Softimage. New end of the world :)

Not sure if this is worth a separate post, but sins I haven’t wrote here for months and months… here it goes :)

softimage

So here at CG chanel.com I have read that the softimages development team, which worked on a product for more then 10 years was moved to work on maya related projects. A new team of developers was assigned for Softimage. “Softimage development will now be carried out by a six-person team in Singapore, headed up by Senior Software Development Manager Chun-Pong Yu.” Strange thing is that I didn’t found any news on this on area or at xsi base pages… Is it a rumor? Anyone?

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Also read about death of Softimage nr 1.

 

The default size of pelted maps in 3dmax. a question.

So this one will be again, the call for a new tool . Now it might very well be that
someone of you know some work around or some way to achieve this, if so please share with us your knowledge. So its all about texturing and laying out uv maps. Lets say I have a character which I am planing to texture using unwrap uvw modifier and say a pelt mapper. Now my model has a separate model for head, torso, cloths, hands and so on. After I peel each of them, the sizes of my characters head texture, hand texture and everything come in same size. they all are fitted to this one square.. Now if I want to hand paint textures things like the width of the line in a texture matters. so in the case where  I have, lets say a giant head of the character and tiny tiny eyes, the unwraper will make them same in a size. And that gives me a problem. If I apply same texture say with a dots, the dots on a head will be huge compared to the ones on the eyes…

naturally in a unwraper I can resize everything, but as far as I know its all done by hand. So the question remains, how to make many pelt maps from many separate objects so the sizes would be very simar to these sizes of actual geometry?

————————–Ok! seems I have an answer myself :) I found this gait tool – Unwrella! from now on its sort of advertising, but i found it solves exactly this problem – it makes the sizes of pelt uv’s all correct sizes relative to each other! text from their website:

Unwrella is an exact unwrapping plug-in for Autodesk 3DSMAX and Autodesk Maya. It is a single click solution which allows you to automatically unfold your 3D models with exact pixel to model surface aspect ratio, speeding up texture baking UV map production significantly.

• Automatic one-click solution – Just apply the Unwrella modifier
• Precise – Preserves user created UV Seams
• Smart – Reduces texture mapping seams almost completely and minimizes surface stretching
• Efficient – Chunks are kept large and are arranged on the UV surface with maximal use of available space
• User-friendly – User defined pixel based padding between UV chunks
• Excellent for all kinds of models (organic, human, industrial)

 

Small UI problem in viewport’s camera position while using “zoom to selected” tool.

So another minor complain on 3dmax’s UI. Its sort of very minor, and in essence is just a tiny thing, but still I personally think it could, and I think should be improved. So it’s about camera (not exactly camera, just viewport) position when you are modeling. So I guess many of us, max users are using “zoom to selected” viewport tool. I use it a lot, and especially when modeling. So the situation is this. One is modeling something, and selects a couple of vertexes, which happen to be in same position. Now we can’t really see anything cos now we look at whole model. so we hit zoom to selected, and bam most likely we see.. nothing. Or just some part of our object, which has suddenly lost its shape. Its viewport clipping I guess. The zoom tool zoomed so close to selected vertexes, that max decided it’s too close and just clipped the model. Or that’s what I think that happened. Look at the pictures, or try it yourself. Not sure if it is exactly what happens, but it sure looks so. Why does max do this?

just an object

(usually this happens when we model say a character, or whatever, and we work only on one half of the model. Other half we minor, and later on we want to weld vertexes which duplicate in the original and mirrored object.. at least that is one of situation where this occurs..)

just an object

zoom to selected

zoomed in, cutted geometry (invisable)

cliping planes in viewport

So what do we do? just scroll back a bit, bam, the model is back, and we are close to our selected elements to work with. But, if you are unexperienced, u might go … Ouch, what happened??? or just scroll back, like you did 1 million times. But can’t we make a tweak in viewport camera positioning and zoom to selected tool’s code, so it doesn’t go to such extremes where model gets clipped? Anyone? So it’s just another small complain. Yes, I know there is million other things that are more important to improve. And this is just a tiny annoyance.. but if it would be just a couple of lines of code, might be it would be worth while writing them down? sins I suppose it should be quite straight forward thing, it’s not like one has to write Lagoa for max or anything like that… (Yes Lagoa would be cooler to get… :) Am I right? am I wrong?

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1. (in image) The clipped area that is not shown….

 

Extrude along spline in 3d studio max

As many of you I do enjoy working with an “extrude along spline” tool.
It makes your modeling so much faster in some cases, and it has
flexibility to achieve various results fast. I found it very good when my
task is not very constrained, when I work with something that I can change and create at my will.
But Some time ago I needed to do something more precise. To be exact i had to
do some lines on a sphere surface. I did remembered nice tool we have in NURBs arsenal which is called “create cv  spline on surface”. Now that i had my splines on a surface i needed to use them as splines for extrusion in my model.  And then I had some troubles with extrude along spline tool.  It just doesn’t seem to actually follow given curve, or to be more precise, the result is same as the curve, but its orientation is all wrong.
And then I had to find how to fix it. So if any of you happen to have same problem
here are some screen shots with a problem and its solution.

