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

[PaulNewman]

This may or may not serve your purpose, but you can start a sequence of renders on one machine, pulll the dongle out and plug it in the next computer, start the renders on that one and so on. There will be a popup about the HASP dongle not being present, but the they will continue to render and save without the dongle.

Works like a charm!

What an elegant and most adequate solution

Exactly what I need.

Thanks Gary! :bounce:

[PaulNewman]

Just for the record, I own m:studio professional which has a license for unlimited nodes, so doing this should be within my rights.

If I had a 1,000 node render farm and I was the render admin and I was running m:studio pro, then I don’t think I would have used render manager software but rather this dongle trick. I’d have my messiah dongle dangling from a snazzy belt clip with a retractable cord, walking around plugging it in and out as I manually control each machine just so that I can have the satisfaction of seeing the red light glowing each time. And if there was a big job submitted and all the nodes were humming productively and I had nothing else to do after cleaning out the lunch box my wife packed, I’d switch off the machine room lights and walk around plugging the dongle in just to make sure all the nodes are still fine. “Oooh little red light glowing so red and bright in the darkest night, you give me such a warm pleasant fright each time you ignite.” Pulling the dongle out, the red glow dies, the room is pitch dark except for yellow and green network LEDs and I’m alone in silence except for the humming of rack mounted fans. I let the dongle go and listen to the sound of the auto retractor winding back - zzzzzzzzzzzzzklak! - hanging from my belt again, a smirk on my face I’m glad no one else can see.

[ThomasHelzle]

Hahahha LOL

I fear my post was unclear - it is frigging hot in germany for too long now and my brain isn’t what it used to be…

Yes, you can invoke the messiah commandline-tool “render.exe” by hand. See the html doc file I mentioned above for explanations about the parameters. Very simple to use. Just create a shortcut on your desktop with the right settings and adapt them to your needs, or create and edit a .bat file.

But if your machines are connected, you can also tell spider to only render on specific machines…

But be warned that the first frame may render black in sequences that contain large images (equal how you do it). The same can happen if you start messiah, load a scene and immediately hit F9 to render without switching to the render tab first.
Something isn’t loaded or refreshed correctly…

I don’t know for sure, but the Butterfly Netrender came with a one-machine-only demoversion some time ago - may be the most convenient way to do it and if you want to go “net”, you already know how it works…

Hm - was that more understandable? I don’t know… :shrug: :wavey:

[PaulNewman]

Hm - was that more understandable? I don’t know… :shrug: :wavey:

It would become clear if I can just find render.exe and the docs you’re talking about. These are pmG messiah files, right?

[ThomasHelzle]

Go online and I send them your way in a second. I think they came with 2.2, but I’m not sure. And I haven’t tested it with 2.4d.
Yes, they are pmG files and they are found in the \messiah folder where the main .exe also is located.

Cheers!

[PaulNewman]

Go online and I send them your way in a second. I think they came with 2.2, but I’m not sure. And I haven’t tested it with 2.4d.
Yes, they are pmG files and they are found in the \messiah folder where the main .exe also is located.

Cheers!

Thanks for helping out with those files, Thomas. I’ll run some tests later and report.

In the meanwhile, last night I ran full res final quality tests at Adaptive AA Level 3 to check shadow noise levels. If you look at the shadows (which a normal viewer won’t do) then I see the noise only in some places. The noise is very evident in the deep dark shadows and nearly not evident at all in the shadows lit with fill light. Of course it helps if a shadow falls on wood grain so that noise becomes hidden. I was also very pleased with overall image quality and how it holds up under motion. It seems I’ll get away without motion blur. The camera motion is slow because the shots are packed with detail and thankfully I’m not taking the M-TV visual blast approach.

I now have enough production confidence with messiah with this project that I’ll easily do my new web design using it. What a pleasure

[PaulNewman]

What you see above is a ribbon draped over an invisible cylindrical object which dynamically moved while interacting with the ribbon. The lower end is ‘attached’ to a ring. There are 3 bones involved, but only for initially shaping the ribbon and bringing the 2 loose ends together.

