and readme.txt is totally totally lame_o!!!

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you can also use the DOF python script. set units to feet, select camera, select your object, run script. answer is distance to object in feet.

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I think a MiniMint is what they leave on my pillow at the hotel each night... "just a waafer thin mint, Mr. Creosote!"

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Antonia Tiger,

You are absolutely correct in your interpretation of how bump maps and displacement maps work. Bump maps only change the orientation of the surface normals causing the light to reflect least for the black and most for the white areas with the center or neutral grey value being what you would see without a bump map applied. These are simply two-dimensional patterns. There is no change to the actual physical mesh, flat is flat and round is round and no shadows are cast by the bumps. Think of the fresnel effect where the edges of a sphere reflect less light and go dark while the front of the sphere reflects almost all of the light.

Displacement maps alter both the orientation of the normals and the position of the surface itself resulting in a texture that actually has three-dimensionality, in combination with the two-dimensional patterns mapped on it. Here again, black is least reflective and lowest, white is most reflective and highest. These surfaces will cast shadows. Displacement maps alleviate the bump map only problem that can occur when you see a highly irregular surface yet the edge appears perfectly smooth. Obviously displacement maps are a lot heavier come render time than bump maps, so it pays to save them for closeups or terrain generation and use bumps for less prominent objects.

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This is all off the top of my head, so don't hold my feet to the fire:

You can use image maps (or generate procedural textures) plugged into the diffuse_color node. This will be the main texture that is applied to your mesh.

Specular_color is, as you say for the "shiny parts."

Bump Maps will give an appearance of roughness, uneveness, etc to the surface. They are greyscale maps where white is the highest and black is the original surface. They do not actually modify the surface, just it's appearance.

Displacement Maps actually cause polygons in the mesh to deform. They work the same as bump maps with black being the original surface and white being higher. You must check  the displacement maps box in your render settings for this to work.

Transparency Maps are often based on a greyscale alpha channel made from the texture. Black in this case is invisible while white is opaque. Transparency edge determines the opacity at the edge of a transparent object and is somewhat determined by the "thickness" of the object. Look at a thin wine glass and compare it to a thick water tumbler.

As far as settings go, I'd highly suggest you take an evening and play around. Most settings are so dependent on all the other settings so that there are no hard & fast rules to tell you. Apply your materials, render in the little window, make a change, render again and slide the little triangle back and forth to see the differences. Make a big change, render and compare. It won't take you long to see what the different settings do and how much is too much. Have Fun!

HTH,

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lookin' good!

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just a thought...

have a look at your task manager and see if you can close down some background tasks. Things like "drag-to-disk" CD burning programs and other processes that keep interrupting the cpu are usually the culprit. I'm able to run with basically the same setup and have no problems. One other possible thing to try is to hide as much of the figure as possible (eyeball icon). This will speed up the lipsync.  HTH,

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never did much in the setup room. what are matspheres?

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I see the need for a how-to techie tutorial from Dale B! All in favor say, "Aye!"

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sounds like you need to use shadowcams. these are views from the light's POV and will show you exactly where the light is pointing.

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Just to clarify one point, the new ILM/LucasArts campus at the Presidio has a render farm of 5000 processors - that's five thousand...!

there are many many other trix that you can use in animations, but the main concept to grasp is that only what people think they saw is important. You have to get far away from literal reality and just use what works to convey the story. You don't need a 37kPoly car parked on the street when a still image texture of a car on a square poly & transparent surround will suffice. etc, etc, etc.

storyboard, storyboard, storyboard and then go back and storyboard some more so that you only ever render what that shot actually needs. Use cutaways to simpler shots. Move in to medium closeups to minimize what needs to be seen in the background. If it isn't seen, you don't need to render it and if it is seen, it can often just be a billboard.

Shrek2 had 300 people working on it and there were shots that took over a year from concept to completion. By comparison, render times are the fastest part of the process!

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then there's alway shift ctrl r, but nobody uses hotkeys, they'd all just rather mouse all over the sceen....

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Thankee!

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Tyger_purr,

Hows about your material room screen shot for that last one (reflect & refract)? Please...?

TIA,

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Vince3,

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the quote should probably be: "Mommy, why are all those people looking at us?" Elephant societies are matriarchal. Great shots though.

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