 

object and the spline

 

Just a picture of an object and a curve.

extrusion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we select faces and go to extrude along spline, and we choose our spline.

 

aligning

“Align
Aligns the extrusion with the face normal, which, in most cases, makes it perpendicular to the extruded polygon(s). When turned off (the default), the extrusion is oriented the same as the spline. To Face Normal, the extrusion does not follow the original orientation of the spline  it’s reoriented to match the face normals, or averaged normals for contiguous selections. The Rotation option is available only when Align To Face Normal is on.”  description from 3dmax help file.

 

rotation

 

“Rotation
Sets the rotation of the extrusion. Available only when Align To Face Normal is on. Default=0. Range=-360 to 360.” again, from 3dmaxs help.

make it first

 

So here we

select the vertex which is closest to extruded polygon so we can make it “first”

wuala!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we have it. Now our extrusion actually follows given spline. This seems to solve my problem. Hoope it helps you too.

 

 

 

Noise, Perlin noise and esthetics of random

Here it is, a title which, as usual is quite confusing. First of all here we will not discus mathematical nature of various random number generators (which is also an interesting topic). And we will focus on esthetics of random. Random… what? Well anything random I guess.

So as I see it there are two ways of making things esthetically more interesting*. One would be depicting more. Say we have a plain wall, we would want to see 5 layers of paint which where applied, and in some parts the paint is cracked and we see bricks, also we see a spider web and so on. This is one approach, and it is a best way to achieve visual detail, and make our frame more interesting. But it takes time to construct both wall, and spiders and dirt and so on. Another approach is to increase detail by adding random elements, which by themselves do not depict anything in particular, but in certain context might be perceived as intended detail.

plian white wall

rich white wall

Again noise is just noise. But if we use gray noise placed above depicted fireplace, viewer will think its a smoke. If we add same gray pattern of noise on plain wall, viewer might interpret it as a dirt on a wall. This way is much faster. And this is what we will talk about.

First of all lets see a simple Perlin noise pattern, and a multiple scaled Perlin noise patterns. (image A)

perlin noise, taken from wikipedia

And in picture “B” we see variations of Perlin noise (here I am not certain if it is actually a perlin noise, probably not, corrections are welcome) which intend to depict something more precise then abstract noise itself.

procedural maps “Celular, Dent, Perlin marble, marble”, 3ds max, image B

So a simple comparison could sound like this.
Perlin Noise. A boring plane noise which is rather abstract and doesn’t depict anything in particular. Which is also a good thing as an element to construct more sophisticated noise like effects.
Now there is nothing better then Scaled multiple Perlin noises. It has different size elements (see image A) and is almost a god in cg world (no?). And variations of Perlin noise, which could be modified to depict wood and other interesting patterns. But what is the difference between Perlin noise – and multiple scaled Perlin noises? Well, I would say that its all same plane noise, but it goes towards depiction, towards sophistication, towards no randomness.

So desired noise for image enhancement, should look like intended detail rather then just random detail. What I want to say, its not the detail itself that is a valuable a detail, its a detail that has something behind it. And its quite tricky to make automatic algorithms that would not only add detail such as Perlin noise but a noise of a sort that somehow depicts something, without a necessity to actually take care of what it depicts. And for that I think we need to look in to such procedural maps as “planet” in 3d s max. Its is gone in new max versions.. (why?). Also in some older posts I suggested to build materials, or procedural maps that would “feel”the geometry they are applied upon. Especially the last link talks about an extra detail on edges of mesh.

One example from real world. Some days ago I was walking in a street and saw a window. It was dirty and covered in paint. But the paint was not running down, but upwards. Now first thought would be that it is an unneeded detail, which , if it where a CG shot, not a real life would make no sense and would complicate understanding of an image or a shot. And then I found a possible reason for paint running “upside down” Most likely the glass was already dirty, and a person who made window used dirty glass without directing it in any particular way from point of view of paint on glass. What I am trying to say, is that observer will always try to find explanations, and be it correct or incorrect, one always might find reason behind something. And here is the question: If it would have been a CG shot, would it be a bad shot, because if one notices this it makes them uncomfortable, ads an unnecessary level of thinking and so on. Or is it a good shot, because rather then having a clean boring “plain”glass we have some visual details…

So I guess the point of this post is to make a note, that we do want detail, but not just any detail, we want it to be “in the context”. It has to depict something, somehow. And if it actually doesn’t depict anything in particular, we should strive that a viewer would find its meaning on his own. Its a tricky task, and I guess.

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*Here I have to make a note and remind you that I am by no means implying that more complicated is better, more detailed is better, visually overwhelming is a desire. But In some cases it might be the case (or some of these statements at least). Just imagine a white wall, which is shot in a close up, and all u see is just a wall. It covers hole screen. Now say a wall is white. So we can imagine a situation where we have a whole image containing only of pixels of rgb value 255,255,255. If you would not know beforehand that it is a wall, wouldn’t you say, its just blank white screen? So in some cases more detail is better. And hole today’s post is dedicated only to this situation, where more detail is better.

