Anim8or Community

hehehe, the only part of the manual I have read is the materials bit when Ambient Occlude was introduced. Oh and a little bit of the ASL part.

Trev

Ah great, I cant wait for Sub to get GoldenEye animations working with An8.

Trev

Just a quick request for when you get back. Im sure Ive mentioned it before but Clamp and Mirror flags on textures, can you please enable them.

Thanks,
Trev

The bone gives the input values to a matrix along with the object vertexes, however the bone itself is just a 3D co-ord with a fancy model overlay pointing to the next 3D co-ord.

I guess you couyld be right though?

Trev

Well, to add my perspective to this I have been creating animations for GoldenEye however AN8 induced one major problem.

GoldenEye uses Euler angles similar to the FBX format.
Problems seem to occur in any conversion.

The only other slight difference was that GE uses Points of Rotation as againts bones, I solved this by using 0 legnth bones at these positions with the same name as POR ID, then I connected the POR ID's by 0 diameter bones.

Attached is a Skeleton I made with the correct positions, however the animation was an export attemt from GE but it failed.

Also Attached is from sub with a custom obj, an FBX file and a failed An8 file (I assume this an8 is the same as mine)

Final Attachmentis a Zip of my working animation folder incase you want to see the skeleton with textures.




As for the default (scarecrow/painting) pose versus the Normal (standing) pose, im not sure which way to go.
I normally make the first frame (0) of all my animations standing and then work from there, e.g. rotate leg 90 at start(0).

Compatability is my main concern just now though.

Trev

I have a debug suggestion.

Can you make a debug option to retain the vertex order from an obj import AND maintain that order on export.

Any NEW vertexes should be at the end of the list although for this debug there really shouldnt be any change in the number of vertexes.

This will allow the modification of certian models that rely on vertexes being in a specific Index order.
EG, In-Game Merging of model1 Index 4 and model2 index 2 (connection between arm and torso). You want vertex 4 to still be the same vertex as before alteration so that the arm still connects to the torso and not the belly button .

Thanks,
Trev

"You're using class=glossyreflector but haven't specified the other material properties. The value of the attribute Kr is important. (If you didn't add it then Anim8or uses the specular factor Ks in its place). The higher this value is the more energy will be reflected, but it will also mask the basic color of the underlying materisl. Also if you set the roughness very high it will make the surface more mirror-like."

Ah yes, thats correct, I only set glossyreflector and used Specular for Reflection intensity (0.99 - almost entirly reflected. at >1 the scene truns black since I assume it reflects all the rays and never back toward the camera)
And yes, Roughness is 10. at 1 there wasnt enough of a bright patch but > 10 causes too much image reflection (polished mirror, which is not what I want, I want 'diffuse Inter-reflection')

Yeah, while the light is far away, with the bright patch overloaded to burnout, this should be anough to reflect more rays.
The patch on the wall is actually looking directly at a sun type light, so its receiving 100% light already anyhow.

"It uses rather extreme lighting, with extreme contrast. Only a tiny percent of light that enters will reach the far corners of the room. Almost all rays are absorbed before they make the multiple bounces off of the room on their way. They dynamic range of light values far exceeds what a normal computer monitor can display."
Erm, yes, the only way to test Diffuse Inter-reflection is to look down a corridor with only 1 diffuse light source, i.e. A Primary light source that is bounced off a primary wall to make a secondary (diffuse/reflected) light source.
As for the contrast, theres nothing I can do about that, thats ARTs desision.
Also, as can be seen, the Secondary Light source has a value of 1.0(255), this should be = to adding a local light of 255 at every point (although this is where calculations get dificult) and then bouncing that ray to the next surface. That secondary wall will be lit by 1/(distance^2) power light

"but it will also mask the basic color of the underlying materisl."
Yes, if Specular is set to colour only then it doesnt show any texture, I copied the texture to specular and now it shows the texture.
Would this not be nessesary if I re-set specular to 0 and then used Kr?
Ill test it

Trev

Ok, tested using Kr. Kr is better than Specular as it doesnt add an untextured layer over the base (causing all reflections to appear just grey) so no longer a requirement to assign a texture to Specular.
However, Kr is still limited to <1.
I have just done another render and this time Ive used 0.5 and it looks the same as the one posted above (will post once render complete)

It seems that as you increase Kr, the darker the surface becomes. At 0.5, as much light is reflected as is refracted.
My lighting is still at 10 though (equivelant to adding 10 suns (infinit lights))

Also, I dissabled Ambiant Occlusion, hehe, whats the point in having it on when this replaces it more accuriatly

Taking a real scenario of this render (Bright sunlit door and no lights on inside), the Diffuse Inter-reflection is definatly more intense than ART is achiving.

Init=0.54, render=3399.69, rays=63307553


I made a composit of an extremem render to get an aproximitly better result, still not perfect though.

Ok, I simply added a light to the scene and nothing else.

The resulting renders are as follows in the images.

Trev