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BryceTalk Tips n Tricks; Q n A
April 29, 1999
Part 5 of 5
1 2 3 4 5

 

BryceTalk Tips & Tricks and Q & A, April 29, 1999
Part 5

rvanderlippe: I'm up?

gdmsynth: Yes, but it works great for still shots where you don't want the fields.

AuntiAlias: if this interlacing discussion is over

(which seems not quite)

rvanderlippe: I can wait

tuckersaur: good sneak Cal - it seems to break when you go 4 or 5 nested groups deep.

gdmsynth: done.

Calyxa: don't think I've ever gone more than 2...

AuntiAlias: rvanderlippe, go for it! : D

rvanderlippe: I typed something about animating materials on the side - so I'll copy and paste - but apologies beforehand - this is a little long :)

Actually, this is something Ales explained to me - hope he'll forgive me for trying to explain it myself. And for many it may already be something you know. But it still seemed like a good subject to try to explain (sure spent too much time rendering movie

Offsetting a material can seem to be exactly the opposite from offsetting an object in a scene. You want "water" to flow towards you - so you open the Material Editor - open the "Edit Texture" palette (far left button above a material) and use the bottom t

above a material) and use the bottom tool to enter an offset.

With me so far?

AuntiAlias: <reading, still>

rvanderlippe: sorry - realized the buffer doesn't always paste everything

Mhyper: k

rvanderlippe: Ok, so - you might think - start with 0,0,0 and enter a keyframe later thats 0,0,-50 - dragging the control "towards" you along Z. But that ends up animating the water material as moving away from you - not what you wanted.

MonkeyT is off to save the world.

rvanderlippe: And here's why ...

lharriet has just left.

rvanderlippe: When you offset a material you are really changing how it is oriented. This will make perfect sense to anyone working in "decal" mode but I happened to be trying to animate clouds and water (a common desire for some of us) when I first explored animating m

materials.

Well, when you think about offsetting a material, imagine it this way - no matter if you are looking at a noise texture or an image.

 

Picture an "X" at dead center in a square - your material preview swatch. Now picture an "O" up above it. The offset coordinates you need to enter are what is needed to have X transition to O's position - not O move to X.

 

So - to make a material seem to move away from the camera (assuming the camera is facing perfectly forward) you enter a positive value for Z.

Essentially, you are saying you want that edge to move to the coordinates used for X to start with. So - the material appears to move towards the camera when you animate it.

dingo has just entered.

rvanderlippe: Done. (phew!)

 

Did I do good Ales?

tuckersaur: excellent tip and I learned that one the hard way too ; )

ahole: I think that Richard outdid me in the length. But he has an excelent point!

dingo: I just joined in......any new revelations with the new release?

AuntiAlias: :D

rvanderlippe: yea - lots of time spent rendering before I learned - somtimes I'm slow ;)

AuntiAlias: we've been doing tips and tricks.. just hang out, if you have a question, type ? if you have a tip, type !

(and yes, there'll be a log of entire discussion posted, dingo!)

tuckersaur: I just pre-render in the movie window in the materials editor and watch it move.

dingo: thanks aunt!

?

AuntiAlias: Rondey, your question is next!

MetaBrian: Oh yeah, did you all notice that the MC and SL cache movie previews now???

Rodney: Brian and Ales... any progress on producing boolean unions with volumetric objects (can we say "clouds") yet?

MetaBrian: sorry, I'm out of sequence :(

tuckersaur: YES!

its great having that

AuntiAlias: Queue list: ) gdmsynth (?), Calyxa (!) dingo (?)

boru: ?

MetaBrian: soon, Rodney, soon...

tuckersaur: YES!!!!

Mhyper is off to save the world.

tuckersaur: I am a thorn in Brian's volumetric side ; )

AuntiAlias: whee!!... okay... gdmsynth, go for it! : )

MetaBrian: there will be much rejoicing one day

slareau: ?!

gdmsynth: How can I make cloud material disappear completely? Faint traces are left even when tranparency is set to full.

Mhyper has just entered.

John_Spirko has just left.

Rodney: gd, hide the object

tuckersaur: attributes... hide object

AuntiAlias: gdm, this in the sky?

gdmsynth: That didn't work when I tried it. I can't animate the hide.

No in the materials.

AuntiAlias: hmmm... wonder if there's something that can be done using filtering in the DTE to animate.... hmmmmm.......

MetaBrian: Blend Transparency mode or regular???

Calyxa: change the transparency to come from 'no source' instead of from one of the texture channels...?

gdmsynth: I'm not sure....

