The spectral atmosphere model also refers to sunlight and how it scatters within the atmosphere and clouds by determining how colors are produced by various factors like density, moisture,  atmospheric curvature, light angle, etc.  This is different from the old model, which was mainly    determined by fog, haze and light decay.  The problem with that model is that the sky color was directly generated from the haze and fog effects.  In reality all 3 are somewhat separate, since each volume effect has its own set of physical characteristics that determines how light scatters within it.

Hey Nicholas, Nice to see some familiar faces, indeed. Modo is ok (I have both), but to me Modo's patching and curve types are really like an afterthought, tacked on at the last minute as opposed to a real solution for curve based modelling. My main gripes with the curve features in today's modellers: 1. Beziers handles cannot be changed once applied. Modo does give some semblance of editable handles, but they are a little quirky to try and manipulate (they look just like other points on the curve). 2. No control over polygon count in curve approximation. For example, when you create a curve in hexagon, it generates a control curve ( a poly line of points clicked) and a curve generated using curve approximation (another polyline with a set number of points between each control point). It would be nice to interactively control the number of points generated on the approximated curve both during creation and after validation. But anyway, I digress, Silo seems like a good poly modeller, but I have only used it briefly. It seemed like a cross between modo and wings to me.

Hi, I haven't posted here much for a while, been too busy and yes there are 2 many 3d apps to play with : ) Hexagon is a "hybrid" tool, that is a cross between nurbs surface modelling and poly modelling. It has some great features, but for me, I think it still is in its infancy yet. The main issue, for me, is that the dynamic geometry features, while they initially impressed me, are still a bit lacking in terms of a full suite of tools and options. I like the tool, but I guess I will have to hope that version 2 or 3 will really add some of the features that I think it needs to really be a solid hybrid nurbs/polygon modeller. Silo/Modo/Wings are all pure polygon modellers. They are all great and have nice functionality, but where they fall apart is their support for curves and patches. This seems to have been a trend for a while, since many 3d apps have come to the conclusion that Nurbs are dead and only have cursory support for robust curve modelling tools and nurbs. Hopefully, the hybrid approach of hexagon will take root and more will see a new way of bridging the gap so that it is easy to model polygons to curves or curves to polys, whichever the artist is more comforable with.

"Ebert said he hoped that a license for Schpok's software might eventually be sold to additional film companies for use in other movies." Too bad they arent making a commercial version of this plugin that any user can buy. Many apps are taking forever to incorporate GPU based effects in their apps and this is another example of steering promising developments in that category AWAY from the general public and more towards proprietary or custom apps solely for studios. I wish he could upgrade swell and make it a commercial plugin.

Quick Tute: 1. Set the terrain editor resolution to 256X256 or lower. (Go to the terrain icon and click on the "?" terrain icon. Do this once, hit ok and that is the default terrain editor resolution.) 2. Keep the size of the terrain at the default size (at first). 3. Play with the function editor while the terrain is at the default size (in the main vue window, upper right tabs). (This is how best to get an idea of how it will look before you scale it.) 4. See how the settings in the function editor affect the terrain. 5. Once you are happy at this "preview" size, scale the terrain in X and Y only. 6. Scale the Z axis in small increments, until you get the amount of detail you want. 7. Tweak the function editor as necessary. 8. Enjoy

Message edited on: 03/26/2005 18:56

Thanks.

Wow! I haven't been active in the vue forums for a while and I was wondering what had happened to Guitta, since I had not seen any posts from her lately. Very sad news indeed. My sincere regrets and condolences go out to Ms. Bertrand and her family.

Yes indeed I meant the sunset sea. Thanks.

Nanotyranus, is that ocean a procedural surface, like the sand?

Thanks Mark! Just what I was looking for. Looking forward to C3!

Hi all! The booleans look great and I can't wait for C3 either. Unfortunately I'll have to get home from this desert before I can play with it. However, one question for Mark: How did you get that brushed metal look on the sphere in the image above. I have noticed a lot of nice metallic textures with somewhat anisotropic speculars on new C3 images and wondered if it was C3, the new plugins or both. Thanks.

This image really is an example of ibl or image based lighting using an high dynamic range image, HDRI, in the backdground to generate the lighting in the scene, IMO. The image is rendered using GI in order to get the subtle variations in color on the rendered model. Carrara can do this if you have a suitable background image and you set the backround to that image, play with the sky intensity and render with GI. You don't need to spend $17,000 to achieve this effect! This type of rendering can make even the crappiest model look good and is not a special feature only of Softimage. One thing that separates Carrara and packages that support HDRI is that they also support special image files that represent a 360 panorama for the background, sometime called image probes. This type of image is wrapped onto a virtual sphere in the background that completely envelops the scene without messy seams and maintains better perspective relative to the camera. Also, HDRI images encode a greater range of color/brightness data per pixel allowing for a truer range of lighting values for use in rendering. These two features are normally present with packages that support HDRI. It is hard to do this in Carrara without generating a panoramic like image, ie very wide image that does not have a noticable seam and proceeding as I mentioned above, playing with the sky intensity to simulate hdri. Carrara does not support HDRI images directly and the wrapping of an image onto the background in Carrara and producing the proper perspective relative to the rest of the scene takes some trial and error.

I think the real problem is that the translucency for a leaf is not just a single flat color. Usually when you look at a leaf with a light shining through it you see a complex pattern formed by the veins in the leaf. Back lighting really does nothing to make the leaves look realistic, since there are no options to use a function on it and there is no way to vary the intensity of the backlighting. Actually a better way is to come up with a custom clip map with patterns on the clip mask for the leaf and put this mask in almost every channel: color transparency, etc. This would make the leaves look better by default. Also another thing I noticed is that using backlighting also exaggerates the edges and increases rendertimes, especially for forests from a distance. Turning off backlighting is a lot better. The best option would be to have a translucency channel added to the material editor. Wish I had thought of it for the wish list.....

New Features: 13 A 14 B 5 A 2 A 6 D 7 G Improvements 2 A 2 E 2 F 16 B 9 A 8 A More plants and trees period.

Here are some of my wishes: 1. Radiosity 2. More advanced sunlight/atmospheric settings allow for things like sun light through clouds from any sun position. 3. More advanced night sky settings for things like nebulas and stars. 4. Better nighttime haze/fog settings that allow for volumetrics at night (moonlit haze, fog etc) 5. Improved volumetric rendering within non standard vue objects (like imported objects). 6. Add improved cloud layer editting tools, to include true 3d clouds with hieght as well as width. Add capability to define cloud layer coverage using a greyscale function that uses greyscale for height information. 7.Allow terrain meshes to be "frozen" so that they can be further molded in the x and y dimensions after generating terrain with height map. Perhaps a sort of airbrush that acts like a magnet on resulting object, pushing and pulling points in x,y and z axes. 8. Add a rainbow primitive or support for rainbows within volumetric atmospheres.