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March Forum Gallery
About Truespace Archives
These pages are a copy of the official truespace forums prior to their removal somewhere around 2011.
They are retained here for archive purposes only.
March Forum Gallery // Image Gallery
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 5:06am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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Howdy, it's me, Zachary. Doing some renders for the purists, using Lightworks AND Vray...I hope you enjoy!
PS only used in Pre-production for textures. |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 5:07am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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Here's screenshots of the scene. |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 5:09am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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Here's a piece I did back in 2005 that was all Truespace:banana:
Everyone feel free to put your own stuff in here and discuss it! |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 15, 2007, 5:19am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Hi Zachary - I'm the last person anyone would call a purist* so is it OK if I enjoy these great pics too? ;)
*I've been told that what I do is not 'true' 3d before because I don't model 'reality'. Shrug - it takes all sorts I s'pose.
I really like that little wee chair you've got - but somehow I always thought you'd be a bit taller!
WZRD |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 5:21am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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:p just a bit taller. I really don't mind accusations, really...I just produce stuff that I like to look at (and I happen to be between projects now, so I figured what the heck).
BTW, I'm an admirer of your work:)feel free to post stuff here! |
Post by Shike // Mar 15, 2007, 6:18am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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Really like both the new and old pic. :D
(and your non-purist ones, hope you keep doing them also ;)) |
Post by Chester Desmond // Mar 15, 2007, 6:34am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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pfffft. a "real" TS artist would use shaders instead of textures. :D
These pics look good and I feel badly that it seems like you need to prove anything to anyone. I realize you aren't too concerned about it but still seems kind of unnecessary. |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 6:41am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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I appreciate that...rest assured that I won't stop producing images in my traditional style...in fact, I've just started on one that's going to be ALL my style;)I hope everyone will enjoy it! |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 15, 2007, 6:45am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Why thank you sir! I'll take you up on your offer and share one of my latest efforts. It's called 'Departure'. It reuses several of my earlier models - the temple and the Nut pod house dwelling thingies. I've tried to recreate the weather and light I remember from my visit to India many years ago. This is all tS6.6 except for a slight fog added with the GIMP and a ZRender depth mask which avoids the alpha mapped artefacts you get from tS native fog.
Check out the wireframe. This pic uses most of the types of trees available in 3d space - the red tree to the right is full geometry (an x-frog freebee IIRC) The two blue trees were made by me using 'Twig" for the trunks and branches. Each leaf is an alpha mapped plane positioned using the wonderful geometry paint tool. The darker gree trees also use 'Twig' made truncks and branches but the leaves are clustered alphamapped hemispheres and the background trees are fully alphamapped onto single planes.
Enjoy, purists and all..... |
Post by Chester Desmond // Mar 15, 2007, 7:00am
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Chester Desmond
Total Posts: 323
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nice Wizard.... what is this Twig you speak of? |
Post by prodigy // Mar 15, 2007, 7:21am
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prodigy
Total Posts: 3029
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HOHOHOHOHO!!!!!!.. Thats my Wiz@ard... :D :banana:
I take off my hat... :) |
Post by trueBlue // Mar 15, 2007, 7:36am
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trueBlue
Total Posts: 1761
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pfffft. a "real" TS artist would use shaders instead of textures. :D
These pics look good and I feel badly that it seems like you need to prove anything to anyone. I realize you aren't too concerned about it but still seems kind of unnecessary.
Yes I have been feeling the same way, was sad from my stand point on what transpired. Zachary: I like your style in more ways then just one. Thank you very much for sharing you work! |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 7:42am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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Wow, that's awesome! The wireframe overloads my cranial circuits!!! I have to work with small intimate scenes because my computer is a piece of crap. The scale of yours is truly amazing...great composition! Really a lot of fun to view and dream about!
