Finally: TLHPro ready for order :)

[okafor]

Thomas,

Order in already! Heeehah!

cheers
Ikem

[ThomasHelzle]

Thank you! :beer:

But I didn't get a notification yet from ShareIt?
Did everything work alright?

Cheers,

[okafor]

Thomas,

Got a notification from Shareit. It confirmed my credit card ok. For now just waiting for all the background work before I get the download details :-).

cheers
Ikem

[ThomasHelzle]

Didn't you directly see a download screen after you ordered?

Hm - curious

Let me know if nothing arrives within the next hours...

Cheers! :wavey:

[AAAron]

Got a download screen directly after, you can count on my dongle nr in your letter box soon:) Just got to get to work first..

[Labuzz]

just ordered. Tky for your work Thomas!:)
waiting for the notification from share it.

[ThomasHelzle]

Thank you Borhan! :thumbsup:

Today is the day where ShareIt switches their role model from service provider to reseller. If I understand it correctly, it is a reaction to the complicated tax/VAT rules, especially in europe. It shouldn't influence the trade, but this sounds like a huge operation to me, so maybe allow them taking a bit longer than usual.

I hope everything goes smoothly :)

Best regards,

[ThomasHelzle]

Well, everything went well with ShareIt and it's changes, so there shouldn't be any problems if you order now.

If there are any questions, concerns or suggestions, please let me know! :thumbsup:

Best regards,

[ThomasHelzle]

There was a mistake in the content that comes with TLHPro. I've sent a little update to all current users and updated the File on ShareIt to "TLHPro 1.0.1.rar".
If you haven't got the update in your mail or don't get the above version if you order now, please let me know and I will send it to you.

I'm sorry for the inconvenience! :bowdown:

Best regards,

[AAAron]

Got it in the mail :D

[ThomasHelzle]

Great! If you find any other problem, please let me know. :thumbsup:

Cheers!

[AAAron]

Thomas I have a small question about the unfinished occlusion shader do it have a simple mode that just give a result similar to this:

http://www.maxon.net/pages/products/c4d/images/highlights/ar/ao_big_e.jpg

This is just of pure curiosity, I know it´s very uncertain if you will release it at all.

[ThomasHelzle]

Yes, that is what it does. :)

[ThomasHelzle]

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[Andreseloy]

Sorry many intents to download the pdf and at the end the rar file say:file corrupted.
Andreseloy

[ThomasHelzle]

Hm - strange, both links above work fine here.
What do you use for Rar extracting?
The files are compressed with Winrar: http://www.rarlab.com
Looks like either a problem with your connection or with your browser/download tool...
What are you using for that?

Anybody else had problems?

Cheers, :wavey:

[Wireframes]

TLHPro ordered this evening

License key send one hour later

Thanks Thomas :thumbsup:

[ThomasHelzle]

:bowdown: The pleasure is all mine ;)

Best regards!

[Andreseloy]

Now i have success downloading the pdf!

I will comment later

Thanks Thomas

Andreseloy

[ThomasHelzle]

Great that it worked out! Do you have any idea what the problem was?
Just curious ;)

Cheers,

[Andreseloy]

Thomas I think was the very low speed connection where im right now. Is my house in the mountain very far from my city house!
I am reading the doc, looks very interesting, i buyed messiah workstation year ago aprox and still learning things from the program.
Thanks for your interest in resolve my problem.
Andreseloy

[ThomasHelzle]

Okay, so it was probably nothing related to my end of the rope. :thumbsup:

I envy you for that house in the mountains.
While Berlin is a nice city, especially in spring, I would sometimes love to take some time off in the woods...

I hope everything will work fine for you from now on.

Cheers, :bowdown:

[ThomasHelzle]

I will be away from my computer for some days, so if you plan to buy TLHPro, better act today (friday 21. april) or wait until next wednesday.

Cheers,

[ThomasHelzle]

OK, I'm back ;)

What feature would you guys like to see next in TLHPro?
Ambient Occlusion, the Polygon mapping tools or Wireframe (or something else completely)?

After some crazy weeks of work, I may have a bit more time ahead (but you never really know as a freelancer...)

I personally tend to an early version of AO, including the "drawn" look, since is is missing completely from the messiah toolset, while everything else is more or less achievable by other tools. It isn't the fastest since the SDK only allows for raytracing the rays, but it isn't too bad either.

Let me know what you think.

Best Regards!

[AAAron]

AO :bounce: I want to make dirt together with AoN and displacement

[dobermunk]

I personally tend to an early version of AO, including the "drawn" look
I personally tend to agree with ya!
Both AO alone and those sketch-like experiments you showed would be great.

[Labuzz]

AO! sounds realy cool to me .:)

[ThomasHelzle]

Now that is a clear vote for AO so far :)

So I will devote my spare time to that - maybe the next SDK-patch will already allow for scanline-raytests to make the computation faster? That would be great.

Cheers! :bowdown:

[AAAron]

Any news on the AO front? :bounce:

[ThomasHelzle]

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[AAAron]

Looks great, can´t wait to play with it. It would be cool if Messiah get baking features in the future. Even if it´s slow is less noisy than using GI right?

[ThomasHelzle]

Yes, baking would be great! :thumbsup:

But no, it is not by default less noisy since it uses similar calculations, but normally you can use much more rays since it should be much faster (like in XSI) as MonteCarlo - it has way less to calculate.
Right now, it is similar or slower than messiahs very fast Monte Carlo. :-(

Let's see what later SDK versions will allow optimizationwise.

Cheers!

[stooch]

looks great.

[ThomasHelzle]

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[MoodyB]

Very nice Thomas :bounce:

[AAAron]

superb!:thumbsup:

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks :)

But I have to take back the "absolutely stable in animation" point: :( :banghead:
I rendered a test tonight where the camera is going around the whole spaceship thingy and that looks rather funny. Fact is, the strokes are stable in relation to the point on screen. That is great if only parts of the image are moving, but if everything is moving, it becomes rather distracting that the objects are "swimming through the strokes" - the eye has difficulties to follow.
I think I have to find a way to allow for UV-coordinates for the strokes so that they can be pinned to the object, not the rendered frame...
hm, tricky.

Cheers, :bowdown:

[Wireframes]

Cool thomas

Can't wait to test it :thumbsup:

Phil

[PaulNewman]

Nice doodles Thomas!

Personally I'd like fewer excuses and much more eye candy :scream:

Keep up the good work. :thumbsup:

[ThomasHelzle]

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[stooch]

TLHPRO ordered :) cant wait to play with my realflow meshes.

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

To all TLHPro and AoN:Studio customers:

With messiah 2.4d you can now have plugins in subdirectories under the messiah\plugins folder. While you can put the TLHPro and AoN:Studio plugins themselves into such a subfolder, you will still have to put the license files into the main plugin folder, otherwise the license isn't found!

Cheers,

[stooch]

Oh man, fast and sexy.

:)

http://www.stooch.net/gallery/d/1729-2/Image.jpg

[stooch]

One thing about the easy glass shader, Im having a tough time visualizing how the transparency settings work in conjunction with the reflectivity curve. It would be great to have some kind of visual reference to the actual curves those settings output. Or have a gradient type interface for those settings.

anyway im digging the supreme ease of use and the quality of the ouput! miles ahead of LW :)

[stooch]

Also, another question, how does the shader handle internal reflections?

