Messages

151

Off-Topic / Re: catnip sessions

« on: 2016-07-22, 13:34:04 »

Thank you again for the "Solid Stone - Unlimited"

Whenever I'm at the gym with this song I increase the volume, but nobody seems to care for the song except me.
 Strange that Above and Beyond seems to gather huge crowds, but if you look around you, not many folks into this kinda of music.

EDIT :
In 1999 I wrote and produced this song (among others)
(quality probably not good, the song was not uploaded by me)
Activ - Sunete

152

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Question: Why do Post-process in 3ds Max?

« on: 2016-07-22, 13:24:39 »

lol, that was really funny

153

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Question: Why do Post-process in 3ds Max?

« on: 2016-07-20, 05:36:53 »

For the exact sun reflections, I would say we might be seeing the tree and not the forest.  Why don't you fake it? 

Actually I'm almost a fan of using tricks and "shortcuts" as much as possible, perhaps because I'm forced to, rendering sometimes movies with very heavy scenes, so sometimes that fog bank floating over the forest is not a true volumetric smoke, but just a plane with alpha channel facing the camera, and maybe even half the forest in the distance is just a plane, and only the close trees and grass are 3d models. Same with the moss over the tree trunk, some are "real" moss, and the far away ones are just painted.

But sometimes it's easier to use the real thing.
As an example, let's say I have a 3d person walking around a dusty street, each step would generate a small cloud of dust. So I could easily place by hand a cloud of particles at each step contact. Or even easier, move the work to 2d domain and just place 2d layers of dust in after effects.
 But if I have 50 people walking and running, doing it by hand get's a lot more difficult and possibly annoying and repetitive, and suddenly it gets easier to setup an automatic generating system of "true" dust particles at each contact of feet with the ground. And if I spend a little more time and make sure the dust intensity is related with the force the character hits the ground, that means I can move the camera closer or in all kinds of angles, and it will still look realistic and good. Sure I have longer render times and some work time to setup the system, but next time I can reuse the system even for large groups of people, or even for giant spiders, horses and so on...

154

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Question: Why do Post-process in 3ds Max?

« on: 2016-07-18, 13:29:47 »

I'll paste again these pics.
How would you compose the shot without a "realtime" glare if you would want a glare from the sun to flash and show in a particular moment ? It would be trial and error with a a post workflow. And maybe with this scene would be easier, but if you would have let's say a character twisting a knife and in an exact moment the knife would flash a glare. That would be difficult to setup in post.




and with a post processing bloom or glare you can change a scene dramatically. Again difficult to imagine the changes without seeing straight in the framebuffer. Notice how you can flood more than half a screen with certain type of glare, and without that the entire screen would be black and empty.
 You would have some advantages though with a post workflow, better control and more options, so sometimes maybe the renderer post process would be used just as a preview.

155

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: corona 1.4

« on: 2016-07-17, 15:41:13 »

Hmm, windows 7 very old ?
My main platform is win xp 32 bit :) With an older i7 and 12 gb ram. I know, only 3.5 usable. Kept with the more "minimalistic" classic gray UI.
I have lots of reasons, for one lack of time to spend a few days to migrate everything to win 10.
 Every time I would change and write some code in cryengine, after saving the text the changes were instantly in the sandbox editor, while in win 7 I had to restart the editor.

156

Off-Topic / Re: Drone

« on: 2016-07-17, 15:06:38 »

Hmm 5k would be kinda expensive for me for (yet) non professional work. My budget would be about 1500 euro, or maybe slightly more. Capable of lifting maybe 1-2 kg.

As I see it, the Lightbridge 2 alone is $1400. It has some nice specs though.
I'm not sure if I can use my Nyrius ARIES Pro, which has a range of only 48 meters, but maybe it is good enough. The transmitter has 38 grams and a total of 200 grams with cables and battery. And it has zero latency and full hd signal.

157

Work in Progress/Tests / Re: Blurry feel of an image.

« on: 2016-07-11, 17:39:02 »

Do you think this will work well even for video ?
I mean, traditionaly film rendering need to be blurrier than static images.
Red cameras for example have a low pass filter before the sensor (basically a glass plate to make the image less sharp) to eliminate moire and other artifacts given by too sharp pictures which in motion tend to flicker and stand out.
Some started to take out that low pass plate to have sharper images from the red camera.