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I have remembered this blog article of mine sis I found this cool interview with Ken Perlin himself! One nice idea he has is: if something is too complicated, add another dimention to it. What does that mean? Listen to his interview at fxpodcast here:

link to fxpostcast with Ken Perlin about noise, aesthetics and perlin noise too!

another article here: link

 

3d multicellular vs Hand drawing in ink :)

So as usual it was quite a long time sins I posted something here. Unfortunately, even though I have some drafts, I just cant sit down and finish them. Therefore I decided to go for an easy post. Well its like writing an software review or movie review. (meaning a reflection of something rather then a creation, and here I am simplifying things a bit, there is surely complicated and “heavy”movie reviews as well as shallow “creation” stories.) Anyways this is gonna be a rather shallow story. But oh well..

So as all of us, weak human beings, from time too time we do stuff which we are not supposed to be doing. Sometimes its something very wrong, but more then often its just something that we are not suppose to be doing cos we are suppose to be doing something else. And most of the time we are watching movies, TV reading a stupid book, or don’t know.. Hundreds of things to do, in order to avoid something you actually must do. It could be anything. So as a member of this human race, I am too doing stupid things. But lucky us (humans) from time to time, on rear occasions, these stupid things lead to something. And be it not something great, or of huge value, its still sort of positive. Well the judgment here can be varying. Still.  As it happens, one of these times I was procrastinating I happen to be inspired by my own drawing in ink, and tried to do something of that sort in 3d. Ah finally you will say, he talks about 3d, its about time. So here it is a small rather dumb project. Who knows, when ’the stars are right’ :) , one day I might actually do something good out of this. But for now we have:

A. A hand drawing of a… don’t know plankton, bug, molecule, microscopical being, alien, virus of a sorts?

ink version of a bug

B. We have a wireframe of recreation of itt in 3d. And then, we use some materials with falloff in opacity Chanel, we add some depth of field in our mental ray rendering engine, we invert an image, and here is what we have:

wireframe of a bug

C. a final output:

final render of a bugg

 

About blogging and 3d magazine called “digital production”

99 winner

So Some weeks ago  I had a lucky day. It happened  so that I clicked on one of these “your ip address is a lucky 100000 visitor, come and get your free i phone” adds. Ok, it was not so. I commented on a blog I tend to read from time to time. And guess what happened? I got a reply saying that u are 1000th commenter on my blog and I want to give you a present. Ill buy u a book at amazon or something like that. And I did chose a magazine.

And guess what? Here I am holding a package from Berlin!  A lucky day, isn’t it?  Well, everything comes with a price, I also received this small note:

The language in this note is hard to understand, its not German or English – its “handwriting” Do u know it? :)

Well it says, when I will have a 1000th comment on my blog I should send similar gift to a commenter, just the way I got my present. Now I wouldn’t consider my self a blogger. The reason is that I don’t read a lot of blogs, and this blog is more of a tool to talk about 3d and cg.  So I guess what I am trying to say is, I am not sure if this is a popular trend among bloggers, or has “Aidenium” thought of this himself, But, I think this gift giving is a cool idea.

So hereby I promise to all bloggers and readers that my 1000th cometer will receive a similar prize.  Now to tell u the truth it will not happen very soon while I have only 88 comments  now :) But its a nice idea that counts right?

Ok. sins this blog is not exactly about my personal life, I will try to bend this post towards this blogs topic, that is 3d.  And here it is a magazine I am reading for couple of years now. Why do I love it so much? well to tell you the truth I love it more then 3d world. why? well this is only my personal opinion.

3d world cover

But… I find 3d world to be more of a collection of very nice images and interviews of people who do them. And these interviews are more of a personal style, well like, what inspired you to create this art peace? what games and books do u like to read? That all is definitely very interesting, but I find it lacks depth. Its more a casual read with inspiring pictures, wile digital production is much harder to read.

digital production, The magazine

Its much more technical. And as such more interesting. Ok this statement probably is not fair. Its probably like comparing apples and oranges. But if I can have only one magazine (its expensive to buy and ship magazines for me) and big fat “Digital Production” costs you 14 euros while thin “3dWorld” costs you about 6 pounds if remember it correctly. Digital Production is 130 pages. Now I don’t have a copy of 3d world, anyone knows how many pages are there? Again one could say that this is not fair to count pages, while “digital production” covers not only 3d. And this is true. But I think a 3d artist should know whats going on in compoziting world and 3d cinema and so on…  So judge it for yourself, what you like better. Oh and one small thing….. “Digital Production” is all in German….except for some titles :) forgot to mention that, so take out your fat German dictionary and lets read it :)  Here I will post some images I grabbed from the latest issue, and tell me if u find something similar in 3dworl.

different images from articles posted in digital production

By the way whats your favorite 3d related magazine? And of course, dear blogger, what do you think of 1000th comment idea?