[ThomasHelzle]

Looks great! :thumbsup:

Well, the messiah SDK currently allows for NO custom interface elements.
No Gradient, no Curves, no visual reference... :sad:
But if you use Bias/Gain more often, it will become second nature as it did for me. It is present in all AoN:Studio shaders as well...

As a workaround you can connect the output temporarily to the radiance input of your main material to see the gradient!

The docs about the Bias/Gain Shader have the visual curves - basically it is very similar to the Photoshop "Curves" filter.

But you don't have to use the Transparency/Reflection outputs of EasyGlass if you prefer Gradients (although you will not get as smooth a curve with a gradient). I just prefer it this way...

I don't use the transparency output in all cases, since the reflection is getting stronger on the edge, so transparency is reduced anyway. I just included it since some people like to have it.

You can also use SplineCurve if you need more detailed and visual settings.

As far as the internal reflections are concerned: the shader doesn't do that, it only is setting the values of the messiah material, so you still have to set your raydepth in messiah correctly and have to keep an eye at the Reflection and Refraction Thresholds in the settings tab - if they are set too high, you will loose the finer reflections/transparencies...

BTW. Your image seems to be broken?

Cheers, :bowdown:

[stooch]

here is an updated render:

http://www.stooch.net/gallery/d/1732-1/33Test1.jpg

[ThomasHelzle]

Cool!

But to emphasize this point once more since it is also related to your internal reflections question and people often seem to be unaware of it:
Glass/Water is nothing without environment!
There is nothing more boring then a mirror in an otherwise empty scene. ;)
So if you put some stuff in the scene you will get a more realistic rendering and more interesting reflections.

The main work with glass for me isn't the material itself, but getting interesting things to happen in the refraction and reflection (sure you need decently modeled objects too).

Cheers,

[stooch]

of course. thats pretty obvious, right now i have a gradient in my foreground and background. Im aware that it could be more interesting...

http://www.stooch.net/gallery/d/1735-1/33Test2.jpg

[rush123]

stooch,

Good to see others showing images, nice work.

"Glass/Water is nothing without environment!"

I didn’t realize how true that was until Thomas showed me in the ‘Easy Glass’ thread. It good to see others using TLHPro, there are some nodes in there especially the ‘Bias & Gain’ node which are great.

Thomas,

Anyway to nest your nodes in a folder or perhaps scroll bars on the node list, as it is a problem for people like me with AoN & TLHPro ?

Thanks

R

[ThomasHelzle]

Sorry, I can't do anything about the interface - the SDK is extremely limited in that regard and I am begging for years for submenues in the shaderlist already... - so the only way to see all shaders is, to throw out everything you don't use. Scripted shaders are the first choice, they are rather useless anyway. Some other shaders are seldom used too...

But the good news is that I am in contact with Taron about this topic and they are looking into solutions as we speak! But this seems to be rather involved, so you will have to be a bit patient...
Other areas would also profit from submenues, like the endless expression list...

Cheers, :bowdown:

[stooch]

Man i love the amount of activity lately! honestly, i have never seen so much progress in any program i use in such a short time period. And not just any arbitrary progress, but things that directly respond to what the users ask.

:)

[ThomasHelzle]

Question:
Does anyone still use something older than WinXP Sp2?

I want to port my development over to Visual C++ 2005 and AlexK had Problems with the plugin I compiled for him.
It works flawless here, and it didn't help to install the usual suspects like msvcr80.dll on his machine (which is still on XP SP1 :rolleyes: :p) .

If anyone has experience with this stuff and has any hints what could be wrong other than the missing Service Pack 2, I would the grateful!

Cheers,

Thomas :bowdown:

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[stooch]

so are you updating the TLHPro shaders ??? does that mean that we can download the new versions?

[ThomasHelzle]

No, that means that I am working on the shaders, developing them further, trying to find bugs by using them...
After that I will update the docs with the new stuff and then you will be able to download them.
I don't know when that will be.

Cheers :bowdown:

[Wireframes]

Cool

Thanks for your hard work Thomas. It seems you've fell in love with messiah again :applause:

Phil

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks for the kind words - I really appreciate your feedback.

Today I worked mostly on that glass scene from the EasyGlass thread and tried to get good quality colored glass with messiah and my tools. The modo absorption can be mostly simulated with TLHPro:Thickness and some tricks. I will post my results later.

And sure this leads to quite some new ideas for the Thickness Shader and EasyGlass. But since my back is well again, I will soon have to do some paying work again...
Well, "it is on the list" <LOL> The best saying ever ;)

Cheers!

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

Question to all TLHPro Users:

I was never too happy with the EasyGlass parameter naming for the Refraction.
Currently it is:
Refraction Incoming
Refraction Outgoing

To make it shorter and maybe clearer, I think about renaming them to:

Refraction Front
Refraction Back

Or:

Ior Front
Ior Back

(Ior stands for "Index of Refraction")

The two new parameters would be

Absorption Front
Absorption Back

What do you think: Should it stay how it is already with the long incoming and outgoing words or Is "Front" and "Back" for "Frontfacing Polygons" and "Backfacing Polygons" the better idea for a clearer interface?

Please everyone vote and maybe explain why (maybe my english is too limited to make the right choice)! :thumbsup:

EasyGlass with Absorption should soon go into Beta stage, and I think it makes most sense to have you all participate, even if there are no docs yet, but this parameter is so simple to use, you will not need one for your first tests.

Since this part is already finished, I will add the AO and Poly stuff later, since both need a bit more work.

Looking forward to your replies! :wavey:

Cheers!

[rush123]

My vote is for:

Ior Front
Ior Bac

along with some common values if possible :)

R

[ThomasHelzle]

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[Taron333]

Looks phenomenal, Dude! Absolutely great, Thomas! :thumbsup:

I havn't dealt with glas for a very long time, because I got so caught up with characters, skin, cloth sometimes, shells, metals, anything hard and pretty opaque. But seeing this great glas stuff of yours is brutally inspiring to play around with that more. I think I'm going to get Modo and...hahahahaha....kidding! I should show you guys ZbornToy very soon, if you want really fast glas renders, we're talking about a few seconds per frame. Looks fantastic, even with caustix, which add about 1 or 2 sec, well at higher resolutions up to 10sec per frame...well....I've never managed to have anything render for more than 30sec, including depth of field and such at 2k resolution.
Where the heck was I...
...ah yeah, glas, gotta play with it, too! Great stuff! I already bought your plugins and can't wait for the next update, then! ;)
In the meantime, once we're through with some of the big lists, we'll see about improving rendertimes on that stuff, too! :wip:

Thanx a lot, Thomas! Kick S stuff! :deal: :buttrock:

[PaulNewman]

I already bought your plugins and can't wait for the next update, then! ;)

I take it this was a private purchase and not pmG doing a buyout of TLHPro :scream:

[Taron333]

I take it this was a private purchase and not pmG doing a buyout of TLHPro :scream:

His stuff would be the first, that's for sure! But, no, it's privat and I would have wanted to give Thomas many times over what he's asking for! But if he was asking for many time more the money, I would have written the tools myself, of course...hahahahaa....but then I'd probably never have written those freaking unbelievable Help and Documentations of his. Not to mention that there's not really enough time to do all of that for me... ...but I will still do the tutorials, that's for sure...and lesser elaborate but still complete docs for my plugins, of course, too.