Thanx for posting:)
Oh, don't worry about it TrueBlue...I'm just anxious to do something for someone (regardless of what it is or why I'm doing it). I'm having a bit of an 'artist's block' so I was more than happy to whip up a quick scene for everyone:) If this were my job, I'd take it more personally...but I got a dayjob to pay the bills:Pthis is just fun work! |
Post by Methusela // Mar 15, 2007, 7:44am
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Methusela
Total Posts: 414
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Zachary, that set of images is fantastic! The lighting and texturing (two things I've never been good at XD) really stand out! The model of that trophy is cool looking too. Reminds me of the football (soccer) trophies you see in the European competitions! Also like the title of the book. XD
W!zard, that's got to be one of the best works I've seen yet from you! That is an incredible amount of detail, how long did that gigantic piece take to render?!
I'm no "purist" either, but I suppose it's nice to see one(two, really) of the masters doing something entirely in TS, as it's pretty inspiring to know what those of us without a tremendous amount of skill in other applications can do!
Thanks alot you guys! |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 7:54am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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:p What are you talking about, you have TONS of skills...I've seen your work. Yeah, I'm interested to know about the render time as well. How long did that bad boy take? Also, what kind of lighting did you use? |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 9:49am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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Here's a cute one I did this afternoon...enjoy! |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 15, 2007, 10:10am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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@Methusela - don't sell yourself short dude.
@Chester Desmond - Twig is a little app that makes... well, twigs! IIRC It's made by the same guy who made 'Grass' or was that '3dgrass'? Sorry I don't have the app or any web addy's for you. I downloaded Twig several years back and used it to make a few dead tree type models which I've since reused several times. The resultant geometry is pretty straight forward and simple enough to make by hand.
@Prodigy - Thanks mate - but don't let your head get cold!:rolleyes:
@Digitaldali - Thanks Zachary - and FWIW I sympathise over the "small scene due to slow computer" blues. I know that song - and so does my poor wife who has so supportively allowed me to spend our meagre savings on a new computer recently. That has made a HUGE difference to the size of scene I can play with. This scene is actually a tiddler - my recent pirate picture has 3 times as many polys' :D
Re lighting and rendering - an IBL which you can see in the wireframe and a single infinite light with ray shadows for the direct sunlight. This is my favourite daylight setup though I use a lot of variation on the theme.
Render time - around 12 hours on my dual core Athlon 4800 x2 CPU with 1 gig or RAM - rendered at 1280x 1024 pixels using 3x AA.
The ZRender run to make a depth mask was much faster and it's easy peasy to blend the two in The GIMP to make the atmospheric fog. |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 15, 2007, 10:13am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Here's a cute one I did this afternoon...enjoy!
LOL! That's cool! I always like shots that place expected ordinary things in unexpected unordinary settings. How many polygons in that picture? |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 15, 2007, 10:14am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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Sweet, I love it:Dnow I'm gonna try an' score me some GRASS...and TWIG. |
Post by prodigy // Mar 15, 2007, 10:43am
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prodigy
Total Posts: 3029
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Yes.. how much polygons?? :) |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 15, 2007, 11:09am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Hot off the CPU, no post work all trueSpace. What do you think? |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 16, 2007, 4:42am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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Ohhhhhhh, I like that one alot!!! Great composition...strange too. I like strange:D |
Post by Shike // Mar 16, 2007, 5:35am
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Shike
Total Posts: 511
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The Departure looks like a place I'd like to vistit ! Very warm tone, feels coozy ! Also like the fruit(?) study. :)
And the field-fridge is also great, the strange picture in picture kinda pulls you in ! :) |
Post by Alien // Mar 16, 2007, 6:55am
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Alien
Total Posts: 1231
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Render time - around 12 hours on my dual core Athlon 4800 x2 CPU with 1 gig or RAM - rendered at 1280x 1024 pixels using 3x AA.
