fascinating work Yamato ! ;)Eric

Sharen,

Some 3D software manufacturers - for whatever reasons - claim that their application is compatible only with a limited list of OpenGL graphic board. Sometimes one OpenGL board is listed, while another from the same brand using the same GPU but with a different extension ("pro", "ultra", etc) is not. This is nonsense. The hardware (or software) is either OpenGL compliant or it is not.

OpenGL is a standard multiplatform graphic application programming interface. There's nothing mysterious about this API: if the hardware and the software support it, then it works!

Millions of kids are playing games with extremely advanced OpenGL real-time rendering engine. Do you think that they hunt the net to know which board to buy or download drivers over and over again because they can't see the ugly monsters correctly? I don't think so. Most of them don't even know what is "OpenGL". Yet, these games use the same core real-time display technology as the one implemented in your favourite 3D application.

The question is not "which OpenGL graphic board works correctly with VUE?" but "does VUE supports OpenGL?" and "does the graphic board supports OpenGL?". The second question is easy to answer: almost all popular graphic boards released in the last 2 years (ATI RADEON, Nvidia GeForce, Nvidia FX, etc...), whatever their model (ti, pro, MX, ultra, 9000, 4600, etc...) or their price (a cheap $40 64 MB GeForce4 MX runs OpenGL applications perfectly).

I have a list of OpenGL benchmarks for hundreds of different graphic boards, some are running faster than others, but none are "not working". If they can run the benchmark, then they are ENTIRELY compatible with the OpenGL standard and, consequently, with your OpenGL 3D application.

If you want a list of certified OpenGL 3D graphic boards, the only place to search is www.opengl.org (http://www.opengl.org/users/apps_hardware/accelerators.html). You'll find all the famous brand (3Dlabs, ATI, Nvidia, etc...). The boards produced by these companies are all OpenGL API-compliant hardware and include drivers that follow strictly the OpenGL specification.

At the same website you can also download dozens of utilities and freeware applications (soft body dynamic simulation, fluid dynamic simulation, virtual solar system, etc...) to test your 3D graphic board.

To summarize: get the OpenGL graphic board you can afford. All should (must) work with VUE PRO. Don't waste your money on the latest ones as they include features not implemented in VUE 4 or VUE PRO (such as volume rendering, real time reflections and transparencies, multi-layered mapping, etc). I would go for a 128 MB or 256 MB board from ATI or Nvidia.

:) Eric

Hi Scott,

Cinebench 2003 is a true cross-platform test that uses MAXON's cross-platform Cinema 4D rendering engine. Other 3D benchmark will give you similar results (Lightwave, Bryce, etc...). You don't even need a benchmark utility, rendering the same 3D scene on a PC and MAC with any 3D software is enough to see the differences.

For 3D applications, Apple G4 and Intel Pentium 4 compare clock for clock. The Pentium 4 is even slightly faster at similar clock speed for tasks such a real-time display shading, photon mapping, radiosity calculation and ray-tracing. Let's face it: motorola's G4 chip, Altivec and RapidIO are totally outdated technologies. Luckily, this will change with the Apple G5 (that benefits from IBM's PowerPC 970 processors, IBM's Velocity Engine and AMD's HyperTransport).

I can understand your concerns. If the minimum requirement for Vue4/Mover4 were a 300 MHz G3 Processor, then a 1,25 GHz one seems quite a "jump". But, 300 MHz is really a joke. Every 3D application will crawl on it. The new requirements are more realistic.

Remember that VUE pro was designed for animation. For still images slow display refreshing rates and long rendering time are tolerable, but for 3D animations you need a fast CPU (or even a rendering farm).

E-on could keep the old requirement. I'm sure that you can run VUE pro on a 300 MHz G3. But then they'll receive hundreds of e-mails asking : "VUE crashes on my G3 !", "The display refreshing takes 1 hour !", "I can't render my animation in less than 6 months !", etc...

:) Eric

Hi Scott !

Why would E-on set a lower minimum requirement for MACs ?

According to the Cinebench 2003 (raytracing benchmark) a 1.25 Ghz G4 gives approx. the same performances than a 1 GHz Pentium 3 - around 110 CB-CPU. This is a very weak result.

A 1 GHz processor is the bare minimum for 3D applications, especially ray-tracers.