[Spin99]

Hey, what's going on with CGtalk? They seem to be in Maintenance mode all the time?Same problem last week.

I really noticed the eye candy on this thread :drool:

Modo watch out tlh glass is catching up on you.
Actually m such a better all round app, even the community..

[stooch]

haha, i wouldnt say its better since its in a different league. messiah is for animation and modo currently, is for print.

[ThomasHelzle]

How is modo doing with large renders (6000x6000, billions of polys)?

[stooch]

it takes some finesse but its not even scratching the surface :) im very impressed

[ThomasHelzle]

Hey guys,

I am very sorry that the EasyGlass Update/Beta with Absorption takes so long to surface.
I somehow managed to introduce a nasty bug when I restructured the shader lately and I have a hard time tracking it down.
Sometimes C just sucks :hmm: :banghead:
I hope to be able to squash it over the weekend!

Best regards and my apologies again :bowdown:

[ThomasHelzle]

The deeper I dive into this whole Glass-theme, the more I learn about the physically correct way of doing it in contrast to the original EasyGlass quick-and-dirty idea.

In reality, each light ray hitting a surface is split in two: a reflective and a refractive part. Depending on incidence-angle and material-change (for instance air-glass, glass-water, water-glass, glass-air) you get different amounts of reflection/refraction but they are always dependent on each other, since you can't reflect light that's gone inside the object.
Many materials and combinations have an angle where they become fully reflective so no more refraction (transparency) is happening.

I want to create the most useful and easy to use solution, so I will have to dive into those waters (pun intended) a bit more.
I am sorry for the delay, but the outcome should give us a much better and more realistic glass/liquid tool to work with.

I hope you can accept that. :bowdown:

[AAAron]

Take you time, I know it will be worth it! :thumbsup: But it´s always fun to see your test renderings while we are waiting. :bounce:

[ThomasHelzle]

:banghead: Argh... :banghead:

I finally found that bug in EasyGlass. It was so stupid that I could just sit down and cry :cry:

Ok, so I am finally back on target and will try to get this working as fast as possible. I have some new jobs coming in and would love to give you something to test before that.

:bounce: Man, what a relieve! :)

Cheers and thanks for your patience,

[ThomasHelzle]

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[dobermunk]

Wow, Thomas - this is impressive glass.

[ThomasHelzle]

Thank you! :bowdown:

I'm actually quite happy myself with the outcome. :bounce:
Currently it is too slow to be usable for real projects with my old machine, since you need crazy AA and shadow settings, but if the AA and the other transparency related stuff will be improved/fixed in later patches, I think messiah should be a cool renderer even for non-character work.

Cheers!

[stooch]

looking good, how do i go about getting the updates?

[chikega]

Very nice results Thomas - but I see what you mean about the small amount of noise in the glass itself, bummer. Hopefully, pmG will address that in future messiah updates.

[ThomasHelzle]

chikega: yeah, especially given the fact that this is AA 5x, which translates into 25 samples per pixel. I don't know what a shadow quality of 8 translates to, but if it is also squared that would be 64 samples per ray...

stooch: aren't you one impatient customer ;)
As I said before, as soon as the beta is in a state I find satisfying, I will send everybody who bought TLHPro a link to download it. But it is a beta, so all the usual precautions apply.
Be sure to keep the 1.0 plugin in a safe place in case you have to go back.
You can't use 1.0 and 1.1 at the same time, but old scenes should work.

Would you guys prefer to get the TLHPro Polygon node and the Ambient Occlusion also? They are much more "under construction" than EasyGlass with Absorption, which is almost finished, so they may change much more later and some modes aren't even implemented yet.
There would be no docs on them also.
The main docs will be updated after 1.1 is finished - the beta will only have some example scenes and a text file with the basics.

Does this answer your question?

Cheers,

[stooch]

lol im not impatient at all, take your time, i was just asking, not rushing you.

[ThomasHelzle]

Cool :thumbsup:

[Bill_nuts]

Wow Thomas

That is beautiful glass. Among the best tinted glass I've seen.

cheers
Bill.

[Gyuru]

looks nice Thomas. :thumbsup: Planning to pick up both AON and TLHPro here soon. ;)

[ThomasHelzle]

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[AAAron]

Wooha!! Thomas this is really great!! Now if PMG find out a way to speed up the renderings a bit they will have a stunning glass/liquid etc. renderer together with THL pro.

[stooch]

yeah, im definitelly looking to messiah as a liquid/glass solution, I notice that its much faster then modo when dealing with transparency. Seems to be easier to get to settings i like as well. Good stuff.

[ThomasHelzle]

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[Taron333]

...
This is a straight render without post. Rendertime ~6 hours on my P4 3.2 Ghz :sad:
Even with AA 5x, Threshold 0.005 and Shadow Quality 8 there is still too much noise through the glass. Hopefully later patches of messiah 2.4d can improve that...
1 Spotlight, one reflection plane with a "window cross" on it, otherwise black environment. No specular (I hate specular highlights more and more - they almost always look as fake as they in fact are...
With a HDRI environment it looked even better, but all the reflections were quite distracting.

Cheers,

I'd first want to address ~6 hours it took to render this, then maybe the grain is part of issue and vanishes with the solution...hehe. If not, it might be an idea to go the noise-reduction route, which might work really well...a type of targeted degraining. Unless it destroys other details, I think that would be a viable approach.

Aside from all of that...THOMASSSS!!! Brilliant GLASSSSSsss....I'm totally delighted to look at these truely exciting images! You should probably pop them right over to that other thread "show your pics!" or whatever you guys called it! I'll add some stuff to it, too, eventually...
Butch rocks, too...HAHAHA...I can never get him out of my head or my memories of the day he was conceived! Laugh at first sight! I would have used his flexing as a timing to animate his surface glossiness and probably transparency diffusion?
Just wonderful work!

THANK YOU so very much, Thomas! :bounce: :bounce: :applause: :applause: :applause: :thumbsup:

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks Taron! :bowdown: :bounce:

Looking more into that topic of Total Internal Reflections (TIR) made me find another problem in messiahs internals:
Each ray carries the value of the "current" Index of Refraction (IoR) with it. But the mechanism used for that is not accurate: When a ray hits a surface, _ineta contains the IoR of the last material surface it did hit. But this has to be handled differently, because with glass (any transparent material in fact), your ray is split in two: one part is reflected and one part is refracted, read: one ray stays inside the same material and IoR while the other one enters a new material. Only the ray going through the surface should change it's _ineta...!

I find more and more "layers" in this glass theme and in the end it may be the best to write a full glass material on my own that doesn't use the messiah material as a base. "RealGlass" could be a good name, and it could be a rater sophisticated material simulation with Complex IoR and more pointed towards photorealism...

