after fighting with vue for 2 days.... i'm about to rip my hair out.  i read the thread on how to get the transparency to accept an alpha picture.... and this MIGHT be the way i go for what i actually have in mind, but i was trying to find a ..... "simpler" solution.

i'm trying to make a box, or sphere, or cone, or ANYTHING be solid, but with cracks.  if i put a point light inside, theoretically, it will shine through the cracks, right?

nothing i did worked yesterday.  the alpha map worked this morning.... kinda.  i still ended up with the rest of the material being partially transparent for some unknown reason.

so, i decided to look at functions.  i found the one for "sparse cracks" and used it, tweaked it some...  and i LIKE the effect....

however, its NOT what i want - i want the parts that are currently transparent to be solid, and vice versa.

HOW do i invert/reverse this function so the white is black and the black is white so the transparency is then correct?  (and if it happens to only be a feature of pro on up, i'll be very VERY tempted to strangle hubby for making me pass up the sale at e-on on sidegrades.  no, i wont actually strangle him)

Hi melikia,
In the bit you have ringed, there's a filter for transparency (top right).
R-click on that and bring up the filter editor. Switch it around so it's sloping in the opposite direction. IIRC, that should give you the effect you want..:-)

Cheers,
Diolma

lol... yeah, after deciding (again) i really can't "break" vue, and what im playing with isn't part of a bigger scene, i relaxed and poked.... and poked.... and found that invert slope.... YAY!!!!!!!!!!!

thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!

what a headache, though  LOL.

now, to see if what i'm thinking of is actually viable....

once again, thank you =D  (i wasnt expecting a reply so fast, was hoping to quietly remove the evidence of my ignorance without anyone noticing....)

ok, this is what i get to fooling around with the transparency function thing (the one i had to invert).... i put BOTH ends of it up at the top....

i have two lights, a point  (with no volumetrics) and a spotlight inside the box.... the spotlights have volumetrics with smoke/dust, using the same small cracks, inverted that i originally had (before i messed it up LOL)

wierd.

absolutely wierd.

I seee that your material is one sided, which isn't right for a cube. One sided work with planes.

lol... the material was the blue plastic i found in the materials.... it was an experiment to see what would happen if i.....

i came up with some other unusual effects by adding in a mirrored sphere.... but am working right now on something else.... it's telling me it has 180 hours to go.  mmmmm, maybe i shouldn't have made the sphere i encased the whole thing in metallic......  grins

and what the heck is a one-sided versus ????? material?  this one has no materials other than came in vue (and some massive fooling around in the function editor by me)

i actually started out with a plane, but didnt like the light seeping around the edges.  i wanted to enclose the light and have it shine through cracks =D

and the above taught me what happens if i do "this" in the function editor of the random transparency ummm... section (node?)...

but please PLEASE explain more about one-sided versus more sided materials....?????

thanks =D

i'm always trying to learn more

meli

One sided means the material is mapped on one side of the object, and not mapped onto the other side, so it works with planes and alpha planes, but not on objects that need to be mapped on all sides. Best is to avoid one sided, it can cause artifacts in the object's shadow. But it is useful for tree leaves on Vue vegetation, combined with a backlight effect ( found in the effets tab of the advanced material editor), it adds some fake translucency to the leaves, that is computed 10000 times (at least) faster than real translucency.

MMMmmmm..... ok, filing this bit of info away in my noggin for a day when understanding will dawn....

makes sense on leaves.... and, in a way, cubes & spheres, as arent they technically one-sided?

and this thing worked just fine til i pushed both ends of the function editor line thingy to the top in the variable transparency area.  (see first image versus second).... if vue wasn't crunching numbers so hard (now up to 217 hours to go... yeesh), i'd load up photoshop, reduce what i did yesterday for web so the forums'd let me post it, and show you how i pushed the strange effect even further....

even mistakes are wonderful learning experiences =D

and how do you map a material on only one side of something?  or the opposite?  i thought you really had no choice, it was up to whoever designed the object if it had more than one "side" to the geometry?

see.... you got me brain thinkin about somethin and its not gonna let it drop til its either figured out, or my brain shorts out....  =D

and in looking, i see i neglected to put up the first image.... LOL

yeesh.

ok, at some point i'll pause vue, and show the other images LOL.

gonna have to do a reboot anyway.

anyone have an extra brain i can borrow?  mine went out for coffee and hasnt returned yet.....