I was going to mention the idea of rendering to a larger size [3x larger in this instance] with no AA & then resizing it in a 2D prog as a possible way to save time, but having just tried it & found it took longer I won't bother. :) [2m 38s at original res with 3xAA, 3m 35s at 3x res with no AA] I'd heard that it would provide a better [though don't know how much] end result, but now I understand why most people don't bother.
The ZRender run to make a depth mask was much faster and it's easy peasy to blend the two in The GIMP to make the atmospheric fog.
Just out of curiosity, why don't you use the ability to render a depth mask using tS7's built-in layer rendering wotsit? Is there some advantage to using ZRender?
Hot off the CPU, no post work all trueSpace. What do you think?
"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Pistachio." :D
Sweet, I love it:Dnow I'm gonna try an' score me some GRASS...and TWIG.
If W!z's on about the same prog I think he is, you may be out of luck. I found a number of references to something that sounded like the prog in question, made by a company called Bantam3D, but the actual company seems to have disappeared. |
Post by spacekdet // Mar 16, 2007, 7:57am
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spacekdet
Total Posts: 1360
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Hot off the CPU, no post work all trueSpace. What do you think?
I'm thinking it's going to take a long time to cook that cabbage with just a candle. I hope corned beef is planning on showing up.
I also think I need to stop looking at dark renders when sunlight is hitting my monitor.
Oddly enough, and your results apparently do vary, I've found that the 'render larger w/ no AA' trick is usually faster than AA. I also usually use a small view when rendering. Totally subjective since I've never applied a stopwatch to the process, but it seems faster than rendering in the main window.
Anyway, nice renders all around. |
Post by TomG // Mar 16, 2007, 8:26am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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I would agree that render larger with no Anti-Aliasing and then scale down in a 2D package is slightly faster, and more important, gives better quality.
Anti-aliasing is nothing fancy, the above is exactly what it does - it renders the image larger than the final image size, and downsizes it.
So if you render 100x100 at 2 times AA, it does the calculations for a 200x200 image (4 times as many as without the AA, which is why AA can impact speed of rendering) and also the calculations to average the pixels out so that it ends up with a 100x100.
You could just render to 200x200, which cuts out some calculations (you do those later in your 2D app).
As for quality, here is my thinking (and seems to be borne out by what I see) - when average out a group of pixels to get down to the final size, tS does this during rendering, not after the whole image is done. This means your 2D application has more information available in making it's resizing and averaging calculations.
The result to me is that external resizing gives better results at removing jaggies. I looked into this using my ship model, which has rails and details that were nice at causing jaggies ;) And that was what I based my thinking on - the render larger and downsample later won on quality.
This was several years ago, using Lightworks. Things may have changed, but I still prefer that approach as a result of those early findings - I can't see how it can be worse :)
Sometimes I render to larger size with adaptive AA (which I believe cleverly looks at geometry and edges, so can't be done post-process in the same way where the app wont have access to geometry info) - cuts down on the speed benefit, but should (in theory, never checked this) give greater quality still, like rendering to a larger image but without ALL the extra time it would take to render that larger image thanks to the adaptive nature of it.
HTH!
Tom |
Post by Alien // Mar 16, 2007, 10:17am
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Alien
Total Posts: 1231
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Oddly enough, and your results apparently do vary, I've found that the 'render larger w/ no AA' trick is usually faster than AA. I also usually use a small view when rendering. Totally subjective since I've never applied a stopwatch to the process, but it seems faster than rendering in the main window.
No stopwatch needed, Chamaeleon posted a cool little timer plugin here (http://forums1.caligari.com/truespace/showthread.php?p=18999#post18999). All you do is click its button to bring up its little panel, & it automatically starts when you start your render & stops when it finishes.
I would agree that render larger with no Anti-Aliasing and then scale down in a 2D package is slightly faster, and more important, gives better quality.
