List your rendering tutorial wishes...

#38

Wow, it’s very surprising to get such a question again after such a long and strong success of Zbrush! Yes, I’ve used Zbrush to create the displacement map AND the color and specularity map, which I also used a bit to control the translucency and the fresnel.

Switching resolutions for the render is very easy and handy and occasionally I do that for quick previews. I also like rendering to the viewport, where I can zoom up lowres renders or play with the limited region to focus on specific areas. They of course always work, viewport or window, but it’s just fun and great to move the limited region around in the viewport and just render it…feels just great. :slight_smile:

The release should be there now…or if not right now then most likely just in a few hours…I tested it and it appears to be just fine, sooooo…it’ll be there! :scream:

#39

Taron,

What will be there? And Where? The new release of Messiah… ?

Thanks for explaining the Zbrush thing to me. I’ve been stuck in a dungeon doing military/defense animation for the last 5 years. I’m now just trying to get back into something a little more creative. I’m just dying to get back into something alittle more fun and less dry. So I just recently have been checking up on Messiah and haven’t done so since my purchase after Siggraph 2001. After being semi proficent in Maya I could really never jump into Messiah. I could never get wrap my head around the edit sphere, Menu level IK setup, and the perspective window not being the default camera.

From what I last remembered a guy named Fred and Lyle were the force behind Messiah, are they still around?

Is there a place to check out your workflow I would love to see more of it? Is there other progams out there that does that type of displacement effect textures?

Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

#40

Questions over questions…haha! YES, I’m talking about the messiah release, which should be up sometime today! At least it is ready to roll and now it’s just a matter of posting it!

My tutorials will reveal a part of my workflow, at least the part inside of messiah. My entire workflow goes like this in brief:

  1. Modelling of a lowres metanurb cage (previewed smooth subdivision) in Lightwave3d
  2. Making UVmap in Lightwave, too!
  3. Zbrushing the heck out of it…really giving the model it’s actual shape with details as well.
  4. Exporting new/modified lowres cage out of Zbrush
  5. Creating and exporting displacement maps and other maps…in and out of Zbrush
  6. Getting everything into messiah, making bone setups, making textures, rendering…
  7. After effects or photoshop sometimes for final touches.

That’s it! :slight_smile:

#41

I Just checked out your website…

I’m truelly humbled…

If you don’t mind me asking do you use Zbrush for your modeling too?
Taron Just answered. Thanks!

#42

Yeh absolutely amazing stuff :smiley:

Taron the stuff you do with brushes is just mind numbing.
On the other hand I bet his sister is good looking with lips like that lol
Honestly that degree or realism on a caricature style has to have huge impact :smiley:
Oh and they all seem to have a life of their own…

I bet you work on all the hollywood horrors :smiley:

Nice to hear new things about messiah.
I’ll be on the waiting list for that, or maybe it’s just me that has to wait.
I really want that dongle on the mail someday…

Would love to know if the hair/fur/grass thing is ever coming?
How about static particles?
Maybe you’re not getting into that sometime??

#43

www.projectmessiah.com
or directly to
DOWNLOADS
The new release is out!!! :smiley:

Looks like the demo ain’t updated, yet, but the new version is now available for everyone, who already owns messiah:Studio as well as a new version of messiah:Animate of course! I will now resume with the tutorials and get you some stuff to start playing with! :wip:

#44

No What’s New! page?!!

#45

Thanks Taron :bounce:

I go to play with --> now :slight_smile:

Phil

#46

hey taron,
could u please include ur excact zbrush displacement map settings in ur tutorials. i had asked the question of d.maps in this thread http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=321451.

wegg and the other members of the forum where great at helping me resolve this issue in messiah. however the mesh and the texture seemed to be streching at the top of the boot. there are some pictures in the thread. i wndered if this was because the map was to small but the same thing happens with a larger map 2048 by 2048 4096 by 4096 same result.

u obviously know the magic combination out of zbrush as far as make displacement map dialougue goes. that would be really helpful.

thanks.

great stuff.will be installing the upgrade right now:thumbsup:

#47

What’s new…oh dear…I think we’ll have to make an official info, HAHAHA…no really, that’s still to come for sure, but I’ll give you a brief list:

Interface and Interaction:

  • new EditSphere (improved handling and display)

  • new Timeline slider (improved visibility and handling) (hmm…but it’s true!)

  • a bunch of clean-ups and optimisations all over around. (yup, it’s an unofficial list, I can say such things!) …amongst them are some menu refresh improvements and more…

Feature adjustments and additions:

  • Particle System has a whole set of new functions and the brand new introduction of custom forces, allowing third parties (and ourselves) to wildly add new forces. I’ve started it off with a vortex force that comes with a really nice set of comfortable features…
    I would explode this post if I would go into all the details of this, but there are many changes and additions in the whole emitting system…time’s now based on frames for more accurate control in connection with keyframes.

A new system of animating emitting amount and frequency allows for a super intuitive handling.

Rotational control for particles is now up and running. An Axis view mode allows for pleasant feedback. Randomize functions are added. Emitting orientations are there now, too. Several improvements of this entire section are up now.

  • ParticleShader …will need a lengthy tutorial thanx to a crazy amount of possibilities with it.