I'd lend you mine but I think I broke it :)

thanks Frank, you're a dear!

just the offer made me grin....

my brain left sometime back around the end of november, early december, and hasnt wandered back yet.... i think it got lost.  or maybe it found its way to Santa's workshop and the elves thought it was a toy....

ack, some poor kid got my brain!

uggg, time to take meds... there goes the rest of MY day.

Ouch !!! Hope the meds work !
(Vue has a bad habit of sending my brain into meltdown :) you gotta love that proggy heh)

they work.... i havent had a cigarette since thanksgiving.

unfortunately, i think the dosage is now too high, as i'm violently ill for about 6 to 8 hours after a dose.... and i have to take it twice a day.

im waiting for my doc to return from vacation to ask him...

on top of that, i get to go in for an ultrasound to find out if i have gall stones or not.  (fun, fun... bleh)

but, while i lay in bed wishing someone would just rip my guts out and be done with it, i think about all the possibilities i have using vue....

oh, and i told hubby - i want the side grade to pro studio for valentine's day....

and the sidegrade to infinite for our 1-year anniversary (July 1)
soooo.... before too long, i'll be able to keep up with the "big boys"

ok, i can PRETNED to keep up with ya'll LOL.

right now, i want that lighttune module.

and i want my new computer to arrive - im going batty.  i literally ran out of space on hubby's laptop (less than 8 gigs of space left).  alllll those wonderful holiday freebies did me in.... i simply couldn't resist.  grins

btw frank... (i thought?) i saw one of your images on e-on's website in the gallery.... great work!!!  there's some really stunning ones in there (hubby got creeped out by the cool snail picture - said it was TOO lifelike).... the reason i say i "thought" is because ive been having some reallllllly life-like dreams lately - to the point i wake up comfused about what reality i'm in now.

uggg, ok, pills kicked in.... off to go hate my bed some more.

I did submit a couple but I don't think they made the grade :) won't stop me trying though heh

@melikia

I got round to doing a couple of experiments (in V5i - can't afford the upgrade to V6)..and found a major omission in your settings as shown at the start of the thread..
You need to check "Cast Shadows" (top right of the edit panel) for the light to create the fullest effect. Also 1 sided/2 sided makes no difference.

Cheers,
Diolma

does her best homer simpson impression

DOH!

baps herself  must remember, toggle shadows....

drat.....

debating now on stopping this render, cus im using that effect in it.... (and its at 6%, but its been rendering for..... 15 hours now)... oh man, if i have to toggle cast shadows on EVERY little part....

YIPES.

man, i didnt have to stop the render.... i just checked, and it has cast shadows on (must be cus i imported this one from poser)

but wondering if i REALLLLLLLY need Volumetrics on all 6 lights.  debates  yes, i do =D

i really want lighttune now.... its gotta be cool to be able to see through the spotlights to aim, and to do all those nifty tricks the e-on site swore it could do (i didnt see anywhere where it said it could roll over and beg, however.... i'm still waiting on that module LOL)

and no, i havent lost my sense of humor.... just my brain =D

ok, gonna reboot (hopefully to help speed up some render time.... for all of 15 minutes)

you guys are great.... and while one-sided or two sided may or may not affect what i was doing, i DID learn something new =D

oh wait, i promised a picture of how far i pushes this thing....

hubby looked at it last night and went "wierd.... but kinda cool"

