Today’s efforts and wish list
Amabilis Forum: Model Feedback: Today’s efforts and wish list
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Saturday, March 24, 2001 – 06:28 pm: andnbsp;
Here’s a tanker I plan on using in the hangar scene with the fighter.
I think I’ve figured out an easy way to position lettering and signs on irregularly shaped objects. I experimented with using a surface patch with the .bmp projected on it and the idea looks promising.
Here’s today’s comments….
(Version Alpha)
3DC has caused an error in D3DRM.DLL — occured just after an attempt to subtract one object from another. Hasn’t repeated.
When you use the eyedrop sample tool, it correctly sets the material, but the numbers given in the materials dialogue box are all set to zero. This means you can’t sample a color, then change it slightly.
I managed to hang up my machine many times today, but there wasn’t anything I could get to repeat. It’s very slow to do things like trianglate densly faceted objects (remember, I have a 1 GHtz machine) and a couple of times I reset it it may simply have been taking forever to finish up. The status bar stops moving lng before the function completes. I wonder if maybe it’s counter isn’t being added to after a certain point in the process.
Would it be possible to add a andquot;center object in viewandquot; button that would quickly position the views on the current or last selected object?
3DC’s generated camera position put me andquot;insideandquot; my tanker, looking the wrong direction.
POVray generates a zillion andquot;no pigment type givenandquot; warnings. They seem to have no harmful effect, but I’m curious and I can’t track ’em down. Do you happen to know what’s causing that?
Take care, Dave
andnbsp; By Simon Hachey on Saturday, March 24, 2001 – 06:40 pm: andnbsp;
Wow, thats a nice tanker.
Simon
andnbsp; By Richard Borsheim (Richard_Borsheim) on Saturday, March 24, 2001 – 08:33 pm: andnbsp;
Hi,
Re problems:
The sample tool seems to work OK for me. Perhaps I don’t understand what you mean by the andquot;material dialog boxandquot;. Do you mean the Material Palette? Or do you mean that you click on the color on the Material Palette and it comes up without the color…. Could you explain?
andquot;I managed to hang up my machine many times todayandquot; how many is many? 5, 10 , 20 and in how many hours. I’ll ask you my usual question: andquot;Have you updated your drivers for your video card lately?andquot;. And which video card are you using? Both the ATI Radeon and NVIDIA chips have had driver updates recently. Could be one of my bugs of course, but if you didn’t see a pattern it is pretty hard to reproduce. So how well has the andquot;Recoveryandquot; feature worked for you?
Triangulate can be slow. I’d like to improve it sometime in the future.
As for camera positioning, have you tried right-clicking on the object and selecting andquot;look atandquot;? Or is that what is causing the problem? Or have you tried andquot;Look at Sceneandquot;?
When you say andquot;3DC’s generated camera positionandquot; do you mean the camera position for POVRay?
I can’t figure out the pigment issue either. Could be a POVRay bug, but it could just as easily be something about POVRay that I don’t quite understand.
Nice Tanker! Since this is the Feedback area, the front of the cab looks like it might need a andquot;Creaseandquot;, though that could be just a JPEG artifact.
Richard
Amabilis Software
andnbsp; By Mail_Us (Mail_Us) on Saturday, March 24, 2001 – 09:04 pm: andnbsp;
Nice job, a suggestion for the whole scene is to have a andquot;caddyandquot; tow truck for the fighter. And some turf or runway for the fighter. Looks great. 1 question for when I get the full version. How did you make the hose??
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 06:49 am: andnbsp;
Richard,
**The sample tool seems to work OK for me. Perhaps I don’t understand what you mean by the andquot;material dialog boxandquot;. Do you mean the Material Palette? Or do you mean that you click on the color on the Material Palette and it comes up without the color…. Could you explain?**
Right, the materials palette. Ambient, emissive, specular and transparency are all set to zero, but the color on the sample object is correct.
**andquot;I managed to hang up my machine many times todayandquot; how many is many? 5, 10 , 20 and in how many hours. I’ll ask you my usual question: andquot;Have you updated your drivers for your video card lately?andquot;. And which video card are you using? Both the ATI Radeon and NVIDIA chips have had driver updates recently. Could be one of my bugs of course, but if you didn’t see a pattern it is pretty hard to reproduce. So how well has the andquot;Recoveryandquot; feature worked for you?**
Between 8 and 10, I should think, in about ten hours of steady work.