:) Eric

Great tutorial who3d ! Why don't you upload it in Renderosity's tutorial area ? it will be a better place for it !

Thanks in advance.

:) Eric

Hi Techyman !

For the geometry :

Use the Wavefront or 3D Studio exchange formats.

You can export directly every Cinema 4D object (primitives, hypernurbs, loftnurbs, etc...) in the Wavefront or 3D Studio formats. Cinema 4D will convert them automatically in polygon meshes.

But before, be sure that the polygon count is not too hight. Nurbs objects can generate thousands of polygons when converted in OBJ or 3DS formats. For example, an HyperNurbs object (subdivision: 3) of 1000 polygons creates a 200 000 polygons mesh. This amount of polygons can already slow down the display shading of VUE considerably. Try to stay below 500 000 polygons otherwise VUE could "freeze".

I would advise you to make all your object "editable" and run a "PolyReduction" before exporting the object. Reduce the amount polygons as much as you can. If polygon edges are noticeable in VUE, double-click on the object and increase the "max smoothing angle".

For the texture :

Don't expect miracles.

Cinema 4D and VUE have totally different material editors.

You won't be able to export the 13 material channels of your C4D object. Many material settings are not compatible with VUE (illumination model, diffusion, displacement, environment, anisotrophy, etc...) and procedural shaders can't be exported.

Some material settings will be included in the 3DS format : color/texture, reflection, transparency and specular. But you'll surely need to adjust them manually in VUE to get satisfactory results. VUE will recognize 5 C4D material channels : color texture, transparency/alpha texture, bump texture, reflection texture and specular color texture.

Here some indications :

• the color channel texture goes VUE's color channel - mapped value.
• the bump channel texture goes in VUE's "bump function" - mapped value.
• the reflection channel texture goes in VUE's "reflection amount function" - mapped value.
• the specular color channel texture goes in VUE's "HighLights Size and Intensity function" - mapped value.
• the alpha or the transparency texture goes in VUE's "transparency amount function" - mapped value.

Once you have VUE 4, spend some time in its material and function editors and try to learn how each setting works. It's the only way to create good texture.

Good luck

:) Eric

Hi Fictitious,

We are not giving away any part of a commercial font. We only provide the Renderosity orginal title/logo in a graphic vector format. You won't be able to use it for anything else than creating the new Renderosity graphic set.

I did this title in Adobe Illustrator and I'm a legal owner of the "Phenix American" and "Phoenix" fonts. I could have used any other free or commercial fonts for this purpose. That's perfectly legal.

:) Eric

"Yes, Renderosity has my permission to use my artwork from my art gallery for promotional use only". Eric Smit (aka audity)

Excellent ! Thanks you Kosaburo !!!

(should be time to start doing business, don't you think ? You have best-sellers here ! My cash is ready...).

:) Eric

the Team is here.

:) Eric

Hi postalpucino !

it sounds interesting...but I don't understand why you call this application "HDRI light studio".

HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging) is an image format that encodes proportionaly the amount of light as floating point number instead of "colors". This is a more accurate physical model as you can have an "infinite" light intensity (from a very weak light source to a bright sunshine). With normal 8 bit low dynamic range image (jpg, bmp, etc...) you're limited to 255 shades for 3 channels (RGB).

Poser's illumination model use low-dynamic range (8 bit) value. Even if you use an HDRI light probe to set the intensity of lights, it will be limited by Poser's 8 bit format. Whatever you'll do, it's impossible to create or use HDR image in Poser.

What you are proposing here is "image based" lighting. This method - used mostly with radiosity rendering engine - has nothing to do HDRI. It's only a global illumination method...

But, hey, image based lighting in Poser is already great !

:) Eric

I will check this out... stay tuned ! :) Eric

strange... I had no problem moving them.

In the edit page, did you change the area from "Poser" to "Vue" by clicking on the "Edit Top Section" button ?

:) Eric

Hi Senjin !

Are you talking about the "Ocean View 1 & 2" free items ?
I moved them to the VUE free stuff area for you.

:) Eric
Renderosity Mod'

this statue is a free model from the "DE ESPONA MODELS ENCICLOPEDIA". You can download it in LWO, 3DS and MAX format at Turbosquid :

http://www.turbosquid.com

(search for "De Espona Athene Sculpture")

:) Eric