But first I will try to make EasyGlass as complete as possible - Almost there...

Cheers,

[ThomasHelzle]

Ooops - double post - CGtalk was going in maintainance mode once more right when I did hit the submit button. What's up with all that maintainance and backup lately? :shrug:

[PaulNewman]

The non-Photoshop version looks great to me. The best Zbrush sword I've seen!

Thomas, you seem to be getting in really deep into your shader and messiah lately. I'm really keen to see what you're going to deliver as you increase momentum and go even deeper.

:thumbsup:

Aren't you starting to neglect XSI?

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks Paul :bowdown:

I think I should add that the sword took only 1:30 minutes for the initial creation of the subdivision depth of 60! That is a lot of polys to deal with... :thumbsup:

Yeah, that could happen. I already decided to keep my XSI shaders inhouse for different reasons. One of them being that lately I learned that Mental Images has some new shader technology "on the verge of releasing" since 2005, so it makes no sense to invest a lot of work if tomorrow something completely different may come up to render it obsolete.
This also looks like the reason for the shader tree and nodes in XSI being so boring and feeling completely abandoned and loveless.
And while I use AoN|XSI and a Mixer and Material of my own creation almost exclusively, somehow MentalRay doesn't inspire me to code for...
messiah is fun :)

Cheers

[ThomasHelzle]

Double Post again...

Man - what's up with CGtalk? The same happened, when pressing Save Changes, I was told it is in maintainance or backup mode and later the post was doubled...
Weird.

[PaulNewman]

Double Post again... I was told it is in maintainance or backup mode and later the post was doubled...
Weird.

Obviously they duplicate your message as part of their backup policy with regards to posts by valuable contributors such as yourself, Thomas.

Of course posts made by wannabe's never get the same exclusive double redundancy backup treatment.

You may then ask why Taron's posts are never duplicated . . . CGTalk backup glitch, that's all.

[ThomasHelzle]

hahahahaha - you made my day >LOL< :thumbsup: :cool:

[ThomasHelzle]

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[chikega]

Beautiful glass sword, Thomas! :thumbsup:

[ThomasHelzle]

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[Tama]

Absolutely gorgeous! One of the more interesting renders I've seen recently including the ones coming out of the modo.

:thumbsup:

[Spin99]

Looks highly promising Thomas :thumbsup:
Thanks for sharing!

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[Parsec3d]

What can I say,, Thomas Laws Rule!

[chikega]

Beautiful Thomas, just beautiful! :thumbsup:

[numberEleven]

Hey, that diagonal stroke effect looks really cool! It reminds me of a specific sort of imagery you might see in an illustrated book, could be a really interesting look for a someone's short!

You have so much energy to put into describing and working on the shader side of studio, you SHOULD get at least considered to contract for helping out with pmg's docs! ( You'd definately add some steam to their workflow.) They have had pretty decent update consistency, fixing and adding stuff with what seems like slowly building momentum. If they dont invite you to help with the shader/render side of the docs, you ought to ask them if they would need someone like that, it might be fun work!

Of course, you might not want to involve yourself outside of controlling your own plugs, and they might not want to let yet another person inside what has long been there own private piece of art/code. (which is understandable.)

Nice work!

-Garin

[ThomasHelzle]

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[Wireframes]

Wonderful job Thomas :thumbsup:

[stooch]

you know. that balls remder is really cool, probably one of my favorite ones. but i would love to see some kind of depth to it. maybe more scattering? ie, making it harder to see the deeper balls get and tinting things as well.

looks cool though.

dont forget about liquids when you work on the glass too, cant wait to play with the updates on some of my sims... speaking of sims, i keep on getting sidetracked from making more of them. :-|

[Gyuru]

looks quite nice :)

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[Spin99]

You can do it THomas :thumbsup:

[ThomasHelzle]

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[chikega]

The MentalRay rendering is very nice ... fast and no noise whatsoever. Hopefully pmG is dutifully figuring out why there's stippling/noise in its glass renders even at Level 6 AA. Good job, Thomas! Looking forward to trying some of this stuff out. :)

I really like that last image ... the pattern is very interesting, but the material looks like Porcelain, very nice ... are you using SSS on the last image?

[Taron333]

Yeah, well, we even know why this is happening, but need to find the most appropriate solution. I can tell you what the issue is, if you like... (in a nutshell of course):

color values above 1.0 go out of the range of normal 8bit images, but neither 16bit nor floating point need to have a problem with that. If the AA clips those values to figure out the proper supersampling result for 8bit images it will look fine on the monitor and on those 8bit images, but the floating point images will be essentially wrong.

The solution to this that I believe would be best is, if there was either a choice to clip and solve for 8bit, or an automatic detection of the output format and a proper correction without the user having to make a choice.

It all sounds almost easy, but it actually is quite tricky in a few different ways...not to be underestimated! When I first solved it for the HDRI stuff it turned out to cause other troubles. It was kind of beautiful, because it would always retain the actual color of the clipped values without compromising the gradient. But then....it kinda did...what shall I say. Strange stuff....so well...it's in our heads and we're working it out.

I like the bubbleball still better than the xsi render...hihihi....had to say it! ;)

[chikega]

Thanks Taron for being the voice of pmG - it's nice to know that you guys are aware and are on top of the situation. :)

[ThomasHelzle]

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[Spin99]

Moh candy moh candy :D

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[rush123]

Hey thanks Thomas :)

downloading as I type.

R

[ThomasHelzle]

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[lanosrep1]

Wow.. looks great!.. Love to see that image with a more standard shadow.. just for comparison.. So this solves the issues you were seeing (dark, sharp edges)..?

[PaulNewman]

Thomas, that looks amazing!

I see you really cranked up the AA settings. It all looks really smooth. I second lanosrep1's request for a normal render just for comparison. But I like the effect very much! I notice there's still a dark contact shadow under the dragon. Is that separate from the bright orange shadow?

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[chikega]

Looking sweet Thomas - can't wait to give it a test drive! Vroom vroom!!!

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks Gary!
The mail to your other adress is underway :thumbsup:

I found the first problem with the 1.1 Beta: When rendering MetaBlob-Particles with EasyGlass, messiah first eats away all available memory and then just dies.
I don't understand exactly why this happens, but part of it seems to be that Blobs don't have a backside.

I will investigate further.

Cheers,

[svintaj]

Thomas, can you exaggerate the absorption-effect?
So the suface goes from clean-transparent to a dark-saturated core?
It would be cool to see!

Can Messiah API recognize wich side of a doublesided polygon who is the "right side"?
Lightwave can't, so in LW I have to do a experimental calculation to "guess" if the ray hits the inside or the outside of an object!

/ Svante

[ThomasHelzle]

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[svintaj]

sure, you can do what you want with it :-)

It uses an exponential falloff (Beers Law), so the curve raises fast first and then goes closer and closer to 1 without ever reaching it...

What you want can be achieved easily with a TLHPro: Thickness node, since that uses linear falloff.
Well the best and fastest (for me) would be to control the absorption with a gradient.


