help with textures and materials

I plan to do that extensively (render on different machiens). When I finish up one or two of my MSTS projects, I’d like to start doing animations again. I used to do animations in POVRay doing ALL the code by hand (even the models). I’d like to use 3DC to create most of the models now and maybe see how it works to set up some of the animation stuff with it, but still do a lot of the work by hand. The reason for this is that when you create the .ini files for your animations, you can tell it WHICH frames to render, ie render from frames 0 to 10000, but only render every other frame (or every third, or fourth, etc.) Then you set another machine to render frames 1 to 10000 every other frame (or third, or fourth, etc.) and you’ll get the other frames. Merge them together, and there’s the whole movie.

You can then EASILY split up the rendering of your frames between as many machines as you have.

I don’t have any idea how this would work in conjunction with 3DC. I’m assuming that one might have to do most of the animation coding by hand to achieve this, but I haven’t tried it yet so I don’t know for sure. I’m assuming that when raytracing animations in 3DC, 3DC animates the objects and sends POV only the information to draw the current frame–as opposed to andquot;exportingandquot; a script that tells POVRay how to animate the scene.

EDIT: andnbsp;I just tried a simple animation, and indeed, it spawns a new POVRay instance for every frame. . .What would be neat is if it is possible to export the .pov file for each frame, then what I described above could be accomplished (splitting of rendering between multiple machines) by dividing up the .pov files. andnbsp;Is it possible to do this (save the .pov file for each frame in an animation)?

Sorry for getting kind of off-topic, but it’s kind of quiet in this forum anyway andnbsp;

I am making simple models in 3DC, ( a table, bowl, vase, walls and windows ) and am going to try to use these for figuring the best lighting and other settings to achieve realist looking models when rendered with pov… my question will start with this one…should i texture and color these objects in 3DC? or use Povs?
Will the textures and colors ( materials) transfer to POV? Also, if i was to use a wood texture in 3DC for, lets say the table, the texture is running the wrong way on the table base ( the pedistal part ) and its way to big, the wood grain looks like the table is only a few inches tall. Can the wood texture be sized? and rotated? I tried to rotate the texture useing the tool on the materials pallet, but it rotates it 180 degrees. I would like to make the texture run up and down instead of left and right. ( 90 degree rotation) Thanks for any help…. I am trying to figure out why my models in POV look so bad. I think alot has to do with the attributes that the texture or material has when i color it in 3DC. ( like ambience and such)

blaydrnnnr,

1). You can use either 3DC’s colors/materials, or select File/Properties and use PovRay’s preset materials/colors.

2). Materials and colors applied in 3DC will be read and interpreted by PovRay, and it seems to be very accurate.

3-A). Use the UV-Map or UV-ReMap operations in 3DC to get correct placement, scaling, and orientation/rotation of textures. You can use them on whole objects or individual faces according to your needs.

3-. One thing I’m not sure about is whether or not PovRay will see an applied texture(from 3DC) and create a texture map for the object as a result. The only way I know to test this would be to render in 3DC using the PovRay rendering option, then export this same file to PovRay and see if Pov actually creates a texture map. Also, when exporting to PovRay, you will have to place copies of your texture file(s) in the PovRay Include folder so that it will find and use the textures properly.

4). The ambient, diffuse, and specular settings that you use in 3DC will be transferred correctly to PovRay when rendering, with the exception that PovRay sees higher Specular settings(over 50%) as reflective settings(I think).

I hope this is helpful to you…. <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>
Let me know if you have other questions.

Les

Thanks for the info….I am not very experienced with mapping and uv-mapping so i am not sure if i can make it work or not but i’ll give it a try when i can. I am also going to have to try to see if i understand what you mean when you say to copy the texture files to POV inc files. I know what the inc. files are in POV, ( that is i know where they are) but i am not sure if i know how and what to copy exactly and how to convert to a POV inc. file. Texture files are usually …. what… jpg or bipmap?? Oh well… i’ll play around with it. Thanks again….

Hey blaydrnnr. andnbsp; If you go to the operation adjust tool then click your texture you can adjust the texture using the edit control just like you were moving your object.

Ahhh…ok..i’ll give it a try…was playing with a wine glass and a ceramic bowl yesterday… but when i click the POV button, rendering was almost at a standstill. I was trying textures and changing the sttributes to see the differences.. when i tried to get the wine glass to look like glass, rendering dropped to such a slow render, i had to stop it and will try it again when i have time to just let it run. Thanks for the tips and any more are most certainly welcome…thanks all..

When I find a render to be slow I usually render a andquot;Snapshotandquot; and set a andquot;manualandquot; size for the snapshot of say 160×120 (or smaller). Another option is to change the size of your andquot;perspective viewandquot; to a really small size and then click andquot;renderandquot;.

Richard

To render in pov can be very slow – try to export the scene (rather than pov render in 3dc) as a andquot;*povandquot; file, load it into pov and alter the andquot;picture sizeandquot; to small (click the ini button and alter selection to andquot;320×200, no AAandquot;) this will render your pic quicker although you only get a thumbnail pic – it should show the andquot;qualityandquot; and then if it is what you are after then inc. the pic size for a final render……

I forgot you could do that <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –> – my only excuse is that I now rendering on another machine while I model on this one…. not much of an excuse but…… <!– s:) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:) –>