Rodney: Render anim twice, once with cloud and once without and dissolve between the two in AE or Premiere

gdmsynth: Yeah, that's the brute force approach.

tuckersaur: actually - come to think of it I tried that too - you can't hide and show an object in the same animation - we need to have birth and death keyframe control and we don't have it yet.

gdmsynth: I need to blow things up and make them disappear.

MetaBrian: Blend Transparency is the only shading mode that this should be true in...

AuntiAlias: Queue list: dingo (?) boru ? slareau ?!

 

Rodney: <brute force solution for those with dedicated render machines...>

gdmsynth: Something like in AE would be nice (hint, hint...)

LOL!

MetaBrian: The regular shading mode performs optical effects when transparency is on, so even full transparency may bend light and cause visual effects to be present

Summry = Try Blend Transparency

gdmsynth: Why can't Hide animate?

ahole: Because it is a state change.

gdmsynth: I'll give it a shot.

AuntiAlias: done?

tuckersaur: Also set and copy keyframes in the AML - otherwise you will never get full transparency - it is trying to interpolate between 0 and full xparency - by design.

MetaBrian: yup

AuntiAlias: then......

Dingo!!!

Rodney: gd, can you shrink the object to zilch between two frames?

dingo: I am wondering when Bryce will introduce " hide boolean intersections" when comprising a complex model.....in future releases? It gets quite confusing will all unnecessary object lines on the screen. Is there a workaround?

gdmsynth: Yeah shrinking is a good idea.

rvanderlippe: or offset it far enough

3d~?~elf: ditto, dingo

gdmsynth: I can also drag it off camera real fast.

tuckersaur: lol

Calyxa: dingo - I use the family colors to help. use light families for bits that are mostly "outside" your object, dark family colors for bits mostly "inside" the object. it helps a little bit.

Rodney: Or animate a boolean negative to swallow it over two or three frames... even cooler?

gdmsynth: But we need a hide animate possibly? Or equavalent?

Yeah! That's way out!

tuckersaur: gdm - a subliminal blip will show and then people will think you worship dark forces...

gdmsynth: Good idea.

tuckersaur: lol

Rodney: A negative sphere grows from the middle of the cloud

dingo: calyxa.....that method has helped me in the past...but as my skills grow...so does the complexity of my scenes....thanx though!

gdmsynth: Thanx all. ;-)

MetaBrian: Great "object removal" ideas...

AuntiAlias: (you guys just don't give up, do you? ;D)

MetaBrian: NEVER

tuckersaur: lol

Mhyper: sorry Susan, B4 is infinite

AuntiAlias: wonderful, wonderful... k.. any other answers to dingo's question? (good suggestion, btw)

ahole: Dingo, the problem is rather difficult to solve. We will attemot to solve this issue in the future, but the results are never gonna be as good as the once produced by the render right now.

Calyxa: maybe try setting the whole group to 'show as box'? but you'll lose the "actual" bounds of hte object...

ahole: I think that this is the best to deal with the scene clutter.

Rodney: Render twice, Dissolve once

renato!: lol

AuntiAlias: or show the negative objects as box, keeping the wireframes for the more positive forms

3d~?~elf: ...ssp neg boolean is "permanent" w/o extra obj lines ( not bragging, mind you)

AuntiAlias: ssp?

3d~?~elf: strat\

AuntiAlias: ah

tuckersaur: Again - use the aml - you can duplicate the keyframe and make it dissapear too fast to see - with full transparency.

ahole: But did you see how often it fails?

dingo: I will try to endure the business on the screen.....thank you for your suggestions....

Rodney: So is 3DS but you can't edit the boolean like you do in Bryce, They destroy the creation objects and produce a new object.

MetaBrian: Try using ssp to do the complexity of booleans that you see in Bryce...good luck


 

 

AuntiAlias: boru, if you don't mind them still coming up with ideas for gdm's problem, then by all means, go for it! ; )

3d~?~elf: lol...i know what you mean...

boru: When can Mac users expect to see MetaStream?

tuckersaur: ssp = strata studio pro?

AuntiAlias: er....

Clay wants to play too.

Rodney: Look! A flying Pig!!!

Mhyper: yes

AuntiAlias: that's a question that has no definite answer other than

MetaBrian: Clay, Rodney thinks you're a pig!

AuntiAlias: "we're working on it"

Clay: thanks Rod!

oink!

squeeel!

Rodney: <Brian, that was in repsonse to boru's "?">

ahole: LOL

tuckersaur: you got a pretty mouth....

Rodney: <asin: When pigs fly.....>

tuckersaur: lol

MetaBrian: sorry, the text came to me in just the right sequence

Clay: LOL

AuntiAlias: or... rsn?

Clay: that's hilarious!

AuntiAlias: "real soon now"

dingo: ?

tuckersaur: Ned Beatty really made a bad career choice on that one.