So instead, I took a very straightforward and simple approach: I created the rule that - mostly as in real life - Rays that hit the surface where the poly normals are pointing in the more or less opposite direction of the ray is "outside" and the other case is "backside" or inside.

That's a good rule, but then you must do your own raytracing, to know when the ray hits the backside, or use an additional object with flipped normals, right?
Or can a ray hit a "singlesided-polygons-backside" in Messiah API?

/ Svante

[ThomasHelzle]

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[svintaj]

I don't think I get what you're after... :shrug:

Cheers,

If you hit the backside of a doublesided polygon, which of the two normals do Messiah then return"? In LW you always get the normal of the back-side(the made up normal) :banghead: ... and because of that the obvious method/rule you described isn't simple to implement! So I'm hoping for a better solution in Messiahs API! :thumbsup:

/ Svante

[ThomasHelzle]

Ah! Now I understand!

Yes, before 2.4 I had to compute the normals myself from the original polygons to get the unaltered normal - that was slower and more prone to errors but worked already quite nicely.

Since 2.4, there is a new switch shader_globals->hit_backDS that tells you if you are hitting a front or backside, before 2.4 there was only hit_back and that worked only for rays you did send out yourself, so it was pretty useless most of the time.

But for LW 9 there is a Front/Back node already if you are on the Beta...
(we're allowed to talk about it now I think...)

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

A simple test render using TLHPro EasyGlass, RayType and Ambient Occlusion.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/SASHOF/cscg.jpg
640x480
30min04sec Render Time
3 sphere lights (1 with shadow)
no GI
kitchen HDR probe for reflection environment

I overcranked the shadow value through a RayType node to get the illumination effect on the ground.

Thanks to Thomas for some technical support! :thumbsup:

[svintaj]

shader_globals->hit_backDS that tells you if you are hitting a front or backside...
But for LW 9 there is a Front/Back node already if you are on the Beta...

Cool so Messiah can do it!! :thumbsup: Thanks for the info!
I haven't upgade to LW[9], but that was great news!

/ Svante

[ThomasHelzle]

Do you use Diffuse on those objects? For fully transparent Glass, I turn down Diffuse to zero mostly -> Light that goes through something can't be diffused, otherwise you return more light than you got from the scene.

For realistic scenes, it is very important to understand that in reality there are only two things: reflection and transparency. What we call diffuse is basically a very unsharp (therefore diffuse) reflection. So if a light ray hits a surface, it can either be reflected or it can go into the material (being absorbed or going through it). If you have reflections at 100%, there is NO diffuse reflection left, since all the light is sharply reflected already.
The same is important for transparent stuff: if your light ray goes into the material, because it is transparent, it can't be reflected anymore.

This is the core of all the talk about physical correct rendering like in maxwell or partly in modo: If your incoming light ray has a strength of 1.0, this can be split into reflections and transparent parts, but the total sum can't be more than 1.0, but normally is even lower, since stuff absorbs light (things lying in the sun get hot - that is absorbed light energy).

Also, when you use HDRIs and reflections, I would turn off specular - they are only faked reflections in the end....
If that all isn't the reason for the overbright spots, I would maybe turn down either the reflection in EasyGlass or the HDRI itself...

Otherwise it looks cool! :thumbsup:

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

Otherwise it looks cool! :thumbsup: For this render that's all I wanted - something cool. I can't remember my settings right now. All the energy in and on the glass is probably over the top for anything realistic, but that wasn't my aim. :p

[ThomasHelzle]

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[ThomasHelzle]

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[benytone]

hi Thomas

nice Material-Shader, nice render http://elouai.com/images/yahoo/04.gif
well done dude :thumbsup:

.

[chikega]

Very easy to see the absorption effect in these latest renders ... very nice, Thomas! :)

[stooch]

Ah! Now I understand!

Yes, before 2.4 I had to compute the normals myself from the original polygons to get the unaltered normal - that was slower and more prone to errors but worked already quite nicely.

Since 2.4, there is a new switch shader_globals->hit_backDS that tells you if you are hitting a front or backside, before 2.4 there was only hit_back and that worked only for rays you did send out yourself, so it was pretty useless most of the time.

But for LW 9 there is a Front/Back node already if you are on the Beta...
(we're allowed to talk about it now I think...)

Cheers,

yeah i did extensive tests with that node. i gotta say, it works alright but a pain in the ass to setup. i prefer easy glass because...well... its easy lol

sorry im a too busy to do some tests btw, its definitelly on my to do list.

thanks to you thomas, messiah has some of the best glass i have ever seen :)

will have to do some liquid tests ;)

[ThomasHelzle]

stooch: Can RealFlow do Air Bubbles?
I would like to demonstrate how that looks from underwater, but they are hard to model by hand - rather weird shapes. If RF can do it and you find some time, I would really appreciate it.

Thank you! :thumbsup:

[stooch]

well realflow doesnt render anything. what i would do is generate another emitter that will mix with the liquid emitter and make it more sparse and lighter so that the particles behave realistically (maybe add some turbulence, they dont have to collide with the water particles).

then i would use hypervoxels to generate the random sized bubbles based on particles.

i guess in messiah you would need to generate the particles with an emitter and make sure that it doesnt go above of the water and then use ball instances and shade them with your shader...

[ThomasHelzle]

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[stooch]

yeah you can do that. that would require more complex simulation but the workflow would go something like this:

first you need a field of particles that represent the solid water volume, doesnt have to be high res, just heavy particle settings (Density).

then you need another emitter, you would emit much much lighter particles, they represent air. you will want to emit them out of a circular surface, in bursts. then you can add a surface tension daemon to the water and the air particles, you want to make sure that the blobs stay somewhat together (setting higher external pressure might help as well). I find that real flow isnt so accurate to give you the speed you expect sometimes, so i would even help the bubbles by applying a vertical force to help them along, a turbulence field will give your bubbles taht wobble as they move up through it.

so yeah its totally feasible to simulate this.

you can even generate mesh of the bubbles subtractively AND generate uv maps for the air bubbles or generate separate mesh for the air altogether. the cool thing about realflow is that they bubbles will actually disturb the surface!

also, i think it might be possible to generate those bubbles without a water medium at all, through creative emitters and force daemons (for under water shots)

I looked at the blender examples and i can tell you that realflow is in a different league...

i was going to do simulations to test your shaders anyway so ill do one for bubbles as well :)

[rush123]

I’ve found a bit of time today to do a quick test with TLHPro 1.1 update in particular the absorption feature. I’ve been testing a rather simple scene (I like simple!) Many thanks to Thomas for his update.


http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/5464/absorptiontestbasicshader049qg.th.jpg (http://img223.imageshack.us/my.php?image=absorptiontestbasicshader049qg.jpg)

R

[Doug Macary]

Hey Thomas!

Just bought TLH Pro! My question is this: What is a typical setup for ambient occlusion?

Thanks

Doug Macary

[PaulNewman]

I’ve found a bit of time today to do a quick test with TLHPro 1.1 update in particular the absorption feature. I’ve been testing a rather simple scene (I like simple!) Many thanks to Thomas for his update.Cool test! Why do the edges close to the corners appear less transparent?