I’ll check with Gateway for driver updates today. (Duh! My only excuse is the machine’s barely four months old. (grin)) And, your recovery feature successfully recovered every single one of the aborts without a hitch, perfectly. In fact, on one occasion the operation I thought had hung up the machine had in fact completed and recovery caught it. Excellent work.
**As for camera positioning, have you tried right-clicking on the object and selecting andquot;look atandquot;? Or is that what is causing the problem? Or have you tried andquot;Look at Sceneandquot;? **
Oh. Right. Uh… yup, works fine. Thanks! Fast response there, fella!
**When you say andquot;3DC’s generated camera positionandquot; do you mean the camera position for POVRay?**
(blush) This one’s my fault. As I was trying to get to sleep last night it hit me. I was having an attack of dumb. Sorry about that.
**I can’t figure out the pigment issue either. Could be a POVRay bug, but it could just as easily be something about POVRay that I don’t quite understand. **
I’ll keep working on it and let you know if I stumble across the reason.
**Nice Tanker! Since this is the Feedback area, the front of the cab looks like it might need a andquot;Creaseandquot;, though that could be just a JPEG artifact. **
Thanks! It probably does need a crease. I think the machine hung when I tried that and by the time I got it fired up again, I’d forgotten what I was doing and moved on to something else. (wry grin)
Thanks again, Dave
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 06:52 am: andnbsp;
Mail,
I extruded a bit of andquot;pipeandquot; using a round profile and a couple control points for the curve, then scaled it to the right size. The hose is actually about a dozen short bits hooked together. For each one, I cloned the original bit of hose, curved the new one to fit what I needed and stuck ’em end to end. I’m trying to think of an easier way!
Take care, Dave
andnbsp; By Mail_Us (Mail_Us) on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 10:18 am: andnbsp;
I was messing around and I found a much easier way to do hose. Use the andquot;extrudeandquot; tool in the andquot;object building toolsandquot; section. It does a nice job and seems to keep it low poly. This section of hose was around 500p.
andnbsp; By Richard Borsheim (Richard_Borsheim) on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 10:46 am: andnbsp;
]Right, the materials palette. Ambient, emissive, specular and transparency are all set to zero, but the color on the sample object is correct.
Odd. This all works fine for me.
]Between 8 and 10, I should think, in about ten hours of steady work. I’ll check with Gateway for driver updates today. (Duh! My only excuse is the machine’s barely four months old. (grin)) And, your recovery feature successfully recovered every single one of the aborts without a hitch, perfectly. In fact, on one occasion the operation I thought had hung up the machine had in fact completed and recovery caught it. Excellent work.
Well… That is a lot. What video card do you have? I’m curious. Perhaps there is something in the order of operations that I don’t do. At least you didn’t loose any data. I keep trying to kill those bugs. Unfortunately, they aren’t always mine.
Richard
Amabilis Software
andnbsp; By Simon Hachey on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 12:09 pm: andnbsp;
Just an idea, you can use the skinning system to make it so that the tube is bendable. I tried it and it works. It would help for building scenes.
Simon
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 05:43 pm: andnbsp;
Simon,
I’ll have to look into that. Thanks!
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 05:49 pm: andnbsp;
Richard,
With the materials palette open, I bring up the sampling tool, click on the object I want to sample. In the materials palette, the ambient, etc values all go to zero while the sample object takes on the color sampled. It’s what happens, I swear! <!– s:-) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="
" title="Smile" /><!– s:-) –>
It’s an ATI Flat plate LCD display and Gateway claims I have the most current drivers for it. Personally, I think I’m just trying to do to many things at once, with a Real Audio stream going on the internet, 3DC and Photoshop and… (wry grin)
Take care, Dave
andnbsp; By Richard Borsheim (Richard_Borsheim) on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 05:55 pm: andnbsp;
Dave,
Well… They should go to zero if they were zero when they were applied (or you have sampled an object that never had a material applied). But if that wasn’t the case its a bug. I can’t reproduce it though. Here is a test: set the four of them to 10,20,30,40, apply it to an object (say a cube). Click the X button on the palette to erase the material. Sample the cube. Does it fail?
