Change scale of camera by +2/3 or double. Oops, gin and tonic factoring... S/b: "2/3 or half"

Ah, if I only had another beefy machine or some sort of render farm. Actually enjoying downtime--usually render when I'm asleep. Had a fine dinner, tasty gin drink, and caught up on reading. So, Bigrobot and Flickerstreak, thanks a heck of alot for info. Scale (camera) seems to have worked fine for the bottom part of image--I think this is why that feature is there. No distortion like +FOV would have produced. In fact, same idea (I ended up with setting scale to 66.667 and render size to 1:1.5) got me most of the left side--I think. Still rendering. You're saying that pan x,y (whichever) will give me those extra 200 pix or so. If so, that's probably easier than what I'm doing, because I could have reset, smaller, the viewport just to render that part or shot it to disk. This all smells like the basis of a good tutorial. I discovered a bug doing it my way, which is this: Change scale of camera by +2/3 or double. Set render ratio to 1:1.5 or 1:2 Start a render and let go one pass Pause it Zoom out to fit Define Plop render Render that This worked for the bottom, but here's the bug: If I multitask (like I'm doing now), when I go back to bryce, the zoomed out render with the plop going on is all distorted. But! It's working fine. You just can't see it, and it looks all messed up (aspect). Like a spolied child, Bryce wants all of your attention.... Forgetting the bug, apparently the camera scale, which I never messed with before, is essentially sorta orthoginal (sp?) vs. FOV. FOV would have been a new perspective. Scale won't let me get at some areas way beyond the FOV. That's where I'll be using pan as you suggest. This is all pretty darn confusing. If I "pan" a real-life camera, like it's on a tripod, I will get a different perspective. I've been trying to imagine what happens if I jump 10 feet to the left with a camera all day--that sounds like what Bryce's "pan" does, no? --Snazzy

If I increase FOV closer to 90 degrees, I get everything (and then some) I want in the shot. The problem is that I am compressing my image at the same time (like zooming out). So, if this is the right track towards fixing this, what I need to know is what the relationship is between viewport/render size and FOV. I.e. for 1 degree in added FOV I need to increase the image size X. The scale button (half scale and double rez) seems to do this, sorta. Unfortunately, it seems to only help me with the bottom of the image. The other idea is to just hop over to the left with the camera--but I'm unclear if this will change perspective where the new part of the image meets old. Maybe some coffee will help.

Well, I think it's a little more complicated than that. FOV, would change the lens on the camera, doesn't it? So my two renders wouldn't have the same perspective. I'd be getting distortion from using a really wide lens (parralax error in photography). Likewise, if I change aspect ratios, I seem to be just getting more or less pixels with the same view, depending on if I have constrain on or off. I get that on the horizontal anyway, where I have maxed out my FOV apparently. The original render is 1500 X 864, FOV 70 degrees.

98SE, 733 with 256MB ram, about 10 gigs free on fast defragged HD, 32mb Matrox Dual Max G400. Hi-rez textures still cause Poser to go to sleep with up-do. Works if I don't use bump maps, but that's whole point. I experimented with making them into tiffs, to avoid compression. No dif. I think I'll just try it in Bryce next, or try simplifying the bump maps somehow. Also changing my start-up so nothing loads in ram and rebooting before render for contiguous ram. Seems to be first thing that has taxed this machine ever.

Not to become a critic all of a sudden, but what's with rough knees? Nice otherwise--Greek isle supermodel. Which CP texture?

Sounds and looks great Konan. Impressive work. 3d studio, besides being expensive, has to be the most complex looking interface I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot!). Hoping to avoid that until something intuitive came along. I know Bryce isn't going to do high end, but this ought to make it robust enough to make little movies and get my feet wet.

(That Konan approah looks very interesting). That's too bad that you go terrain by terrain. So pratically, you'd really want to design your entire enviro in these other apps (I guess there are plugins that speed that up). Bryce may head for the shelf if I go this route, save Konan.... Thanks for info.

What sort of object is the Poser animation in Bryce? Can you move it, or does it need to stay in same spot?

Can you import Bryce environments (moving) into max or lw? Or do you have to make scenery there? I know PPP let's you export your Poser animations to there--wondering if you can do same with Bryce and have the two meet.