It’s just a preview of what I’ve been working on. I hope to integrate this medallion ribbon with my scene tomorrow. I’ve managed to get moving collision detection and dual surfaces (one with and one without SBs on the same object) working. The realtime nature of messiah’s SBs is really impressive. The process had it’s fair share of frustrations, most of which I attribute to my inexperience. Hopefully using this SB rig inside my scene won’t inflict too much pain…

[ThomasHelzle]

I created an example for you about how you can tile UVs:
The basic principle is, that you use the S and T outputs of a Texture Map node that is set to UV, but doesn’t contain an image. Those two outputs deliver the internal UV representation of messiahs mapping (you can also get other mappings from this, not only UV).
UV coordinates are nothing else but values (usually between 0 and 1 but not limited to that) that you can work on like anything else in the shadertree - that is the genius behind the messiah shaderflow, in Mental Ray this is way more convoluted, unclear and often hidden from the user. In messiah it is just another value that you can use as you see fit (connect S or T to your main materials Radiance input to see the UV-gradients… very handy for mapped gradients etc.)

Now I connected those two outputs (“S” and “T” means nothing, it is just a unimaginative coder grabbing available letters - like “U” and “V”) each to a TLHPro: EasyMath node and multiplied the values - messiah seems to automatically tile the texture as soon as it goes out of the 0-1 range so I needed nothing else to do in these nodes…

Now I connected the two outputs of the math nodes to the corresponding S and T inputs of another Texture Map node. This allows for external control of the mapping with whatever 0-1 gradients you can come up with. This node contains the actual texture image and is set to “Planar” (I found this by Trial and Error - some other modes don’t work with the external inputs).

Finally connect the Texture Map output to your material and you’re all set - you can now control your UVmap tiling with the multipliers in the math nodes.

This is just a basic example, more complex things are of course possible.

BTW. My procedural AoN:Studio shaders can be fed and used with UV coordinates in the same way, so their docs contain some knowledge about the messiah texture mapping too.

Here is the project file:
http://www.screendream.de/stuff/UV_Test.mpj

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

I created an example for you about how you can tile UVs:

Cool thanks Thomas!

Last night after reading your TLHPro docs again, I made a similar setup except that my blank texture node was a planar node and my actual one was UV, while your’s is the other way around.

This feature would be simple and handy as part of messiah’s UV texture mapping, but I am most grateful for this workaround. I need it for applying a fine seamless weave bump map onto my medallion strap.
ich danke Ihnen dafür, daß Sie mir geholfen haben

(I sure hope this correctly expresses my appreciation since my German is very poor)

[ThomasHelzle]

Cool I was able to help

Yes, there is a lot that could be done in the Texture Map node

• Size, position and rotation should work all the time in all projection modes.
• A real camera projection that sticks to one selected camera is badly missing.
• I personally also think a visual guide for the parameters should be included in a simple way, to help the imagination understand the values - a plane, a sphere and a box would go a long way for starters.
  … and quite a lot of other little improvements and fixes, like duplicated objects remembering their UVmap etc.

BTW. Be careful with bumpmaps: while they aren’t as slow in messiah as in Mental Ray, they still drag your renderspeed down massively not only because of the rather involved computation of the bent normals, but also by introducing fine noise that the AA has to filter out afterwards.
You may be better off with a color texture that already contains a bit of weave (using bicubic filtering).
Or put the structure in the diffuse input…

Since your rendertimes are very high already, I would go for such workarounds if you don’t have extreme closeups on the band.

Once more I wish you best of luck for the project!

Cheers,

[PaulNewman]

I personally also think a visual guide for the parameters should be included in a simple way, to help the imagination understand the values - a plane, a sphere and a box would go a long way for starters.

This is one area where 3DSMax was way ahead early on. Even Lightwave sucks with this. To me this is basic stuff which visually confirms the settings to the user and cuts out guessing and numerous test renders.

… and quite a lot of other little improvements and fixes, like duplicated objects remembering their UVmap etc.

Yes, these fixes have my vote too.

BTW. Be careful with bumpmaps: while they aren’t as slow in messiah as in Mental Ray, they still drag your renderspeed down massively not only because of the rather involved computation of the bent normals, but also by introducing fine noise that the AA has to filter out afterwards.
You may be better off with a color texture that already contains a bit of weave (using bicubic filtering).
Or put the structure in the diffuse input…

Since your rendertimes are very high already, I would go for such workarounds if you don’t have extreme closeups on the band.

