m:studio 2.4d in use on SA Sports Hall of Fame

#1

I’m using messiah on the South African Sport Hall of Fame TV series for creating various animated theme elements:

[ul]
[li]30 second intro sequence[/li][li]5 second sting[/li][li]strapline for names[/li][li]strapline for info crawls[/li][li]slow moving generic background (for info display)[/li][li]various themed transition mechanisms[/li][li]sponsor mechanisms[/li][/ul]I’ve decided to start this thread to report any issues, bug reports, improvements and feature requests as I go along. I’d like to also show my WIP at certain key stages and I’d value your critiques and creative inputs. I am on a deadline, so I can’t guarantee what suggestions will be implemented. :slight_smile:

The format is PAL 720x576 progressive.

The brief gave me full creative freedom to come up with a concept, with the client only providing a 2D logo design. I’m not going to share my concept pitch since you can see that unfold as the work progresses and then in the final product. Since I have full creative freedom, the concept is fluid.

Not a very inspiring logo design.

Other tools I’m using are Painter with a Wacom for textures, Lightwave for modeling. and Digital Fusion for layering and effects.
Let’s see what messiah can help me do. :wip:

#2

Wow, great project. Good luck and don’t hesitate to ask if there are questions.

#3

Thanks AlexK, will do.

Here’s a proof of concept made from an image of a golfer found on the Internet. This will not be used in the final since that will be based on the last frames of sports video clips from our South African archives.

I used messiah’s displacement for the inner disc and I’m very happy with the results and the render speed! I could have used Zbrush if I owned it or Sharp Construct which is freeware. But I’m happy with the hand painted results. I painted 2 grayscale images:
[ol]
[li]pulling out the bulk forms in relief (medium airbrush for soft gradients) [/li][li]defining detailed lines, creases and other features (fine air + pencils, etc.) [/li][/ol] The idea is not a photoreal sculpture, just a handmade likeness, since these medallions will be closeup and in motion for a short time and then for the rest just seen in the distance.

The wreath leaves on the outer rim is partially modelled and thereafter displaced with those organic roundings using another grayscale extracted using DF’s blur and matte tools. Once I have them done final, I’ll do a post showing all the layers used.

I’m not happy with my gold material and I’m already drooling for Thomas’ EasyMetal shader. :thumbsup:

Anyone have suggestions for cool looking metal in messiah?

#4

Something that bugs me a little is that I can only use CTRL+S when I explicitly return focus to the main messiah GUI. After I’ve just rendered and in some other places (can’t remember right now) CTRL+S does not work.

Unless CTRL+S is also used to save other stuff in messiah, can’t we have it so that regardless of the context in which you use it, it always saves the scene? For a paranoid save-happy user like me it will just ease the pain a tad.

#5

Yeah, that Shortcut thing is extremely annoying, especially with the render window blocking most of the shortcuts…
I accept that if your cursor is in an input field, shortcuts can’t be recognized, but in every other location they should work.

I don’t know if TLHPro: RealMetal will be finshed soon enough for you - depends on your deadline and how much time I will find to work on it.

The basic metal concepts are:

  • Highlights are colored (other than with almost any other material) so use tint reflection.

  • Avoid specular highlights if possible - they are evil.

  • Use a gradient for incidence angle on reflectivity - the effect isn’t as strong as with glass, but helps a lot.

  • Key is the HDRI. Hopefully something can be done about the Antialisasing soon, It is almost impossible to get clean renderings with HDRIs…
    Most of the time you want a greyscale HDRI.

  • To get realistic results, always be aware that everything that is reflected can’t contribute to diffuse etc. So if reflections are at 50%, diffuse can be at a max of 40-50% too. Often I use rather low diffuse for metal.

I think those were the most important basics.

Cheers! :thumbsup:

#6

Thomas, your suggestions have already improved my gold metal significantly! I have another 2 weeks to complete this project, so I’ll take one EasyMetal Beta shader, thanks :scream: Just kidding - it would be cool though.

Messiah’s material editor is so well thought out. I’m enjoying the ease and power!

Here’s one additional feature request: a colour swatch palette where you can drag and drop colours to and from as you exchange them between materials and do tests. Perhaps 20x20 pixel swatches with a way (tooltip perhaps) for a text string to record some notes or ideas or whatever, but nothing heavy, just a short line. This info should be saved with the scene.

#7

But you know about the swatches that you can access from the dropdown in every color selector?
No comments or color names, but cool to “transport” and save colors around!

Cheers,

#8

Sorry, no, I missed that. :blush: . . . OK, that works just great! Silly me.

#9

Although those colour swatches do get the job done, they are little tiny for me at 9 x 9 pixels.

The reason I mentioned adding text strings earlier is for those less obvious cases when colours are really so close that you struggle to tell them apart at first glance and now have to remember which swatch is which, especially if you get back to a scene a week or two later. Of course text has so many other benefits too. Text is an overkill for most cases, and then you just don’t type anything and use the swatch as usual.

I find the current swatch tool really handy for immediate transportation of colours (which is vital in itself) but would personally benefit from something like this . . .

I modified it so that it still fits exactly into the standard designated area on the GUI. Here’s a description of it . . .

Note that the 5th swatch is occupied with a gray colour similar to the background but it is still possible to notice it because empty swatches have little squares inside to differentiate them.