[rush123]

Cool test! Why do the edges close to the corners appear less transparent?

Cheers Paul,

Funny you asked the question, because Blackbrd on irc asked the exact question. The layman’s answer is, it was a very late night ‘node link fumble’ which has now been corrected (I think!)

http://img90.imageshack.us/img90/3020/absorptiontestbasicshader102hn.th.jpg (http://img90.imageshack.us/my.php?image=absorptiontestbasicshader102hn.jpg)

<edit> I’m only using color at this stage as noted by Thomas below. My shaderflow is as follows.

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/2945/shaderflowarbs5oy.th.jpg (http://img222.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shaderflowarbs5oy.jpg)

[ThomasHelzle]

rush123:
You are still using absorption only, like in the scene you sent me, do you? So we don't see transparency or glass but only exponential thickness used as color here, right?
I want to prevent confusion for others seeing this...

It is cool if people post results here, I love it :thumbsup: , but maybe explain what you are doing to inspire others with unintended but creative uses and putting things into context ;)

Doug Macary:
Hm - not sure if I understand you question right, but here it goes anyway:

1.) "In-Picture-Use":
For stills, it often makes sense to put Ambient Occlusion directly onto your objects to emphasize cavities and give them more depth.
For stylized rendering you can also use AO as your main "shading power" -> I often use brightly, rather uniformly lit objects with AO as the only shadows in my illustration work.
Another typical use I need almost daily is, to have a custom material on the floor and only put AO into the radiance in. So you can render non-shaded backgrounds and floors in white (f.i. for print) while objects still have nice contact shadows.
For architectural scenes, AO is perfect to add those nice little contact shadows to table legs and other objects.
As long as you remember that it is a fake, you can use it for everything you see fit. ;)

There are endless options to set it up, but one of the most common for normal materials is, to connect AO to the diffuse input of your main material. Set Color A in the AO node to the highest value you want your diffuse to reach and Color B to black or a dark grey.
You can even use negative colors for extreme effects.

The even more flexible way to set it up, is using a custom material as base node, connect a TLHPro: Merger to it's radiance input. and then connect a messiah Matte Shader or Basic Shader to the Background input of the merger and a TLHPro: Occlusion shader to the Foreground input.
Now you have very fine control over your result with the 25+ merge modes and a texturable merge amount...

In the end, you can apply AO to everything you see fit: Control the Reflection amount in cavities to be lower (where dirt gathers), change the translucency there or the color... or make them glow in the dark ("Lava Cracks").

I see it more as a kind of "mask" for concave detail...

2.) "Ambient Occlusion Pass":
If you need more flexibility in post, it may be more comfortable to render a separate AO Pass. The fastest way to set this up I know is, to put all objects you want to render with AO into one messiah render group and apply a custom material to the group. Connect an AO node to the Radiance in of the material and adjust the settings so they fit to your scene and intended look.
You may want to put all other objects into a group with a 100% white material (TLHPro: Color set to white connected to the Radiance in of another custom material, applied to the group).
Render this out and apply it in your compositor of choice on top of the beauty pass. Most of the time it is applied with multiply, since this mode basically leaves white areas alone (multiply with 1.0) and darkens areas where the AO pass is darker.
In this setup, you can control the intensity of the AO afterwards without re-rendering, or mask areas out etc.

If this wasn't the question, please be more specific what you want to do.

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

Hey Thomas, I personally think your shaders rock and so does your involvement on the forum!

Your posts are helping me A LOT to learn more. Thanks for taking the time explaining things to us. Thanks also for great render tests and descriptions. I'm already using TLHPro to improve my work.

The messiah forum is lately buzzing with people doing tests and posting renders (and bugs) and I think that's fantastic and I think a great thanks is due to you!

Keep up the good work, mate! :thumbsup:

[ThomasHelzle]

Thank you very much Paul! :bowdown:

And thank you rush123 for your edit. This way, it is way more instructive to people, before it was more like the unlabeled buttons in messiah we all love so much ;)

It is a pleasure to me, to work for and with this friendly community :thumbsup: :bounce:

Best regards,

[Doug Macary]

Just the kind of answer that I was hoping for!
You could teach this stuff!
Thanks much Thomas!

Doug Macary

[ThomasHelzle]

Cool I could help!

The updated docs will contain this info in a bit more depth and with some examples. I just need a break right now, after all the work on TLHPro and some illustration jobs...

Just something I forgot to explain in the Beta docs textfile (thanks rush123):
Absorption is measured in the direction of the rays. Those "measuring rays" use the same refraction values as you have set in the EasyGlass interface. So if you use only the absorption, it will still be measured in the direction of the refracted rays, even if you didn't connect refraction.
If you don't want that, just set both incoming and outgoing refraction to 1.0 - then the absorption will be measured in view direction from the camera.

Cheers,

[ThomasHelzle]

I seem to have my lucky weekend:

- If I set Soft Transparency on a glass object (with or without EasyGlass) to anything other than 0.0, transparency is disabled and I get a non-transparent rendering? Huh?
It seems to only work on the preview sphere here. Weird.
I wanted to try how it looks with EasyGlass...
Another feature for RealGlass I guess.

Has anyone found a solution to this?

- The bug with Particles when rendered as transparent Blobs is also available without EasyGlass. Everything is going fine until a seemingly random area in the image is hit. Then suddenly rendering hangs and TaskManager shows messiah eating all available memory quite fast until it crashes.
It seems you can only render them as non transparent... :(

- After fiddling with Speed Hazer for an hour and then some, I got nothing reliable that I was able to understand. I looked through the threads here and followed all the guides, but this shader isn't available to my brain - or doesn't do what I want. :banghead:
Maybe it is time to reanimate my 1998 Cinema 4D V.5 Clouds and Haze Shader? I also had a funny, cheap to render faked cigarette smoke shader back then...
So many ideas, so little time ;)

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

Maybe it is time to reanimate my 1998 Cinema 4D V.5 Clouds and Haze Shader? I also had a funny, cheap to render faked cigarette smoke shader back then...
So many ideas, so little time ;)Cheers,Thomas is . . . smokin'

[ThomasHelzle]

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[rush123]

Hahaha - not really ;)

Inspired by rush123's tests with objects inside objects, I tried the following image:



I’ve never been someone’s inspiration before! :) Anyway I whipped up a kind of ‘wood tile’ using ray marching in Speed Hazer and I’ve attached the shaderflow which might help you Thomas with your Speed Hazer studies :)


Note colours are a bit distorted because of jpeg etc

PS : Give us a hint about what’s hidden?

R

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/5685/shtile6nm.th.jpg (http://img156.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shtile6nm.jpg)

http://img419.imageshack.us/img419/508/shtileshaderflow8cb.th.jpg (http://img419.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shtileshaderflow8cb.jpg)

[svintaj]

BTW. In this image a hint on something cool is hidden - Who is able to point it out?


Well I think I can see a face similar to your avatar and with Hair!
But I'm a bit drunk for the moment:beer: yes really :p
What can I win, a free TLHP?:p
Good Night!:wavey:

/ Svante

[Parsec3d]

well I too can see a face reflected there but i have to admit that I too have been on the party mood all this weekend ,, so...

