Hi Guys.
And idea's what could be causing this.

Render 1 – Everything is as expected.

Render 2 – No settings where changed, all I'm doing is moving the camera away from the model.

Don't know what else to say really, if it works close up, it should be exactly the same when I move the camera back a bit.

I'm running Vue7 Infinity v7.21-04 build 39290 with on Vista32.

Kind Regards.
James.

Alphaplanes can be set to follow the camera (I can't remember the exact name, something with "billboard"). Did you set this? If you did, maybe when you move the camera they change slightly their angle with the object and so slightly penetrate it.

I notice that some text didn't change and is ok in the 2nd render. Are these also alphaplanes? If so, what's different about them?

Great model and great render, by the way.

Hi Rutra
Thanks a million for your advice.
I didn't know about that billboard feature, but it wasn't enabled.

Quote - I notice that some text didn't change and is ok in the 2nd render. Are these also alphaplanes?

Yes, they are and thank you for pointing that out. You got me curious as to why they didn't change so I started to compare everything.

Believe it or not all this is down to the Z value and the position of the alpha plane above the buttons. The text that looks ok in both images is slightly raised off the buttons more than the other text. So I reset the Z value for all faulty alpha planes to the same as the one that was working right.

lol... that did the trick. Seems vue doesn't like me being as accurate as I was because the text was raised off the buttons for every alpha plane. Strange it would work close-up- but not when you moved the camera away.

Here's a quick render showing the full model now with the text working.

http://www.irishacts.com/misc/m3-complete-text-render1.jpg

Thanks for your help mate. I've been so frustrated with trying to get this right that it never even clicked with me to check the settings of the alpha plane that was working.

Do you think this is something I should report to e-on ?. It certainly doesn't seem like normal operation.

Regards.
James.

Glad I could help. It looks great. :-)

Yes, that seems like a strange behavior. I would report it to e-on. Since you can reproduce it easily, these are the kind of things that they typically fix fairly quickly.

Oh, and by the way, very clever use of alphaplanes! I find your solution simpler, faster and more flexible than creating a texture for each individual sub-object, adjusting it to the right position and size, etc. So, thanks for the idea! :-)

A very smart idea with the alpha planes!

Mazak

Thanks for the help guys.
I've finished the model tonight, well....all I'm going to do on it for a while anyway.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5

I need to go away and learn how to make the buttons glow before I can ever finish this. The buttons should be a slightly transparent plastic and to the left there should be a light bulb underneath the button. I'm not able to get  Vue to reproduce this effect as I see it on the real M3-M device.

If you like, you can check out a video of me playing the real unit live on YouTube. All the sounds are coming from the unit, the piano I'm playing is only used as the midi controller for the module.

www.youtube.com/watch

Regards.
James.

Make the buttons have a translucent material, that's how it works in RL and should work in Vue, but SSS materials are pesky to get right.

Great modelling! :)

I have absolutely no clue what this "object" is (well, Audio Workstation... oookay), but it looks simply fantastic. All those buttons and glowing lamps. Shiny!
Id go with silverblades advice, too. Translucent materials should do the trick. Can`t speak for SSS materials, though, they tend to kill my machine on a regular basis trying to render them...

Thanks for the tip silverblade.

I've just tried what you suggested, and that does seem to be the direction to go for sure, but I'm not able to get button to glow at this point. I think I just need to sit down and learn about theses settings your referring to in order to understand exactly what I need to do.

Thanks for the help.

James.

I watched the youtube video and I really liked it. Then I saw your pointer to your site and went there... and I loved your music!... Thanks for sharing it!

About your modelling and rendering, it looks really good. Yes, translucency could be one way to go. You have to place a point light inside. One difficulty will be that the text should be brighter than the rest and because it's an alphaplane indepedent from the object, as far as I understand, that will require some extra work in faking the light. You could probably make the text a self-luminous material of the same color as the point light inside.

Another thing that could work, instead of translucency, and with less render time, would be a very slight transparency of the buttons material, plus a point light inside. Just 5% or so should do the trick. It won't appear transparent without the light inside but it will sort of glow when the light is on.