One over-sized cube to keep out atmosphere
deleted sun light - cant remember if i made ambient turn to black or not, but i dont think i did
one point light sitting in front of a spot light, both inside a mirrored sphere, using the inverted sparse cracks.  One cube outside the sphere, using the wierd thing i did earlier (i just added that sphere to the scene and played)
spotlight is volumetric, with smoke & dust, using (once again) inverted sparse cracks (that sounded just wrong, didnt it?  LOL)

crosses fingers and hopes this attaches, if it works, off to reboot... fun.... not

that is seriously weird but rather cool looking :) I must remember that one heh

just wait til this abysmally long render is finished.... IF it works out the way i hope it will, it'll be more than seriousely wierd but rather cool....

and a friend pointed out to me that there are less than 200 hours in a week, so i'm looking at two weeks of waiting.

reminded HIM that once it gets past the facy crap, it'll speed up again =D

also, rebootting every so often helps.

i keep trying to get him to convert to the vue side..... told him its not as much of a headache as poser was to learn.....

resistance is (rather than infringe a possible copyright) ... resistance aint happenin, bud!

once i get infinite, i'm gonna push him until he at LEAST tries the PLE edition =D  (this way any q's he has, i can hopefully answer... like "how do i turn off the sun?".... see that magic button on your keyboard, usually located around the "insert key"... called "delete?"  make sure the sun is toggled and hit that - voila!  the sun turned off!  (now, if it was only that simple RL in summer up here.... wayyyyyy too much sunlight, and i think i'm part vampire)

nice, the reboot dropped the eta from 295 to 225 hours.

somehow, i dont think hubby will let it go all THAT time....

and if im lucky, my new computer'll be here before this thing's finished LOL.

wait.  would that mean i have to start all over?  yeesh.

but frank - i'm serious, one of your pieces made it into e-on's gallery =D (but danged if i can find it now.... they added some and took away some)   Tablesaw has one in there =D

and leave it to someone who doesnt know what they're doing to create a wierd effect.... and then have one heck of a time trying to explain how they did it (hey, ya'll are lucky i even remember basically what i did.... pushed this button, slid this bar, raised this line, went "yuck", tried again)

i wanna try to figure out how that one person had the aurora in his.....  mmmm..... bet i could do it with lighttune.....

figures.

ok, nuff yappin my mouth at ya'll (for now)... bed is calling my name again, and as much as i wish i could ignore it, i cant.  sighs

just a few more weeks of this.... it's worth it to be nicotine-free.

oh yeah, frank.... please dont change your avatar... i dont think i'd be able to find ya otherwise grins

You rendering that at poster size or something ? 225 hrs is waaaay too long even for an ultra render.  There's a PDF floating around that gives you some neat tips on optimising your render settings to get decent quality before the end of the universe :)
(I bet you are using GR aren't you ? probably doesn't need that - you could get away with AO I'd have thought.  Try setting the atmosphere quality down to -1 as well takes chunks off the render time and doesn't do horrible things to the render either)

Ok, consider this Avatar kept - I'll forwarn you if I change him :P

actually, i think its set at 1280x1024....

ultra (didnt touch other settings).... poor hubby's laptop has NO hard drive space left, and way too much junk running in background (and do you think i can get him to let me reduce the amount of junk?  nope.)  he also only has 1gb of memory.

and like i said... 6 lights, ALL volumetric, different shades of yellow & red.... reddish mirrored background... ok, and i'll break down and say what else.... V4 with cracks in her skin, her clothes are set to the "parchment" material... oh, and a variation of the "orange wax" material....

poor computer is about to become schizophrenic.  we're at 9% with 217 hours to go LOL.

if i reboot at least once a day, it does speed things along nicely =D.... even better if i do it twice a day.  would be even better if i had my new system.... 4 gigs of ram (and yes, the OS to handle that much)... i can't wait.  don't ask me to quote what else is in that system (not tonight anyway LOL)

good idea on the atmosphere setting - but will it make my render start back over?

and i have NOOOOOOO idea which setting it is - it was the default when you first start up vue - i just deleted the sun... oh, and i turned ambient to black, made the light slide all the way to the sun like i read as a suggestion at some point =D.

