take a while, Chris's point was that so long as the RS process
is ticking over it will generally come out the other end Ok.

Oh, yes ... the real answer to "how do I manage these beasts" is that I know
that I have no intention of involving them in animation. They are all
designed to be mural sized prints.

But also I'm still learning. The reason these images are all Analytic is
because for a couple of years I simply did not want anything to do with SDS
or Nurbs. The reason the scenes are so big is that I didn't know they
couldnt be. Etc..

That's my book for the day. Got some ladders to draw.

Neil Cooke


----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Hagerty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2006 2:12 AM
Subject: Re: Changing color of multiple ojects at once?


> Thank you all for the suggestions, I think I can make something work
> now.  Neil's makes the most sense to my brain, so I'll give it a try
> first, but I'm certainly going to experiment with everyone's suggestions
> if only to better understand the software.
>
> Neil, those images are incredible!  Care to share with us how you manage
> such a large scene?  Do you model parts individually and pull them into
> a master scene?  I seem to always model and set up my scene in the same
> file, probably because Realsoft does not separate the modeler from the
> scene/renderer/animator like many other packages (not that it's bad,
> just different.)  But then again, I've never made a scene as complex as
> the one you linked to below.
>
> Matthew
>
>
> Neil Cooke wrote:
> > In case this helps ... maybe copy the "color" material from the constant
> > folder in the materials library and rename it color1, copy again and
call it
> > color2 etc. ... grab all things that must stay black for example and
assign
> > them color1, etc. I use this system to create slightly different
coloured
> > stoneworks in the link below ... the exaggerated colour image is used
for
> > checking what parts I have assigned etc. Go to the fourth and fifth rows
of
> > images down on this page:
> >
> > http://www.neico.co.nz/3d/neico0601.html
> >
> > I don't know about animating this since I have never needed to look into
it.
> >
> > I use that constant/color material a lot.
> >
> > Neil Cooke
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Matthias Kappenberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[email protected]>
> > Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 5:42 PM
> > Subject: Re: Changing color of multiple ojects at once?
> >
> >
> >
> >> Hi Matthew,
> >>
> >> What's with a identifier or a "user defined channel",
> >> and a material with "if" statement?
> >>
> >> Matthias
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: "Matthew Hagerty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> To: <[email protected]>
> >> Sent: Friday, June 30, 2006 12:48 AM
> >> Subject: Re: Changing color of multiple ojects at once?
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> Vesa Meskanen wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Hello
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>> I'm not sure how to map "to the scene" and where do I find the
> >>>>> Map2Obj tool?  Also, I guess I'm missing how this will let me
quickly
> >>>>> change the color of the various objects of the model that represent
> >>>>> the model's color?
> >>>>>
> >>>> Sorry! My reply was apparently aimed at users who already knew how to
> >>>> change the colors using map2obj.
> >>>>
> >>>> The method I described has the following idea: you create a material
> >>>> (texture map etc). which defines the colors. Material defined color
is
> >>>> then converted to object colors. After that, objects can be animated
> >>>> and the color will not change. Using this principle, one can color
> >>>> thousands of objects in a couple of minutes 'automatically'. I am no
> >>>> longer sure if this is what you wanted.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> Let me try to explain another way.  I have a model, a lightcycle
> >>> inspired from the movie TRON.  The model has about 60 or so objects
that
> >>> make it up.  Some of objects, like the main body, tires, etc. are a
> >>> color such that you would say "that lightcycle is blue, or yellow, or
> >>> red", etc..  Now, there are also parts of the lightcycle that are
always
> >>> going to be white, some that are black, some that have materials,
etc..
> >>>
> >>> So, to change the "color" of the lightcycle, I currently have to
either
> >>> multi-select or individually select each of about 35+ objects and set
> >>> the color.  I was wondering if there was some way to assign a tag of
> >>> some sort, or group the objects that make up the those that define the
> >>> "color" of the lightcycle, and change them all at once instead of
> >>> individually or multi-selecting all 35+ objects every time.
> >>>
> >>> Matthew
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >
> >
>
>

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