ATI… So it is probably a Raedoen (sp?). Same as me. There are new drivers, but they will probably take a while to make their way through the Gateway machinery.
Richard
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 09:04 pm: andnbsp;
Richard,
(sigh) I have gremlins. That’s the only explaination.
UH huh…it says it’s an FPD1500 I like the heck outta it, between these 45 years old eyes and bifocals, it’s been a big help.
Thanks, Dave
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 09:08 pm: andnbsp;
Today’s version of the hangar, with toxic waste barrels stacked neatly in a corner. (-:
I think I’m going to have to add area lights inside the spotlight shades to get them to look right, in addition to the spots themselves.
andnbsp; By Simon Hachey on Sunday, March 25, 2001 – 09:35 pm: andnbsp;
Nice job!
Simon Hachey
andnbsp; By Mail_Us (Mail_Us) on Monday, March 26, 2001 – 06:36 am: andnbsp;
Dave that looks great. Keep up the good work, when do you think your gonna be done??
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Monday, March 26, 2001 – 08:45 am: andnbsp;
Mail,
Probably never… <!– s:-) –><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt="" title="Smile" /><!– s:-) –> Knowing me, it’ll be tweaked until long after I retire…
Take care, Dave
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Monday, March 26, 2001 – 08:11 pm: andnbsp;
Today’s version of the hangar, with flooring and some changes to the lighting. I think I’m going to have to put transparent andquot;bulbsandquot; in the spotlights overhead to get them to look like they have lightbulbs in them. Point lights nearby didn’t reflect like I’d hoped.
Richard, I ran into the following errors today. I checked with Gateway again and they still claim my video (Radeon) drivers are up to date.
DirectFlexExport
Run-time error ‘0’
I had just opened the material library and was postioning the pointer over one of the materials.
Unrecoverable error
3DC has caused an error in D3DRM.DLL
Restart recovered the files, but the program ran very slowly until I rebooted the machine.
Take care, Dave
P.S. I’ll send up the fighter to the gallery when I get a little more done.
andnbsp; By Mail_Us (Mail_Us) on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 – 07:34 pm: andnbsp;
Lookin’ good. The lighting effects have really improved.
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Tuesday, March 27, 2001 – 09:21 pm: andnbsp;
Mail,
Thanks! But something today sent me hyin’ off in a different direction. I think I’ll have something interesting tomorrow.
Take care, DAve
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 – 08:39 pm: andnbsp;
NOW I’m happy with the hangar! I finally got the look I want for the decking, a kind of metal mesh-like material I’ve seen the Air Force use on muddy terrain.
andnbsp; By Simon Hachey on Wednesday, March 28, 2001 – 09:28 pm: andnbsp;
Nice job on the Hangar, i like it!
Simon
andnbsp; By Mail_Us (Mail_Us) on Thursday, March 29, 2001 – 07:06 pm: andnbsp;
The new textures look great! The barrels seem to show up better, and the lower wall looks awesome! Would you mind telling me where you got the textures??
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Friday, March 30, 2001 – 06:09 pm: andnbsp;
Mail,
I found the texture files at [img:1grxiaf2]http://www.grsites.com/textures/[/img:1grxiaf2]
<!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://www.grsites.com/textures/">http://www.grsites.com/textures/</a><!– m –>
They have a zillion of ’em, intended, I think, primarily for use as html backgrounds.
Thanks, Dave
andnbsp; By David Bollinger on Saturday, March 31, 2001 – 04:06 pm: andnbsp;
And, finally, the andquot;doneandquot; fuel tanker. It’s ready, I think, to add to the hangar scene. The blue grid, by the way, turned out to be extremely handy for positioning the camera and adjusting the andquot;decalandquot; images.
andnbsp; By Mail_Us (Mail_Us) on Saturday, March 31, 2001 – 09:07 pm: andnbsp;
wow, i’m speachless… looks great.
andnbsp; By Les on Sunday, April 01, 2001 – 06:59 pm: andnbsp;
David,
Wow! The hangar and tanker both look great. The hangar kinda reminds me of something out of DeusEx(a game). It all looks really cool.