I disagree with the sentiment of lowering image filter being a necessarily bad idea. Just for funsies, try just turning the image filter off. This way a sample does not have a 2 px influence when being rasterized, but will only affect the pixel it samples. This will sharpen it, without "actually" sharpening.

158

[Scatter] Feature Requests / Re: Support geometry motion blur for CoronaScatter

« on: 2016-07-08, 22:08:41 »

Oh, that's acceptable. At least for my uses.

159

[Scatter] Feature Requests / Re: Support geometry motion blur for CoronaScatter

« on: 2016-07-08, 18:12:54 »

This sounds serious. So there's no way right now to have motion blur if you render with Corona and vegetation distributed by CoronaScatter ?

160

[Max] General Discussion / Re: PBR kinda materials

« on: 2016-07-08, 18:10:18 »

Keeping CoronaMtl (mostly) unchanged (maybe just fix certain bugs from it) would make sure all those wonderful tutorials on your youtube channel - would still work.
And introducing another Corona material, the PBR one or something.

161

Off-Topic / Re: Drone

« on: 2016-07-04, 15:49:01 »

Interesting. 5-8 kg ? That's a lot, and maybe not needed in my case. I'm invested in the samsung nx camera and lenses, I have 6 lenses already, so I'm kinda stuck with the system, I didn't bought the nx300 and nx500 for drone use, but now that I did, I think the nx500 could be good for that.

28 MP,  9 fps continuous shooting with stabilization, high res touch screen, 4k movie, possibility to take photos and movies with a "flatter" settings which maybe mimics a little a Red Camera flat mode.

 Including a motorized zoom lens so I can change the zoom while the camera is up in the air.
 As I said earlier, with the motorized lens the camera is only 500 gr, but other lenses are quite heavy, much more than the camera, so maybe with a setup like yours I can even use the heavy ones.

Too bad the "professional" drones sometimes don't have all the bells and whistles of the consumer ones like the superior modes of navigating (working well even when the gps is not visible) and obstacle avoiding of the Phantom 4.

What's the total price for your solution ? Drone, gimbal, video transmission (can you use a tablet or phone as a screen ? )

162

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Bucket Renderer in 1.4 ???

« on: 2016-07-04, 13:29:46 »

Lol at "placebo" features.
And next a second "render" button placed in the lower part of the screen. But this one has a green color. So maybe it will be faster ;)

163

[Max] I need help! / Re: Massive Render Dimensions

« on: 2016-06-25, 11:07:34 »

I found this plugin "Blow Up" http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/

 

another one was a AE plugin from redgiant. Maybe this one
https://www.redgiant.com/products/instant-4k/

164

[Max] I need help! / Re: Massive Render Dimensions

« on: 2016-06-24, 15:39:27 »

A few years ago I asked on a forum which image had better quality and higher resolution.
About half of the people chose the lower resolution image as "the one with a higher resolution"

But I used a plugin with a better algorithm for re-sizing (I don't remember which one, there are a few for After Effects as well). The photoshop bicubic sharp one is not enough. Even lanczos is better for that.

A little (secret) trick that can be used in cases where client are requesting huge renderers without any logical reason is to render it out at a lower size and then upscale it in Photoshop. This way the client gets what he wants without you having a major headache.

Of course it has to be a secret :)

165

Off-Topic / Re: Drone

« on: 2016-06-20, 16:43:48 »

I don't think I was notified by your reply. Maybe some wrong setting here on forum.

I kept doing research the last days. I found out that DJI phantom 3 can carry and lift pretty smooth 500g, but you can't mount the camera on the special gimbal where the drone camera is mounted.
A way would be to buy the Phantom 3 without a camera and gimbal, find another gimbal (still low weight) rated for about 500 grams. Mount the camera on that gimbal. Buy a low weight video transmission module to send the video down.
  For less vibrations use sorbothane pad under the camera and equalize the propeller blades with sandpaper. Search youtube tutorials for that.
  But anyway, it's not very straightforward and easy to mount a camera on a Phantom.