The Area

Gradient Lights?

2008-05-15T12:32:22-06:00

DISCLAIMER:
Please forgive my ignorance; I have spent my career in realtime and recently decided to try my hand at some offline Mental Ray rendering. I will do my best to describe what I am trying to achieve.

MY QUESTION:
Is there a certain light type or or method for creating a light that casts different colors at different ranges? For example, say an omni light that casts white light out to it’s far inner attentuation range, followed by yellow light to the near outer range, and then blended to red at the far outer attenuation range? Or perhaps a spot light whose hotspot is white, blending off through yellow to red at the outer edge of the falloff?

Thanks.

Does anyone actually like Max 2009?

2008-05-12T15:25:35-06:00

All I see here are complaints about Max 2009, does anyone here actually like Max 2009? I have to say I have pretty much not enjoyed the changes from 2008 to 2009.
Seems harder to use somehow, just used to the old way of doing things I guess.... but I’m sure someone here will think I am stupid for saying so.... 8-)
Kind regards, Tom

Fluid plugin for Maya

2008-05-12T19:06:03-06:00

Don’t name Realflow, I’m talking about pyrotechnics, clouds, etc. Do any plugins exist for Maya? If not, I’m going to have to learn 3ds max because the FumeFX plugin is the best.

Trying to Link a Helper to Cloth

2008-05-15T21:25:39-06:00

I’ve created a piece of cloth that I have blowing across the screen being blow by a Wind Space Warp. Imagine a paper napkin blowing along the ground in front of the camera from right to left and the camera is at ground level.

What I want to do is lock a camera to the tumbling napkin as it blows across so the camera follows it. I’ve tried to link a ‘helper’ to the cloth (cloth modifier on a spline and Garment maker) but the cloth leaves the helper behind when it move. I assigned a ‘position constraint’ to the camera targert but that didn’t work.

Is there a way to link an object to cloth so that the object (in my case the camera) will follow the blowing cloth?

Materials losing their Bitmaps

2008-05-15T19:29:00-06:00

To All:
I have a student trying to create a walk-through of a retail store. She created materials for the shelving and displays from images she gathered on the internet. They looked pretty good but when she saved the scene and opened it the next week, the materials were not displaying correctly. After digging around we found out that the cropping she applied to them was reset back to the corner of the image. Resetting that restored the image. The same thing happened again the next week only this time we could get the images to display properly in the viewport, but they would not render at all. Just white boxes. The only way to fix it is to recreate the material again.
Very frustrating.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Jeff

More advanced Maya

2007-11-28T15:28:04-06:00

I would like Maya to have advanced NURBS tools, such as

I’m using Maya 7, sorry if one of those or more are featured in Maya 2008

Just a great new Tool
Split NURBS tool-Kinda like Split Polygon tool
Convert curve to nurb,polygon,subdiv like T-Spline plugin
The paint tool must stick to object, put paint applied to polygon.

Also some options:
Automotive modeler(Which has all the good tools to model a car)

Landscape designer(This is special option that has tools specific for modeling cities,forest, and it is suppose to handle more than 400 million tri in a lowend computer)

Artist(This is a another special option made to model a human easy.

Name as all as you can

Most important addition

Maya need to handle over 500 million tris on a lowend computer, so that the company can make high detailed game,movie without any problem.

How do You start modelling?

2008-04-28T21:22:50-06:00

How to start the model? How to imagine what should it looks like?
As for me, using images is nice for job-modelling, when you know what to model, which materials you should use.
But if you want to create something for practice skills, what do you do?
As for me, i create cylinder or cube and make chaotic extruding of faces and then i see that something of that looks like some shape ond, basing of it, make an interior or exterior for that.
And you?
Let’s flood here!

Gradient Ramp Interface Bug

2008-05-14T11:32:54-06:00

I’ve always wondered why you were limited to integer values in the gradient map plugin, especially for the position of your flags. I assumed it was a maths limitation of 32-bit max, and would be addressed in max 64-bit… but nothing ever came about.

You can imagine my surprise when accessing the flag position through maxscript, it returned a float value, and not even rounded to the nearest integer value that appears when you slide the flags in the gradient ramp rollout! I can’t think of any reason for this other than sloppy programming.

Firstly, why is the position of a flag not definable through the rollout as a float value?

Secondly, Can we PLEASE have a gradient editor, like the output editor, that allows you to zoom in to define very precise values and positions for your flags?

// walks away shaking his head.

Outdoor Scene Material Advice

2008-05-01T18:47:41-06:00

Hey Area,
I am working on an exterior scene and have just started, and I need a little advise on my materials. The fountain looks to greyish, and I’m maybe thinking of coloring it, and do you think the tile is to bland, right next to the fountain do you think I should use a better tile bitmap, the tile looks literally amazing on the preview, but for some reason, looks a little more bland, I’m thinking when I do the lighting it will fix this I attached the scene, (just started it), and a preview of my material:p.

problems with: modeling a wall, lots of edges, chamfering.

2008-05-14T04:00:15-06:00

I am trying to model a simple kitchen. The kitchen table is rounded and contacts a wall. Where the kitchen table makes the contact with the wall - i want to avoid sharp corners, i want smooth transition for which i use chamfer. For that, i select the end edges, use the Shift+Move to extrude them in the direction i want, then i return to the new corner i formed and select those edges with Chamfer, but i get total chaos. I tried many ways - but i can’t get over it. I am attaching the scene, it’s from max 2009.

Like that: http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/3797/47196160dx9.jpg (the blue stuff is from PS, to illustrate)

See those rounded edges on the table? The way i approach it is: selecting half of them + the top edge on the flat table surface, then doing the shift+drag to extrude, then make planar on the rounded extruded edge. Repeat that on bottom half. After that - select all corner edges and doing extrude, which gets me to this situation:

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/2695/selectionqu9.jpg

^ - those are the selected edges ready for chamfer

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/4677/chamferedsi0.jpg

Here i did the chamfer. One can say that it looks ok, but it is not. see next pic.

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/7311/chamfer2ok5.jpg

if you increase the chamfer ammount, it reveals the total mess…

I also tried to delete the extra edges on the wall itself, the edges that came from the rounded corner of the table, also deleted the un-needed vertices:

http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/3079/cleanupbl0.jpg

Just ring select the wall edges and backspace; select all vertices on the wall and collapse. Then attempt to extrude:

http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/5284/finalchamfersu0.jpg

Don’t laugh too much, please help