AuntiAlias: okay, who was after boru... aaah! steve lareau!

Clay: LOL

tuckersaur: lol

slareau: So.. Rodney my man..... what are you wearing right now? Oops- wrong window! ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!

tuckersaur: lol

slareau: Was off playing with something, sorry- I just read a while back here about the water movement question- why not just grab the water plane and move that, animated? That's what I've been doing so far, and it's worked out just fine!

Clay: LOL

you'll go blind

tuckersaur: I was so tempted to say - why no - this is the whips and chains chatroom - LOL

Mhyper: LOL

3d~?~elf: ...he is pretty hairy already....lol

tuckersaur: when someone dropped in earlier

Rodney: Even better, Steve, have two semitransparent planes animating at different speeds

AuntiAlias: (ow! my stomach hurts; I'm laughing so hard)

MetaBrian: we're going down a dark road

slareau: Done. That's all. Nothing more to see. Move along good citizens....

Clay: that's a good idea rod and steve

tuckersaur: and just think - you can get this kind of sick humor live at Ojai!

AuntiAlias: dingo!

slareau: Rodney- been there, filled my hard drive. Deleted it.

Calyxa: woohoo!

renato!: yeeeha

AuntiAlias: ow, steve!

Rodney: Deleted?

ccasady: I don't doubt it will

Clay: can't go to camp this year:-(

AuntiAlias: er...

renato!: we'll be campy happers

dingo: Can you out put the render animation in reverse sequence......(reverse frames?)

Rodney: or...

AuntiAlias: I believe we have one last question before this dissolves into happy chaos

3d~?~elf: ?

ccasady: In your home town next year Clay

tuckersaur: lol happy chaos was last year!

Clay: thanks that'd be cool!

renato!: lol

Rodney: Supposedly you can do that in the AML.... rotsa ruck... I use After Effects to reverse animations.

slareau: Aunti- too late! Wish I could go camping....

ccasady: Where do you live? Have a lab there?

boru: Bryce bacchanalia

slareau: Need to do a camp here in the Smokies!

Rodney: Happy chaos? Julie's here?

dingo: I suppose I could render bitmaps.....import them into Flash...and reverse the sequence....

tuckersaur: that would be awesome in the smokies!

slareau: Got a huge backyard- bring a tent!

Clay: no lab chris, I'm a Mac island in a sea of PCs ....

ccasady: I think Happy Chaos best describes what just happened : )

Calyxa: party at Steve's!

tuckersaur: or maybe into quicktime pro dingo

AuntiAlias: yeah... dingo, check out last week's chat log. Rodney and Robert Bailey discussed animation...

some tips there...

ccasady: Hey, we don't care about Platforms,

AuntiAlias: may help you come up with a solution

slareau: just keep the 'puters out of the pool!

dingo: tucker.... freeware....or another app to buy?

AuntiAlias: ONE LAST QUESTION!

3D ? elf!!

tuckersaur: QT is multiplatform - that's why it rocks!

Clay: whose bringin the beer?

3d~?~elf: two parts...1) ales don't know if you remember about using b3 win to mac ( or vice versa) was not working ...is fixed with b4?...also recent reports of b4 screen freeze, any is=deas what's causing it?

tuckersaur: cosmic waves from Redmond...

Rodney: Kitchen's Last Question...

ahole: You should have no problem going between Mac and windows

3d~?~elf: is fixed then?

Rodney: Mac and Windows works perfectly.

dingo: thank you all for the time...

dingo slinks out.

AuntiAlias: um, you gotta provide a suffix on Mac then bring over to windows, right?

Mhyper: the direction of cloud movement is reversed from mac to pc

Rodney: Using 9 PCs to render Mac created anims.

Lise has left the building.

3d~?~elf: >g<

ahole: No, So far we think it problem of the OS (Win98) and Extensions on the Mac. But we're still looking into it.

tuckersaur: A dingo got your baby...

flip: lol

gdmsynth: ?

Clark/CDS: meta wants to bump me -(

tuckersaur: lol

ahole: You don't need suffix, but you need to show all files on PC

3d~?~elf: ok...i re arranged drives (mac) and haven't had freeze yet...

jplapointe is off to save the world.

tuckersaur: how so clark

AuntiAlias: 3 d elf, did your questions get answered?

Rodney: B4 freezes on icebox G3 seemed to be related to energy conservation.

3d~?~elf: yessum

AuntiAlias: ; )

gdmsynth: I have two texture maps. A top and a side map for a f-14. I need to apply both textures to one object. I know that Bryce can only apply one texture per object. What is the best way to do this?

tuckersaur: and low beer consumption ; )

Rodney: Turned of all sleep modes and had only 1 freeze all last wweek

AuntiAlias: gdmsynth!! congratulations! you are the lucky winner of our LAST QUESTION prize!!!!

whee!

tuckersaur: WAHOOOOO!

