Count me among those who are kind of disappointed with the new features. I'm just a hobbyist, so the pro version is out of reach for me. And a feature I've really wanted, blurry reflections, is being "held hostage" by the pro version. I think my wishlist is pretty different from most people's, though. Everyone wants loads of features for animation, landscapes, and PoserPoserCharacterPoserPoser. Those are the three things I'm least interested in. So I guess I should be happy they've done SOME of the things I wanted (like the manipulator)

I think of ambient light as "the light that's there before you add any lights." Years ago, when raytracers only made hard shadows and there was no GI, you had to put some ambient light into every scene or your shadows would be dead black. It was basically poor man's GI. So ambient light is definitely not necessary when using GI, although you can use it if you want, of course. Overall ambient light has the effect of reducing the contrast of a scene, because your ambient light setting defines how dark the darkest shadow can be. If your ambient light is a medium-dark grey, then your darkest darkest shadow will be that same medium darkness.

There's a free version of Cinema 4D called Cinema 4D CE 6, which includes a gear tool that works very nicely. You can change the parameters of the gear any time after you've created it. The only thing is, I don't know how you can get this program. I got it from a CD that came with MacAddict magazine, and I've seen it on CDs from other Mac and PC magazines. It's certainly worth the cost of a magazine for all of the fine modeling tools.

I think this is a great start. My first instinct is to say, just do more of what you're doing. And I'm sure others will have better suggestions, but I can offer this:

I think that once you add a road the scene will come together a lot more, because the buildings will not be so completely separate. And you can consider tying the buildings together with other elements: a sign that spans two buildings, or a single porch across a pair of them. Add a shared railing to the porch, maybe. These things would give the sense that the street was built up in phases.

Also, this doesn't really apply to your question, but in real life the interior of each building would be almost completely dark when seen from the outside, and there would be much more stuff reflected in the windows. Try turning off the light-through-transparency rendering option to see how that looks. Or maybe make the windows much darker and more opaque to fake it.

Finally, the viewpoint is a little higher than eye-level, so it feels a bit like the 7/8 scale buildings at Disney World. If you lower the camera a bit it may feel a bit more real.

Message edited on: 06/27/2004 12:42

Marc, I can answer half of your question: before the sword will be visible, you have to give it something to reflect. You've chosen a chrome-like texture, which doesn't have much of an intrinsic color of its own. The quickest way to give it something to reflect is to add a sky to your scene. 1. Click the word Scene in your Instances palette (it's in a larger font than the other items, but it's clickable) 2. In the Effects palette above that, go to the Atmosphere section and click the word None to show a pop-up menu of atmosphere choices. Choose Sky. 3. You'll see a pop-up menu of sky presets. Try one and render your scene. You should see the sword. Once you have some more objects in your scene, your sword will reflect those, and it will be that much more realistic looking. - Joe

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/index.ez?viewLink=193

By the way, Renderosity's terms of service state the following: "E-mail Addresses: Member e-mail addresses are stored in a database for use in distributing member selected newsletters. This information is not shared except in cooperation with appropriate authorities in the case of violations of our Zero Tolerance Conduct." I am CERTAIN that they didn't really think about it when they set up the email system to expose the sender's email address to the recipient. I'm sure they added it for convenience, so that the recipient can click Reply in their email program to write back. But Waldo has a valid complaint against Renderosity if he does not wish his email address to be shown to the people he writes to. Renderosity says they would not share his email address with anyone.

Waldo: it is possible for Renderosity to send an email message which looks like it comes from Eric's email account. Every email message has a "From" line in it, and the sender can put whatever they want in there. The irony which no one has noticed in this discussion is that Renderosity actually did expose Eric's email address to Waldo. If Waldo had sent a message to Eric, his email address woule likewise have been exposed. The blame in any case rests with Renderosity, not with Eric or Waldo.

Attached Link: http://www.3dxtract.com

I'm writing a tutorial on this for 3DXtract at this very moment. Hopefully it will get published in a future issue.

Also, if you really lose it altogether, you can just make a new camera (with a new production frame) and get rid of the old one. Kind of annoying, but it's a solution.

Very nice! Looks like a lot of work. Was this published?

When I saw this I was going to say, hey, those eyes look like the eyes on vizualds.com... but then I realized you're that guy. :-) Nice job. Definitely one of my favorite number-face-old-man pictures. At least from Carrara.

What makes it a cheat?

Ooo, and it's kind of alarming how his hair is spreading into the ears there... :)

You can add a modifier to the plane to make it point at the camera. Select the plane, go into the Modifiers tab, and choose Behaviors > Point At. Enter the name of the camera into the field. This will ensure that the plane always points at the camera, but it doesn't ensure that the plane is always in view. If you want you can also set up a modifier for the camera to make it always point at the plane. Or if it makes sense for your scene you can just group the plane and camera and move them together as a unit.

Ah. Thanks!