[PaulNewman]

BTW. In this image a hint on something cool is hidden - Who is able to point it out?Your ship's propeller, perhaps?

[ThomasHelzle]

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[Spin99]

BTW. In this image a hint on something cool is hidden - Who is able to point it out?Smoke? :curious:

Simply amazing stuff Thomas?

Any case, I've been thinking about getting some eye candy going using Renderman, or more specifically the Gelato renderer. I've been thinking of the classic "Glass with drink (liquid)" render :D

So, I just wanted to ask for tips on what materials to use if it's OK.
For the glass it's obvious, just not using Easyglass 'cause I'm not using Messiah this time (yet?). But can I have any generic advice on what material to use for the liquid?

Cheers,
--JC

[ThomasHelzle]

Hi Spin,

I am neither familiar with renderman nor gelato, so I can't give any advise at all.
But I am sure renderman is capable of doing everything that messiah can and more, there sure are a lot of internet resources for it - gelato I have no clue about.

It boils down to something very simple:
Every clear transparent substance is the same. There is no difference between glass, water, whiskey and diamond in the basic principles. Refraction is different between them, since it is determined by the density of the matter through which the light is traveling (the more dense, the more slowing down the light). But other than that, it is all the same.

So you have to see if you can find shaders that allow for absorption, TIR and the other phenomena that make EasyGlass look like it does, but from there it is just entering the correct refraction values and tweaking the look until you like it.

All the liquids in this thread use the same shader as the glass...

Cheers,

[chikega]

That's very cool Thomas - varying the Translucency using the Turbulence Procedural in additive mode. :thumbsup: A pattern of procedural dots would show this to great effect as well.

[ThomasHelzle]

Ahem - I was using Refraction not Translucency ...
Or did I get you wrong? ;)

BTW. The beta is out for some time now: did anyone encounter any problems, errors or illogical stuff?

So far I have the following feature/wishlist:

- A dropdown for common refraction values in EasyGlass.

- Help and About buttons like in AoN, to directly open the docs and see the used version.
(I'm still not sure how to best approach the Help thing, because of the new PDF format. )

- Finally delivering a bunch of presets, even if they are not as universal as with AoN, because of their quite specific nature...

- And sure, bringing the PDF docs up to 1.1...

I would be thankful for some feedback!

Cheers,

[Spin99]

Thomas

Thanks for the wise words and excuse the newbness :D
I'm just having fun playing with glass but nothing much to show at this stage.

Actually I don't think I'll post here since it's the messiah forum.
But there's something about glass that just really does for me.

I'm really enjoying this thread. Could it be the bling factor???

[ThomasHelzle]

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[chikega]

I love Silo ... can't wait for Silo2! :) Thanks for the link to TopMod, Thomas ... very interesting manifold modeler.

And that's a beautiful glass rendering ... very hypnotic! :thumbsup: The SSS effect enhances the glass very nicely. I wasn't able to get SSS to work with Transparency. But maybe EasyGlass is able to work around this. I would love to see the shader flow.

[PaulNewman]

I have no words for this render . . . :thumbsup:

Really, no words.

[dobermunk]

Great renders! You should send them to topmod as well. I'm sure they'd be delighted!
edit: the guy in the videos is great! I'll definitely check this modeler. Might be neat for arabesques!

[ThomasHelzle]

Thank you very much Gary! :bowdown:

Yes, the Silo 2 preview posted on another thread here really made me look at this tool again. Basically I am set for modeling with XSI, but the life UV unwrapping, the displacement painting and some other cool details made me finally buy it before the price raises to - still very reasonable - 159.- Dollar when Silo 2 is released.

The shaderflow is extremely simple - just EasyGlass 1.1 in default settings connected to Reflection, Transparency, Refraction and Transparency Tint (for the Absorption effect).

I always have Diffuse at 0.0 or slightly above for clear glass, since the light goes into and through the glass or is clearly reflected so there isn't much diffusely reflected light left. The surface color is set to a dark orange for Transparency Tint to work it's magic with Absorption.

Then I did raise the SSS setting, but didn't bother long with it - I just wanted a bit of "inner glow" in the glass. What isn't working for you with Transparency and SSS?
I never gave it much of a tryout, basically just enabled it :-)

Here is the shaderflow - very basic really, mostly using defaults:

http://www.screendream.de/stuff/Schleife_Material_ScreenShot.jpg

Edit: Thank you Paul and David. Sending this to the TopMod Guys is a good idea actually :)

Best regards,

[AAAron]

Thanks for the info Thomas. I was playing with the new easy glass yesterday, and was wondering what to connect the absorption output too, now I know. Really nice render BTW!!

[ThomasHelzle]

AAAron: You're welcome ;-) :bowdown:

Didn't I mention that connection in the Beta_Documentation.txt? Silly me ...
This is the most important thing to know actually >LOL<

Be sure to have a look at the new example scenes also.

Best regards,

[Andreseloy]

I get yesterday my TLHPro is fantastic!
This shaderflow will help tons to begin using it!
Congratulations Thomas
Andreseloy

ps:this message from remote site

[AAAron]

Didn't I mention that connection in the Beta_Documentation.txt? Silly me ...
This is the most important thing to know actually >LOL<

Of course you did, it´s all there. Just missed it :P

[ThomasHelzle]

Thank you Andreseloy!
Cool it works for you :)
I whish you a lot of fun with the shaders!

AAAron: well, I'm growing older by the minute and it becomes more and more common that I forget something. :rolleyes: ;)
If anything else is unclear, please speak up!!!

Cheers,

[freeschwag]

Thomas, some fine stuff you have there!

My guess on your hidden thingy in your renderings is it's a Salvador Dali image...
either "The Persistence of Memory" or "Le grand masturbateur" :D

cheers.

[xtrm3d]

the bottome one is exelent ..
sory , i am not able to apreciate the technical value of the work that went into this picture .. but the artistic result is gorgeous !!
now imagine this orange stuff siting on your desk , as a piece of heavy glass.. that would be cool

[PaulNewman]

13:15 hours on a P4 3.2Ghz with 2 Gig of Ram. Adaptive AA Level 3, Threshold 0.05. Raydepth 6. 10 Subdivisions on the mesh (Pre-Generated Polygons).
One directional light, no shadows.OK, after some time thinking about this fabulous render, I finally have words... Thomas, I'm really stunned by the image quality of this render. What strikes me is just how clean the render is at AA Level 3. If I'm not mistaken, many of your previous renders on this thread were done using much higher AA, no? So is this an improved EasyGlass or what?

[ThomasHelzle]

Hahaha, Salvadore Dali - not bad ;)

Thanks to everyone for the nice words :-)

well, since nobody yet came close to the solution other than Paul who has an advantage of knowing it already: The "hidden" cool thing is AA 3 producing a clean rendering with HDRI environments. I don't think I spill too much if I say that after my repeated rumblings on the forum, Taron fixed the AA bug and made a beta version available to me, although I no longer take part in the beta testing group.

So all who suffer from the badly broken AA in 2.4d can relax, help is coming! :thumbsup:
I don't know when though.