Well, I've only tried it the once, but it was almost a minute slower. Maybe the speed benefit varies depending on the scene. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alien42/smilies/dunno.gif |
Post by W!ZARD // Mar 18, 2007, 12:06am
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W!ZARD
Total Posts: 2603
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Great composition...strange too. I like strange:D
You like strange? LOL! I never would have guessed that from your posted work Zachary! :rolleyes: - (Disengage gentle sarcasm mode) Seriously though I'm also a fan of strange mytself. By looking at something in a newer stranger way we get a better undestanding of it IMHO.
I was going to mention the idea of rendering to a larger size [3x larger in this instance] with no AA & then resizing it in a 2D prog as a possible way to save time, but having just tried it & found it took longer I won't bother. [2m 38s at original res with 3xAA, 3m 35s at 3x res with no AA] I'd heard that it would provide a better [though don't know how much] end result, but now I understand why most people don't bother.
This has always been a popular talking point amongst the Terragen community. My understanding is that the final result of downsizing versus AA can depend a lot on which downsizing algorithm you use (linear, cubic etc). I'm of the understanding that once you get beyond a certain rendering resolution/ AA level the difference in output quality becomes so small as to essentially subjective.
Certainly I would be surprised if a viewer could determine which method had been used from viewing only the final product.
@Alien - The only advantage I know of to using Zrender is that I know how to use it already! Whilst I dip into tS 7.11 from time to time as a learning exercise I find that I tend to use tS 6.6 simply because I'm more comfortable with it. I suppose I could move my completes tS6.6 scenes into tS7.11 to take advantage of the faster render speeds but this would involve a whole new layer of import/export steps.
@Alien - "Alas poor Yorick"? You are a man (or should I say cosmic entity;) ) of many talents. I never suspected you as a Shakespearean Scholar!
RE. Grass and twig - Alien is correct, they were freely available from Bantam3d but the company has since disappeared and the domain name is used by someone else. I recall seeing a link to a site that still had Grass available3 for download but with no support. Sadly too many hours subjected to Cathode Rays has fried my brain and I can't recall where I saw this information. Some creative Googling may prove worthwhile. |
Post by Alien // Mar 18, 2007, 3:28am
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Alien
Total Posts: 1231
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The only advantage I know of to using Zrender is that I know how to use it already!
It's quite easy in 7.11.
Render to file
Choose .psd as the file format [& give it a filename & click Render]
Turn on the depth mask channel option as well as the channels as layers option, & click Ok.
That'll give you a .psd file with your render on 1 layer & your depth mask on another.
Whilst I dip into tS 7.11 from time to time as a learning exercise I find that I tend to use tS 6.6 simply because I'm more comfortable with it. I suppose I could move my completes tS6.6 scenes into tS7.11 to take advantage of the faster render speeds but this would involve a whole new layer of import/export steps.
What, File, Load, Scene? :D
"Alas poor Yorick"? You are a man (or should I say cosmic entity;) ) of many talents. I never suspected you as a Shakespearean Scholar!
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/alien42/smilies/roflol.gif Hardly, it's just a very well known quote, & I have a good memory for [mostly] useless trivia. The only Shakespeare I've ever read was The Merchant of Venice, & that was only because we had to in an English lesson in school.
RE. Grass and twig - Alien is correct, they were freely available from Bantam3d but the company has since disappeared and the domain name is used by someone else. I recall seeing a link to a site that still had Grass available3 for download but with no support. Sadly too many hours subjected to Cathode Rays has fried my brain and I can't recall where I saw this information. Some creative Googling may prove worthwhile.
Well I did come up with an interesting lead. Unless I'm mistaken, you're a member of the 3dcommune forum, yes? [found a post on there by someone with a similar username & the post sounded like you] Well, my Googling came up with the result that apparently 1 of the forum staff, SirJames has both Grass & Twig in his collection of 3D apps. As they're legitimately free, perhaps you could ask him to pass them along? |
Post by digitaldali // Mar 19, 2007, 4:52am
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digitaldali
Total Posts: 143
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I just finished this one up over the weekend...it's called "Evolution of the Universe." Enjoy! |
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