Good advice. I already do this with my wood texture - no bump - since the colour map is already rich enough. I may not be going closeup on the ribbon, so this would most likely work…thanks for the tip I’ll go through my scene and make more optimizations like this. Yes, very good advice!

Once more I wish you best of luck for the project!

Thanks for your support. I would have had to fall back onto using LW were it not for you guys helping me get into messiah and through the difficulties, which were in fact only difficult until I asked :). Like many other things in life, ignorance and lack of experience keeps me from really flying with messiah. Once I overcome something, then messiah is a pleasure.

I constantly have messiah’s docs open as I work and I have to add my vote for better in-depth docs which clearly and extensively reveal tips and tricks and inside knowledge for doing advanced things. The current docs are good by way of introduction. Messiah’s in-depth knowledge is currently a collective wisdom in this forum of messiah users and developers, and not in a 1200 page PDF - that’s the problem. Quite scary. Imagine if just one or two key people that helped me were on holiday at the exact moment I needed to do something simple like UV tiling… I hope I’m not coming over as negative, because I’m even more excited about working in messiah now than before.

[PaulNewman]

Some basic tests showing tiled UV mapping with a hand painted texture to drive diffuse and the final result…

colour map with diffuse = 0.5

diffuse map (rendered here as a colour map for demonstration)
painted in Painter with pastel chalk on a rough paper texture
The UVs are freaking out near the bottom. I’ll have to play with them. They’ve been giving me hassles since last night. In fact, so much so that what you see here are tiled UVs saved from LW and imported into messiah. So this is not tiled using the ST-UV solution.

diffuse map is remapped 0.0 to 0.3 and than added to the base diffuse of 0.5
no bumpmap - only colour and diffuse

I can make it more real by hand painting slight weave details into my colour map and hopefully sorting out that wacky UV problem.

[PaulNewman]

my reference photo

Weave distortion achieved in Painter using the distorto tool, pulling one weave this way and the other one that way. Just slightly of course. The diffuse map is halfmixed through it so you can see where I painted.

The result is more convincing - still not using bump

The UV distortion may pass for distortion in the coth itself. If it is a visible problem in my animation, I’ll edit it, but for now I’m done. The ribbon won’t be this close to the camera anyway

[PaulNewman]

I tried to execute the MoveTo (Null_1,stopwatch_ring,1) command on messiah’s CLI (Command Line Interface bottom left on the GUI) when my TD advised me to rather try the scripts in the palette (F5) before I injure myself.

I then fumbled through the palette icons and finally found Align and MoveTo, after which I thought the fumbling cannot happen again, so I made my own custom icons. It’s the more visible and less fumble-prone black and red icons below. They were just hand sketched in Painter to get the job done. Nothing 3D and fancy at this time…

I’ve added a ZIP file with the two icons. Just drop them into the “messiah/modules/scripts/icons” folder and restart messiah. If you don’t want to use them I won’t be offended :).

The messiah docs do say how to do your own icons if you look under “Palette”.

[PaulNewman]

[ul]
[li]Ribbon was draped over a simple modelled single-mesh collision stand-in object representing the table and the two relevant sides of the tin.[/li][li]The exact position of the collision surfaces was known by using SaveMorphSequence on frame 0 and saving the table and the tin. Messiah correctly saves out transformed objects, not only deformed geometry. Really cool feature![/li][li]Before simulation, the one end of the ribbon being non-softbody and fixed to the ring, the other end diagonally up in the air.[/li][li]I then ran the softbody simulation until the ribbon had settled.[/li]
[li]Using SaveMorphSequence I saved a single frame LWO of the deformed ribbon.[/li][li]Using SaveMorphSequence I also saved the ring to which the ribbon is attached as well as the two photos under the ribbon. (The simulation did not know about the ring and photos - the ribbon fell in this position by coincidence)[/li][li]In LW modeler, I tweaked the ribbon (a metaNURB object) to iron out intesections with the tin sides and slightly lift the ribbon off the table surface and onto the photo surfaces.[/li][li]I then got rid of my simulation and loaded the static ribbon into messiah.[/li][li]I adjusted the diffuse remapping settings on the weave diffuse texture (0.5 to 1.2) and made the weave twice as course (2x less threads over the same length = 2x thicker threads) so that it can be seen better and to get rid of moire problems.[/li][/ul]At default softbody settings, the simulation settled into a 2D puddle of ribbon, all the vertices settling flat onto the table - oops. After messing around, I finally cranked up both Internal Pressure and Damping to 50. This allowed the ribbon to hold its shape. With these settings I had to run the simulation for 550 frames before it settled onto the table. With default settings it would settle in about 50 frames but with the mentioned problems.