y'know, your avatar used to freak me out.... something about the eyes... that faint glow coming out of the helmet.  i've gotten used to him, though....  i prolly should change mine, but shrugs what can i say.... i'm just a big ol' kitty-kat.  =D

and to tell the truth (back to vue, sorry, my mind jumps around a lot).... i have no earthly CLUE what the differences are between AO, GR, etc.  even the "add a light" options confuse me.... i finally determined the differance between a point light & spotlight (they're obvious).... but whats the difference between quadratic spot and normal spot?  and the other one.... that has the same two options (quad and normal).... no CLUE.  the explinations i've read just make me scratch my head even more.  i DID finally determine (i think) that the quadratic ones... the light falls off .... faster???

and how do you decide which atmosphere type best suits your needs?

ok.... i gotta get going for now, hubby needs computer.... sighs  once again - pause vue, save vue, close vue, wait til he gets bored, start vue, resume render (i LOVE THAT FEATURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  POSER NEEDS IT!!!!!!!!)

now, i cant wait for valentine's day.... then, i can't wait for anniversary =D

and thanks for letting me have a heads-up whenever you decide to change your avatar, Frank... seriousely, its the first thing i spot in posts when i skim over them (and read them, yes i do read them LOL).  i've got a few people's avatar's memorized, and when they change them - i'm thrown completely for a loop for weeks.

especially when i change my own!  lol.  ok, hubby's starting to give me the ol stink-eye.... i love this community.... =D

Quadratic vs non quadratic is easy :)

Quadratic lights decay with distance like a real light does so if you have a line of blocks for example then the one nearest the light will be a lot brighter than the one furthest away - Non quadratic ones will all be illuminated the same (told you it was easy :) )

I just flick through the atmospheres till I get one I like unless I have something definate in mind

Changing the atmosphere settings will indeed cause the render to restart so file it away for future reference.  It only really makes a lot of difference to GI and GR renders.  I'll see if I can dig up that link to the PDF - I think it's in the tutorial section on here somewhere.  Some of the stuff is quite useful

http://users.tns.net/~mwalter1/Vue_Render_Settings.pdf

Hope it helps. 

That's the one !!! I knew it was around somewhere :) Thanks Peggy

woohooo, thank you both =D

will look it up after hubby and exchange out a desk in this tiny space for a loveseat (with me being sick most of the time, the two computer chairs we WERE using for normal seatting - well, its just not working too good anymore LOL)

render's at 26% =D

and no, it hasn't been rendering constantly, there was one night when it wasnt loaded up (hubby wanted computer).  but, besides the reboots now and then, its still pluggin right along.

this'll teach me.  LOL.  oh, and it's SEVEN lights, not 6.... all volumetric.  yeesh.  all point lights.

you folks rock =D

meli

I just realised why it's taking so long to render :)

Quote - V4 with cracks in her skin, her clothes are set to the "parchment" material... oh, and a variation of the "orange wax" material....

You are using the translucency tab with Sub Surface Scattering turned on - that's a real render killer in Vue.  Takes forever to calculate

see?   i knew there was a reason... although i did have one involving aiko, rendered using poser materials - and her dress was that pearl-like effect that comes with poser's materials.... and i pushed it a bit further with the semi-transparency.... she was standing on the edge of a cliff, and strangely enough, i think it was the water fading off into infinity that clogged the machine more than the overly large area with that pearl-like effect.  she took about  10 days to render, off and on.  total time i think ended up being somewhere around 3 or 4 days.

but, this one's at 35% this morning.... and in a few hours, will reboot, reload, and resume the render (i usually get a good 1 or 2% within the first hour after a reboot - especially if i don't try to do anything online LOL)

chuckles i can see her legs & boots.... and from what i'm seeing so far, this is gonna be REALLLLLLLLLY wierd. =D

sighs  but i miss being able to PLAY.  may end up pausing it for a day or so while i play with another image or something.  LOL.  i'm so impatient.

sighs i'm such a sucker for cool effects.... that subsurface scattering thing is just kick-butt.  i couldn't resist V4 having wax breast cups in her outfit.... and wax panties giggles  the rest of her outfit is, like i said, the parchment paper effect.  this computer never stood a chance grins