The selected swatch is indicated with a little black and white square icon in the center because an outer border disrupts the apparent colour of a swatch relative to it’s neighbors - something I wouldn’t want.

Suggestions on how to operate it . . .

[ul]
[li]Left-click once on a swatch to select it. This will show any associated text and allow modifying the text.[/li][li]Double-click a swatch to make this the currect material colour.[/li][li]Click on an empty swatch to save the current material colour in the next open swatch.[/li][li]Right-click a swatch to delete it.[/li][/ul]Swatches and text should be saved with the scene to be useful later on.

#10

Very good ideas - I like them a lot! :thumbsup:

And now can you believe that there is NO color library in XSI? When I asked for it on the official mailinglist I was met by “why would you need that, just enter the RGB values”… :rolleyes: <LOL>
The “officialy recommended” way of doing it in XSI is creating a color palette as a picture in Photoshop and then open that with the clip viewer and pick the colors out of that… :scream: :banghead:

Notice that the .swt files that the color picker palette creates are text and the default is saved in your temp directory as messiah.swt. It looks like this:

RGBA 173.400000 0.000000 0.000000 0.000000
RGBA 255.000000 178.500000 0.000000 0.000000
RGBA 103.275000 127.500000 116.598750 0.000000
RGBA 104.040000 164.016000 204.000000 0.000000
RGBA 142.800000 90.440000 0.000000 0.000000
RGBA 60.201808 80.999988 55.889991 0.000000
RGBA 181.050000 114.665000 0.000000 255.000000
RGBA 181.050000 114.665000 0.000000 255.000000
RGBA 127.500000 55.250085 0.000000 0.000000
RGBA 127.041000 135.150000 129.068250 0.000000
RGBA 0.000000 47.600000 102.000000 0.000000
RGBA 188.700000 100.640000 0.000000 163.200000

So you can easily create a sorted palette for your needs until better tools are avialable.
Just add some “placeholder” colors between groups.

Cheers! :thumbsup:

#11

The Palette where I save my materials needs a refresh option (perhaps right-click context menu and select refresh).

Currently, when I save a material to a newly created folder, I need to first exit and restart messiah for it to register the new folder.

Obviously not a bug or a show-stopper, just a need.

#12

Does messiah have an option to disable confirmation requester windows? :argh: It’s driving me nuts each time “Are you sure…” and I must click Yes after I delete a material, etc.

#13

[ul]
[li]open a Noisette shader[/li][li]create a shader preview on NoiseValue[/li][li]change Noise Function from Lava_A to anything else[/li][/ul]There’s no preview that get’s refreshed in the shader preview thumbnail. If I render, then of course the new Noisette gets rendered. To force a preview refresh, I have to disable preview and then select shader preview on NoiseValue again. :banghead: It’s more intuitive for me to just hit F9 and see the new results . . . but that means waiting for a render.

Another workaround is to tweak a noise parameter: click to focus in text entry field + type new value + hit enter + move mouse for update. Better than hitting F9, but . . . :banghead:

PLUS

What is Noisette’s min & max supposed to do? I do not see any change regardless of what I type in there. I would imagine 0 & 1 outputs a map from black to white (full range) while other values force it into the grayscale range? I could be mistaken.

#14

Yeah, the F5 palette is a bit inflexible in this regard - I usually create a bunch of spare folders.
It is also not the best solution, that you can only see materials that are saved in folders at the bottom of the hierarchy - in folders that contain folders they just don’t show up. Weird

I’m 100% with you on the requesters. My most hated requester is the one at the start of messiah, when it asks you if you really want to open that scene. I start messiah about 1000 times a day when developing… :banghead:
The requester when closing messiah is also pretty useless in it’s current form - it would be nice if the requester would know if anything changed in the scene and if yes, would allow you to save first. Just asking if I really want to shut messiah down doesn’t do anything for me.

Your third point is also an oldtimer: You can’t refresh the preview from within a shader. Supernuts. You always have to doubleclick on a shaderball or do like you said in the node preview. Only the channels that are animateable trigger the refresh…

Nothing serious, but pile enough small things on top of each other and they will form an eiffeltower on their own… :wink:

Cheers :bowdown:

#15

post deleted - incorrect information posted in error - apologies

#16

Update to 2.4d to fix the paste over problems…

Cheers,

#17

OK, someone just slap me . . . :curious:

Thomas just politely informed me that I’ve just reported an old bug which was fixed in 2.4d.

Say what!?

So I checked and found out the shocking truth, despite having 2.4d, I’m running 2.4. :eek:

I’m versionally challenged. What can I say, except, huge apologies and this will not happen again guaranteed until 2.4e.

:smiley:

#18

medal_01.jpg714x454

This render test took 2min on a 2.8GHz P4 at 720x576 (above image is cropped). Rendering on 2.4d seemed 9 seconds faster than on 2.4.

#19

Or another work around is to connect noisette opacity to base opacity and disable, this also forces a preview redraw as well.

What is Noisette’s min & max supposed to do? I do not see any change regardless of what I type in there. I would imagine 0 & 1 outputs a map from black to white (full range) while other values force it into the grayscale range? I could be mistaken.

I found that if you change the values it does change the shader, try 0.0 - 1.5

R

#20

Thanks for the assist rush123. Please read my 2nd to previous post.

Slap me again if you feel the need . . . :surprised