Was it not for the fact that this first phase of the sequence simply requires a static ribbon, I would have been in trouble, since, in my admittedly limited experience over the past 2 days, it seems that what pmG has said to date applies: softbodies are not meant to be used for cloth. I seriously felt the limitations for what I was doing. Collision detection is also lacking, as mentioned in so many previous threads. I got totally accurate results with the table, but not the tin walls. Self collision was also a slight problem, but only slight.

However, this is so far the easiest softbody software I’ve ever used and I’m sure if I was setting up softbodies instead of cloth, things would have been a much greater pleasure. If this is what pmG can do with softbodies, then I can’t wait to see what they do with cloth…wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

[PaulNewman]

My TD warned me against using Lightwave’s ngons and so I did a test. Good thing I have a TD

Turns out that messiah can render ngons (I’m talking straight non-metaNURBS rendering here) but the texture maps do not play nice. In fact textures just did not render and the surface showed major artifacts.

After applying LW’s triple function, and reloading the scene in messiah - perfect.

This is probably a bit of useless information since most of you are doing subD’s all the way. I seem to be one of the last of old school users still rendering straight polygons. My TD tells me I really have to break with these bad old habits.

[ThomasHelzle]

>LOL< You should always listen to your TD

Cheers!

[PaulNewman]

The watch now has all its markings. One turn of the main arm covers 60 years. So it’s sort of a time-travel watch. The 4 secondary dials represent, from the 12 o’clock position clockwise - hours, days, weeks, months. In my sequence I’ll be covering 60 years in roughly 5 seconds.Full SASHOF Concept
Scene starts with old and dirty sports stuff (watch still needs dirt) and the camera zooms into the watch and advances rapidly (time travel) to the modern day after which camera pulls out from watch and a similar scene and camera angle is infront of us but all the items are new and clean and the flag is no longer old-South African but new and photos are colour instead of sepia and there’s moving footage and all those modern conveniences. The watch then lifts up and comes towards the camera and rotates, showing a golden embossed South African Sport Hall of Fame logo embossed onto the back. After delivering the logo, the watch then swings around, showing the face again, but this time the 5 dials turn, small ones first, circular wipes to reveal the underlying footage.

[chikega]

After applying LW’s triple function, and reloading the scene in messiah - perfect.

I personally like Metaform Plus - it will turn ngons into quads - so, you’ll still have the option of applying metanurbs if need be.

Also, it’s a tribute to pmG since they originally wrote the plugin for LW just before the development of Metanurbs.

[PaulNewman]

For those interested, my watch design was inspired by Tutima, a reknowned quality German watch manufacturer since 1927, famous for pilot’s watches.

I based my design on Tutima’s proportions and basic styling, although mine is not as clean in appearance because I have the reflective checker pattern on the face and also now the bold typeface markings.

Hmmm . . . now that the text markings are adding to the clutter, let me try a clean render without the checker pattern.

When comparing my render to the Tutima studio photo, bear in mind the extra scene detail and the sepia look in my environment map reflecting off my watch. Also note the lower AA in my render and the nice soft reflections and slight brushed metal in the Tutima photo. My glass reflects the scene while in the photo they obviously try to get rid of such reflections to show off the watch face. Anyway, mine doesn’t have to be exactly the same - just nice to compare these things to learn.

To think that the photo was a click of a button while my render was painfully watching 2 horizontal green lines advancing upwards.

Please let me know which watch face you like best: checker or clean.