Attached Link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/2/15620.html

You might not "get" that Gilmore article I linked earlier without some background. Here's a good backgrounder on the IDE scheme, coming to a hard drive near you real soon. Gilmore is pretty philisophical obviously. He goes futher than I in many respects. But this is indeed the issue of the day, and why I think you see it touching a nerve here. For me, CL is becoming, in whatever small way, an early adopter of this sort of "taking over my hard drive" idea. If I had some extra bucks right now, I'd invest in several hard drives and leave them in their wrappers for a while. --Snazzy

(Maybe that was the 90's with Adobe--anyway, way back when in computer industry terms)

Attached Link: http://www.toad.com/gnu/whatswrong.html

I suppose I object most to the idea that CL wants to do something secret on my HD. That just rubs me the wrong way. I want trust. CL reps talk about how this is a direction many other software companies are/will be taking. I object to that. But they are indeed correct. Did you know there are big plans underway to have every IDE drive have a serial no/copy protection/encryption scheme? It's not just CL, it the whole industry. I plan to fight that every way I can--just like we fought (and have won so far) the id no. in your Pentium processor. Check out the link to this John Gilmore article. He states my point much better than I will get out here. I seem to remember Adobe (now a CL partner) being a leader in not having locked software in the 80's when us designers and techs objected vociferously (and also won that battle). Yes, I know they have some similar thing now on on GoLive, I think. Dreamweaver doesn't. I don't want to have a note from my doctor to do what I want with software I buy. Once I buy it, that's the end of the relationship as far as I'm concerned. You don't have my permission to do anything secret on my hard drive, or require any ongoing contact for me to use it. This whole thing is very much repeating the past to me. And the excuse is that there are so many people on the Internet that extra measures are needed. I don't buy that. Seems like an invasive excuse (not just from CL but the whole industry). Please don't move this thread to C&D, I think this is important enough to be here. --Patrick Snazzy Graphics

I should have said: "Apple ][" -- how quickly we forget.... Re Robert Belton and piracy source: The source and tracking issues you bring up are interesting but by "actual users pirating" I meant using the program and distributing to others who would actually use the program. Like some sort of crazy pirate poser sewing circle. This goes to the lost revenues aspect that folks keep mentioning, which from a business standpoint, is a somewhat questionable proposition. You can't put that on your balance sheet as a loss, at least not with my accountant. It is not real, it is an estimate, a potential. What the CL people are saying is maybe 5-10% guesstimate of the ripped off ppp is from people who would otherwise buy the software. They add up thousands of copies of stolen software, think about that percent and translate into people's paychecks and funding. I say that's maybe a thought experiment best avoided. I think if you go further down this here path you get into divergent philosophies, business and otherwise. >> Keep in mind that if it's the eleventh hour you still can install and have that grace period to register, during which time the app is fully functional. << Good to know, that eases some meltdown concerns. On stealing front desk, maids, etc.: If I were to find myself booked at a hotel with bars on the windows, chances are I'm in the wrong part of town. You know, all this stuff is coming to a head fast--why I find this interesting. Copyright issues with everything--books, movies, artwork, software, music. Anything that can be digitized, will be and then will be ripped off. That's an underlying cultural problem. It's not going away. Locks and enforcement of any sort won't stop it. Education might. Interesting times ahead!

A loyal user base can help reduce losses, but it won't totally eliminate the losses that piracy creates. << True. I think nothing will ever eliminate those losses or come close. And as others have pointed, those are potential or estimated losses. So yes, I'm largely saying something like "be a successful enough company to make those potential loses miniscule compared to profits. Drive customer loyalty to the bank." Not to go crazy with the analogies, but take hotels. People steal/misplace/abuse towels and other room goodies. Obviously you can't eliminate or chain 'em down--you'd have a brief run in business and some smelly guests. So what approaches do they take? Some hotels post warning signs, telling you what your towel responsibilities are--pretty cheesy. Others probably go out of their way to do a careful accounting after you leave--bill you, hunt you down, whatever. Still others provide really nice, clean, abundant towels. Maybe throw in a robe, lots of little bottles of bathroom type stuff and possibly don't glue down the tv and the remote. They might charge a little extra, or perhaps have a note that politely says you can buy their items at the gift shop. These are the places I'd rather stay. They have a perceived trust with their customers. Anticipate some loss in exchange for good will; charge a little more to take up the slack. I'm willing to pay it to avoid all that perceived lack of trust and to generally have a better experience. To the business traveler versus the weekend holiday type, these little things really add up to make a big difference. Same deal for the graphics pro: If I need to rip apart a machine for some god awful 11th hour reason--now!--to get some client project out the door on time, I don't want to worry about connecting to tech support, calling anybody, asking permission, and so on. This does come up unfortunately, and it does affect what software I pick and choose. I've crashed more hard drives than I care to remember. That Poser might be tied to a particular machine, a particular hard drive, and 9-5 business hours (or whatever obstruction--the specifics don't really matter--it's all about more effort on my part), that makes it a questionable choice for me to depend on and trust. (Side issue: That it might somehow also add system overhead also concerns me). I wonder what sort of data they have that suggests actual users are pirating the software? Sounds somewhat paranoid to me. Like most software, Poser/PPP was probably available on the warez groups before it was even released to the public. Do the pirates make any art with it? I doubt it. Any case, I'm skeptical because this whole issue is nothing new for the entire industry. I too wish them luck. And will kep you in mind for the wish list there Steve! --Patrick