AuntiAlias: ask it before we all leave! ; ) hee he heeee

Clay: you get steve's whirrling chair!

Clark/CDS: a message popped up saying " you will be bumped"

slareau: Wheee!!!!!!!!!!

gdmsynth: I have two texture maps. A top and a side map for a f-14. I need to apply both textures to one object. I know that Bryce can only apply one texture per object. What is the best way to do this?

Mindscenes has just left.

tuckersaur: wow - what did you do Clark?

ccasady: Use Canoma 2.0

Michael: Can we get a list from everyone of their online galleries???

Rodney: <Yes, you have just won One Super Wedgie deployed by Bob the dragon's personal trainer Knute!>

3d~?~elf: thank you goodly people for the info tonight

slareau: Synchronized chair spins- ready?

AuntiAlias: yes! type your gallery or web site, everyone

slareau: Wheee!!!!!!!

ahole: gd we have talked about this one just the other way. There is no easy way to deal with this in Bryce.

tuckersaur: you need to break the f-14 into a top and side terrain or primitive

Calyxa: my spinny chair broke...

AuntiAlias: http://www.auntialias.com/

slareau: http://www.hilltopdesign.com

ahole: day not way

3d~?~elf: www.none.com

Clark/CDS: www.clarkdunbar.com

Calyxa: http://www.best.com/~calyxa/pearl/

ccasady: http://www.tilenut.com/yomama/bryce/ Galleries/GalleryIndex.html

Clay: http://www.phase2.net/claygraphics/

boru: http://www2.cybernex.net/~boru

Cricket: http://www.delphideli.com/cricket/

JeffP has more important business elsewhere.

tuckersaur: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6450 <-- very ancient stuff tho...

MetaBrian: www.metacreations.com

slareau: http://members.tripod.com/~bryceart/

Rodney: Geee... I guess I need to create a gallery... I feel so impovrished

rvanderlippe: http://www.vanlippe.com/

3d~?~elf: join mine...

flip: this has gone far enought... time for my own site...

ccasady: http://www.tilenut.com/yomama/bryce/ Galleries/recentwrk.html

boru: Yomama?

flip: hehe*

ccasady: sorry...

tuckersaur: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6450/raptors.html <-- my dinos to look at

AuntiAlias: hey.. that's 14 out of 25

Clay: evryone hit the little disk to save all these urls......

ccasady: Richard, tell them

AuntiAlias: the other 11 of you, cough it up! LD

er :D

Michael: If only Yahoo could see this!!!

rvanderlippe: lol!

ccasady: : )

rvanderlippe: too many links, eh :)

Mhyper: :)

ccasady: an in joke.

Rodney: OK, y'all be good. If you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful be anonymous.

AuntiAlias: better yet, do option-click or alt-click to save as HTML

flip: give me a week and then you'll see something... (not the best but something..re: url)

tuckersaur: hit opt/alt floopy and save this log to HTML!

floppy

yeah

Calyxa: hang on floopy, hang on.

AuntiAlias: Okay... QUESTIONS are OVER.. LET THE CHAOS BEGIN!!!! :D :D :D

ccasady: Somebody's going to do a lot of web surfing there

rvanderlippe: Hey Steve L - that question about "why not just use a plane and move it to animate water" - was that in response to how to animate materials?

tuckersaur: floopy and the red baron...

Rodney: Gee... i don' got a floopy in my BryceTalk... I feel deprived... Scott gets all the good floopies...

tuckersaur: LOL

ccasady: Ales, are we going to have an okay time sharing files between platforms at Ojai?

tuckersaur: better than ok...

ccasady: you mean it's all really compatible?

ahole: Yeah Chris, you should be OK.

ccasady: cool! Excellent!

Fantastic!!

slareau: Rvan- yes, as far as moving water. Just scoot the water plane. Or wasn't that the question?

tuckersaur: Ask rodney about this - his life depends on it - LOL

Rodney: Chris, I haven't found anything off.

MetaBrian: notice he said "should" ;)

Calyxa: wild thatching there, Chris, how'd you do that?!

rvanderlippe: well - fine if your water is flat - but - but for a waterfall - doesn't work

ccasady: yea, good point!

tuckersaur: lol

boru: Unless, something goes wrong, Chris.

slareau: I missed that part- sorry.

Rodney: Of course, with Bill Ellsworth animations... Who would know?

dcb_ is off to render mirrored spheres.

rvanderlippe: no prob - was an abstract example was all

 

>>>> Next week (May 6): A discussion with MetaCreations CEO Gary Lauer

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