BUT my favorites are here:

  • Standart material has changed dramatically:
    New interface with the addition of tinting parameters for specularity, reflections and transparency.
    Tinting for Translucency with color sliders and a new mode called “uniLimit”, which I will explain in the tutorials.
    Specular Highlights as well as the diffuse shading itself will respond to the SIZE of the lightsource. Even a distance light has a size now. This is to achieve more natural sunlight shading for instance. It also effects every surface in a scene and therefore promotes more coherence by default!
    Glossiness level describes now the coarseness of the surface and therefore diffuses the highlight. A more natural feel gets created, when texturing the glossiness. This supports the idea of actually leaving the specular levels full on and instead texturing the glossiness levels. Beautiful way of designing surfaces.
    Shadow calculation and translucency calculations are vastly improved! I’m particularely happy about that one, toO!
    HDRI implementation and antialiasing for overexposed areas is massively improved! (looks real nice and smooth now!)
    HDR filter interface is beautified and more understandable now!

Awwmmm…tons of stuff…oh, I made a bunch of other fixes to some of the shadernodes…and additons, actually. I believe I had added a new mode to the textureDeform shader for some world coordinates locking of attached textures (Thanx Weggy).

I mean, this is a totally unofficial list, because I’m really not the kind of professional informer anyone would want to have on the frontline, haha, but it gives you at least somewhat of an idea what’s new. I most likely have left out plenty of things and even those things that I’ve mentioned have so many new details. It would be a few hours worth of work to put all of that together. I believe the tutorials will cover it best at first, however weired that may seem.

Anyway…I’ll be off doing that now…or sleeping first…hmmm…sleeping I think.

#48

There’s a bit of text in the update download…

David

#49

Looks like I hardly left anything out except for our new file-formats for loading and saving, including the infamous .MDD format.
The new additional compositing layer saving options: Normals, Shadows, Surface Color, Object IDs, Specular and Diffuse Radiance buffers besides the already existing color and depth outputs.
There’s a new volume/haze shader we lovingly called: SpeedHazer (how do you like the name?) It’s actually not just a “fog” shader, but in essence a volume shader that even allows solid volume renders. Make procedural grounds that dissolve over time if you like…animate it’s “geometry” using textures or any shaders for that matter. It’s a crazy beast that really asks for it’s very own tutorial. It’s very fast and insanely flexible. In it’s most basic feature it’s a highly convenient fog and ground fog tool.

Materials:

  • Easy copy, paste, undo and replace between materials.

That’s been a request and an entry in our own wishlist for a long time, but finally it made it into the mix! So there it is…! :smiley:

Interface:

  • Color picker can switch between floating point color (0.0->1.0) or 8 bit (0->255) and now is the default for setting color in the material’s interface.
  • Added a frame slider button with current frame indicator, for easier grabbing to scrub.
  • HDRI in texture map now has a popup choice between “Reflection map” and “Image light”, and automatically
  • defaults to “Image Light”, if the light probe map type is chosen.
  • Menus are now double buffered to eliminate flicker when drawing on some graphics cards.

Particles can also now be controlled with expressions! Oddly enough I havn’t even tried that, yet, but writing plugin forces is just so much more fun…I’m going to write a whole bunch of new forces very soon! The Vortex is a great starter, though…I mentioned that in another post below already, I think.

Oh yes, and a bunch of fixes…don’t know if you ever ran into those, but they’re fixed now:
Fixes:

  • When creating a number of objects in file->add_items they now will be numbered correctly when creating multiple items at once.
  • Processing flag now saves/loads properly for tracks in compose
  • The tooltip windows in the script palette now draw properly.

- Fixed a problem when loading non-LWO objects as clusters. This should also fix any other issues people were having with non LWO objects.
That one used to be a big one, because it caused all sorts of funny little instabilities, which are now GONE! At the very least in this very regard! So that’s a pretty darn great thing, even while the fix was rather super simple. But then it’s often really just FINDING the problem, that shows to be the most effort.

The read-me of the update shows a few more entries, but this should cover it for the most part. I’m pretty sure we all forgot to mention tiny little fixes and changes that, again, just helped cleaning up the whole package a bit more. But hopefully you won’t even have to notice! :slight_smile:

#50

Whenever you can get to it man:)

#51

taron, nice update. I like what’s been done as its a step in the right direction, but I also know its not yet the major update people have been hoping for. I hope you find the time to show us how to use these new toys with your tutorials. Ideally it would be awesome to have zscript like mode where messiah plays itself back.

Can you show me the shader flow for the character you made in this thread?

BTW: I like the new edit sphere!!

#52

I’m glad you feel that we’re going into the right direction. Makes me happy to hear!
We found a little kink at the last second and will add another patch probably tonight or tomorrow. We took the opportunity to also add another request for the viewport…

Thanx! And don’t stop hoping for the next major update. It’s always a fantastic thing when hopes come true and that’s what we’re working on! :thumbsup:

#53

The little extra patch will have to wait until the weekend. But we’ve found even more sweet little improvements, which are now in place…amazing what sometimes becomes so clear, when everything else improves. Hmmm… …it certainly gets sleaker and sleaker. We also finally took care of the camera reticle viewport fitting! Works beautifully.

Little things, but great they are nontheless! :slight_smile:

So, sorry for the delay…I’m out of town until Friday.

#54

dude!!
And the shift-No. toggle channel active setting??? Please!?

#55

Hope you’ve looked at the simple issues that have been posted in the unofficial bug tracker here too!

I hope we get those tutorial videos soon…to see how all this new stuff works.

#56

FIRST POST - MARCH 10 - Today April 12

Okay we did have a 2.4 and a 2.4b release but every now is on the same page.

Stop making goodies and start making tutorials.

Same energy you use at Siggraph. When taron talks the CG community listens, you would think he’d talk a:beer: ll day.

so just confirm that you have stop programming and losing sleep and u are activately
making tutorials.

#57

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.