Now I hope I didn't brake the NDA with this >LOL< otherwise I am doomed... :eek:

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

well, since nobody yet came close to the solution other than Paul who has an advantage of knowing it already: The "hidden" cool thing is AA 3 producing a clean rendering with HDRI environments.All I'll say is Taron listened to the problem (thanks also to Thomas' persistence) and pmG came through, something for which I'm thankful, to say the least, since I would not have been able to render this project with that AA problem. But since the fix...what a pleasure :thumbsup: Clean rendering.

It seems that pmG does lurk on these forums. At times I scroll to the bottom of the page where it tells you which members are now online and then I run across one of them.

Keep up the render tests, and if you have a project not tied by NDAs, why not run a WIP on this forum? :)

[ThomasHelzle]

This has nothing to do with NDAs, but with the fact that I don't use messiah for anything but shader development.
Other than you, I don't trust this software for real work. I had too many and too bad experiences in the past. There are way too many basic things missing, broken or only half done. So there would be massive changes needed to make me want to try it again for anything serious.

I personally drew a different sum from the issues you encountered in your project. For me it was cool to help you out, but in my own work, I need something that doesn't brake down every half meter or so.

And I don't believe this situation to change without the injection of serious money and manpower into the project.

Sorry for the negative air, but I really wish something would happen to finally brake that endless spell.

Best regards,

[PaulNewman]

Other than you, I don't trust this software for real work. I had too many and too bad experiences in the past. There are way too many basic things missing, broken or only half done. So there would be massive changes needed to make me want to try it again for anything serious.

I personally drew a different sum from the issues you encountered in your project. For me it was cool to help you out, but in my own work, I need something that doesn't brake down every half meter or so.

And I don't believe this situation to change without the injection of serious money and manpower into the project.My conclusion is that messiah can be used for certain projects IF you are willing to take your lumps, endure patiently, ask for help, speak to pmG, etc. Most people are not prepared for this, or even if you are, many factors may prevent you from doing it - like a client or you are just plain sick and tired of struggling. So in this I must agree with Thomas, although I am still positive. Make sense? Perhaps I'm a sucker for punishment...

As for messiah needing investment and manpower for these things to change . . . yes, true. At the current rate of change most people here have been stretched to the extreme in their patience. This does not make messiah bad, just slow at getting to be where we all see and want it.

[ThomasHelzle]

Removed ...

[rush123]

Hey Thomas,

Cool example :) incidentally did you subd the mesh before export out of blender? Also the fluids in blender has been updated in the last 3 or 4 days which is purported to addresses the problem you mentioned.

R

[ThomasHelzle]

I didn't subd the mesh - why? Should I?

With update, you mean in the nightly builds? The official build is still 2.42a AFAIK?

(And this scene is already some weeks old...)

Thanks for any further insights you gathered in your own tests if you feel like sharing!

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

Amazing water render, Thomas. :thumbsup: Sheds light on what's possible with Blender...

[rush123]

Thomas, I did do some testing with Blender fluids before as you know and on the whole happy with the results but found the mesh produced to be a little coarse. But as I stated a new build has addressed that and added more features to fluids, though I haven’t had time to try it yet. But the build note says;

“isosurface subdivision: directly creates a finer surface mesh from the simulation data.
this increases simulation time and harddisk usage, though, so be careful - usually values of 2-4 should be enough.”

http://projects.blender.org/pipermail/bf-blender-cvs/2006-November/007948.html

Some of my findings were to subsurf the mesh before export out of Blender, select the fluids mesh in your viewport and control + 3 (1 to 6). Be warned that your export file can become very large and I hit the Messiah .obj size import limit.

Also I raise the ‘resolution’ from its standard 50 to something higher; I think I just doubled it.

R

[ThomasHelzle]

Paul: yeah, the potential is really amazing.

Rush123: Thanks a lot. I looked into the CVS release and they really did change some things, but this mesh is already done with a resolution of 256!
Now I tried the newest build but I haven't found it to do anything different as far as the stepping at the bottom is concerned.
To me it looks as if the volume (I made it as small around the water tank as possible) is divided by a regular grid, the slightly angled floor therefore shows a classical case of "aliasing".
Subd afterwards wouldn't really help in this case, the steps are too pronounced. I guess with doubling the resolution the steps become half-sized and at one point invisible, but that solution will become too slow for my machine. :-(

Cheers!

[ThomasHelzle]

Hi,

I want to wish all the users of AoN:Studio and TLHPro a great all-new 2007 :thumbsup:
May your endeavors prosper and flourish :wavey:

I have a big nice job coming in (funny enough it will eventually be done in Cinema 4D, the software I started doing serious CG with 10 years ago LOL - Now I have to re-buy it... weird), so my presence here will be very sparse, but don't ever hesitate to send me an email if you are stuck with using the shaders or find bugs.
Direct email is definitely the best choice, since I am no longer receiving the messiah mailinglists.

And thank you guys for your fantastic feedback and support!

Best regards,

[stooch]

no xsi? sounds like a motion project hehe. ive been getting into motion alot lately and thats the favorite program in that field.

Speaking of TLHPRO, im about to do a project with messiah and your glass shader, for ABC no less. you know that ubiquitous glass ball ABC logo ? heh... i have to redo it and messiah fits the bill.

[ThomasHelzle]

Yeah, motion graphics - it is a series of short videos about basic sailing rules and principles for the America's Cup :-)

ABC - not bad :) All the best for your project then. :thumbsup:

Cheers!

[AAAron]

Thomas and Stooch good luck with your projects!

And Thomas, I took the c4d train and bought it for the current project I´m on. From the begining it was sketch and toon that made my decision. Anyway the app is simply amazing in the last revision really loving it.

But I´m still using messiah for GI stuff since I didn´t buy the AR module straight away and it´s more fun to play with nodes than layers. :)

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks AAAron!

Yeah, the shading in Cinema feels quite old fashioned after using messiah, LW9 and XSI (it hasn't changed much from back when I used C4D versions 4-6).
But I asked maxon support about it and got the answer that they are looking into implementing nodes in the next version (11). I just hope they look at messiah and LW for the nodes implementation rather than at the dumb single-output ones in XSI ;)

Sketch and Toon looks very nice, MoGraph is amazing, and the Hair is the fastest I've seen so far. For our project, especially the fantastic AfterEffects support, native Flash export and PC/Mac availability combined with ease of use made the difference.

I did shaders and plugins for C4D back in version 5 (Cellshader, Cloud & Haze, Droplet) when there was only scripting - they were the first commercial plugins I ever did - so maybe I will have a look at the SDK once again...

Cheers and all the best wishes for the new year 2007!

:bowdown:

[rush123]

Happy New Year to you Thomas, thanks for AoN & TLHPro, good luck wih your project.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/7946/example05rq2.th.png (http://img177.imageshack.us/my.php?image=example05rq2.png)
Made with Easyglass, Occlusion, and Distance nodes (THLPro)

R

[ThomasHelzle]

Thanks rush123!

Your experiments look great :thumbsup:

:bowdown:

[ThomasHelzle]

Au Revoir my dear friends. :wavey:

It was fun as long as it lasted.

Best regards, :bowdown:

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