What's Next After Project Phoenix?

#9

Hi,

[font=Arial]I’m trying to pick up digital 3d/3d animation again, but this time for keeps. So from the struggling part time artist side of things I’d like to request reasonable projects that help improve my understanding of Nurbs, Nurb surfaces, good modeling techniques that help make a better model for animation, deformation, textures, and shaders in EIAS. In EIAS, I am embarrassed to say I have never gotten very far and I’m still learning the interface and how to deal with the whole application.[/font]
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[font=Arial]That’s my 2 cents.[/font]
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[font=Arial]Mike[/font]
[font=Arial][Not sure if I’m going to make the Mar.22 deadline on project Pheonix, Looks like my eyes were bigger then my stomach… but will continue trying to make the deadline[/font][font=Arial]][/font]
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#10

I’m still trying to figure out what half of the available plugins do! =)

I’d really like to see some demonstrations of the more popular plugins. That, to me, would be of great value!

#11

So if we had to choose a plugin to highlight, which one would you want? Anyone?

#12

Hm. I suppose one of the particle ones.

GM

#13

hmm, i’d like to see some really good work with particles, too.
something in the line with the old burning tire example on northerlights website. i have forgotten who made it.

it’s a shame that the build in particle system is such b…s…, at least compared with other packages.

hey blair, any chance for dante lite bundled with eias? :slight_smile:

#14

Or… maybe it could be a kind of ‘pick your favorite plug-in, and feature it’. Points given for how exclusively and creatively the featured plug-in is used.

That way many plug-ins could get some exposure, and everyone could learn some great tricks.

-Steve

#15

Oh I would like to get to all of them eventually. But something a bit more centralized where everyone is studying the same same thing is a bit more beneficial. Stay tuned. I’m thinking something up. :slight_smile:

#16

Well… i’m rendering an animated asteroid demo right now :thumbsup:

Reuben

#17

Hey everyone. What are some of the most requested 3D effects you can think of. If I make my list I would probably list:

  1. Water (oceans)
  2. Water (running)
  3. Stationary and Moving Fire
  4. Smoke
  5. Lightrays
  6. Explosions & weapons fire.
  7. Dust and Debris
  8. Fog
  9. Fountains
  10. Bullet holes or impact craters

We’ve touched on Water (oceans) in the Problem of the day: Storm. Since we discussed the idea of focusing on a plugin for the next community project…which of the effects above would you like to see discussed?

#18

Fire and smoke would be my first choices. Smoke being the one I have most problem with… For fire, I always did the requested jobs with billboard technique.

#19

My votes would be: Particles, and hair… and that’s because I have PPPro which I know how to work with, and also Fiberforge which I haven’t done much with, and personally I have a hard time making it work they way I want it to.

Mrs Bebel would be cool for a second round. I don’t have it but it looks sooo interesting.

Joel

#20

Well a nice combination of those would be quite fun…

An explosion with dust, debris, smoke and fog :slight_smile:

I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy Blaster… And I don’t have a particle system (simply because they appear stagnant, although perhaps that’s because they are so good :wink: so maybe I need kicking into getting one of those as well. PPP is only 80 quid now. I can’t see how much Dante is because the NL store is down…

Bebel will be mine very soon indeed, my boss finally cracked!
Ian

#21

Maybe I need to double check, but the last time I looked PPPro was broken. Everytime I did renders particles would just disapear. Anyone having a lot of success with PPpro in EIAS 6.5r? I’d love to have pppro working again, I loved that plug.

As far as contest plugin? I’d have to say Placer Deposit. That is probably the most under rated plug in. It does hair (kind of) grass, rocks, wind…ect…

That’s my vote.

It would be great if demo plugs were available that worked for 30 days. Let everyone have a copy so they can learn and use it. The winner wins a full version, and everyone else will probably buy it once they’ve fallen in love with it. Everybody wins including the developers of the plug. But this is just a dream :wink:

#22

i second that! it would be a great way to open this contest to the masses. maybe limit the demo handouts to only registered contestants?

blair, igors, david? anyone?

#23

me too! :slight_smile:

#24

Here’s a list of my favorites:

  1. Fire & Smoke
  2. Clouds
  3. Hair
  4. Water

Also another vote for Mrs. Bebel (& Mr. Revolver combo?).

Tim

#25

I’ve been in talks with Blair about highlighting Dante along with other particle systems for EI. I don’t really want to do a “plugin contest” but rather just a nice teaching series where everyone contributes. Timed demos for plugins are difficult to accomplish and reduced functionality doesn’t really help anyone… give me a little more time to mull this one over. I’m finishing up on 2 films this week and my time should increase considerably after Friday.

#26

PPPro is my only particles plugin, I don’t have Dante. I recently finished a project with particles and it ran very smoothly, worked like a charm. I have to say that the particles were a very heavy object (lots and lots of polygons each particle!) and I had no problem at all.

here’s part of that render:

I remember I once had your problem, but a quick email to TripleD and an update fixed it. But that was a long time ago, what version of PPP do you have? mine is 2.1.8.1.

cheers

Joel

#27

That’s very strange Joel. I have version 2.1.9, and I still get particles disappearing and reappearing. I did a project with bubbles emitting at 0 time, and nothing rendered until like 2 seconds in, then suddenly the whole screen filed with bubbles. Very strange things occur with my version. Maybe I should try an older version. Are you using 6.5r2 of EIAS?

Thanks

#28

yes, EIAS 6.5r2 on a mac (Tiger 10.4.5). But wait, actually now that you mention it, I remember that this project had the same problem that you describe. It took about 15 frames for the first particle to appear, and then after that all went fine. Since the start time wasn’t critical for me I forgot until now that you mention it. I just adjusted the animation of all other objects to 15 frames later, but I remember it seemed strange for me to see this delay. But as I said, after that everything worked fine.

The other problem I was talking about was with I think 2.1.6, and particles would dissapear for 1 frame at random times and then appear like nothing happened in the next frame, so the particles would flicker. But an update solved it.

have you contacted TripleD about this? please do and I will too.

cheers

J