3D modeler?

Thanks Mad Fax I'll check out Bryce 5. Maybe I'll find an update to it at work.

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The Flash>>>>>

Quote

Originally posted by mrxak:
**Actually, I made a sprite with photoshop once (using the rotate canvas and croping tools). Of course it sucked but...

**

Same here. I learned how to make sprites in Photoshop before I did with Infini-D...

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Bryce is not just for making landscapes 🙂

l e g i o n

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The heart goes streight from sugar to coffee.

Quote

Originally posted by Legion:
Bryce is not just for making landscapes 🙂

But that is what it does best. Other (price comparable) programs are a lot better than Bryce when modeling ships and photorealist images, and should be used instead of Bryce for doing the above mentioned.

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Quote

Originally posted by Legion:
**Bryce is not just for making landscapes:)

l e g i o n

**

Indeed. Folks such as Cap'n Carno have mastered ship design with Bryce, but even he admits that Bryce is not any easy program to create ship designs with...

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Quote

Originally posted by Mr_The_Kid:
**OK, to clarify, by point-based I mean that you can type in coordinates to create objects; ie make a line from (5,6,7) to (3,4,5) or a circle of radius 6 centered at (4,5). That sort of thing. I really don't do well with using mice, so I was wondering if anyone had ever heard of a program that could do that. Thanks, people.

Mr. The Kid

**

That's what (url="http://"http://mac.povray.org/")POV-Ray(/url) is all about, and it's Meshwork-compatible.

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NTi Ozymandias of the Red Shadow Organization

Quote

Originally posted by Mr_The_Kid:
**Allow me to rephrase that: Any 3D modelers that can be easily converted into Nova? Hey, gimme a break here, I have no clue what I'm doing.

Mr. The Kid

**

Oh. Ok. Typically a nice easy program like Bryce will export movies which can be exported into PICT files with a program like m2s or p2s...unfortunately they only work in 8-bit. Oh well. I used paint for a while to make sprites, but then I failed at doing them well, so I sent them to this nice guy who made them for me. I made like an EV-expansion, I remember... oh well. Point based would be teh suck, as it were. =P

Nat

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Quote

Originally posted by Lequis MX:
...with a program like m2s or p2s...unfortunately they only work in 8-bit...

The version of m2s in the (url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/dr_ralph/")sprites(/url) pack for Nova exports to either 8, or 16-bit. (the older one only exported to 8-bit) 'Course a 32-bit export option would be nice for post processing...

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Quote

Originally posted by NTiOzymandias:
**That's what POV-Ray is all about, and it's Meshwork-compatible.

**

POVRay! POVRay! POVRay! POVRay! POVRay! I was going to post a message with something to that effect, but you beat me to it, NTi. So Kid, if you want a program that works in the way that you said, POVRay is practically a match for you.

Matrix

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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."

Quote

Originally posted by what_is_the_matrix:
**POVRay! POVRay! POVRay! POVRay! POVRay! I was going to post a message with something to that effect, but you beat me to it, NTi. So Kid, if you want a program that works in the way that you said, POVRay is practically a match for you.

Matrix

**

Let's make that three votes for POV-Ray! I've used AutoCad, and the main difference between it and most CG programs out there is that it's designed for (surprise, surprise) Computer Aided Design - not graphics. The difference is simple: when building a CAD model, things must be exactly right; when building something for CG, it only needs to look right. POV-Ray is much more conducive to the former aproach; about the only thing I miss of AutoCad is the ability to just order the program to fillet all the edges and not worry about it myself. Ah, well, that's what macros and trig and way too many tori are for...
POV-Ray can be found at: (url="http://"http://www.povray.org/")http://www.povray.org/(/url)

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You might try a program such as Lightwave or Maya, these programs have numeric as well as graphical editors, tons of advanced FX features, great point based systems that allow an object such as a sphere to be deformed on a point by point basis. These programs also include the capability to restrict mouse editing, so that such editing is much simpler and more seamless (and easier). They have several things on POV-Ray as well: Realtime visualization (this is very improtant to many people), powerful FX engines, object editing, organic modeling, powerful animation and motion systems, and a host of other features. But these programs have the numeric editors for primitives (line form x,y,z to x,y,z, sphere at x,y,z with # radii as well (one for each axis)), as well as numeric editors for the points and polygons that make up these primitives (move point a from x,y,z to x,y,z, or make polygon from x number of points). Just get the demos of both products (contact newtek to get the full CD sent to you, or download Maya PLE form (url="http://"http://www.alaiswavefront.com)")www.alaiswavefront.com)(/url), and see if either suits you.
Joe

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Quote

Originally posted by jdh545:
**You might try a program such as Lightwave or Maya, these programs have numeric as well as graphical editors, tons of advanced FX features, great point based systems that allow an object such as a sphere to be deformed on a point by point basis. These programs also include the capability to restrict mouse editing, so that such editing is much simpler and more seamless (and easier). They have several things on POV-Ray as well: Realtime visualization (this is very improtant to many people), powerful FX engines, object editing, organic modeling, powerful animation and motion systems, and a host of other features. But these programs have the numeric editors for primitives (line form x,y,z to x,y,z, sphere at x,y,z with # radii as well (one for each axis)), as well as numeric editors for the points and polygons that make up these primitives (move point a from x,y,z to x,y,z, or make polygon from x number of points). Just get the demos of both products (contact newtek to get the full CD sent to you, or download Maya PLE form www.alaiswavefront.com), and see if either suits you.
Joe

**

I'll agree with you in that Lightwave and Maya are in many ways more powerful than POVRay, but they are also more difficult to use. POVRay is free, its documentation is good and it's free, and any system can run it. Lightwave and Maya both cost over $1000 retail (over $400 for students), and they also require fast computers with gobs of RAM, and good video cards. I wouldn't go for Lightwave or Maya, unless you were totally serious about going into the CGI field (as a career).

Matrix

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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."

(This message has been edited by what_is_the_matrix (edited 06-24-2002).)

OK, POV-Ray is great. Thanks, all!

One question... does anyone have a good way to make flame effects with POV-Ray? I'm having trouble making fuel jets for my ship... again, thanks to everyone for all the help.

Mr. The Kid

(This message has been edited by Mr_The_Kid (edited 06-26-2002).)

Quote

Originally posted by Mr_The_Kid:
**OK, POV-Ray is great. Thanks, all!

One question... does anyone have a good way to make flame effects with POV-Ray? I'm having trouble making fuel jets for my ship... again, thanks to everyone for all the help.

Mr. The Kid

(This message has been edited by Mr_The_Kid (edited 06-26-2002).)**

Err... Now, that depends. Realistic flame is a pain to do no matter what program you're using. Simple engine glow type things, on the other hand, are pretty simple: go take a look at the "media" section of the manual. For basic results, try a sphere w/: pigment{ rgbt 1 } hollow interior{ media{ emission rgb <something> } }

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Quote

Originally posted by Wyvern:
**Err... Now, that depends. Realistic flame is a pain to do no matter what program you're using. Simple engine glow type things, on the other hand, are pretty simple: go take a look at the "media" section of the manual. For basic results, try a sphere w/: pigment{ rgbt 1 } hollow interior{ media{ emission rgb <something> } }
**

Good flame isn't that hard. In fact, it is quite easy in lightwave and Maya, and not too much more dificult in Bryce.
Joe

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Hmmm... that doesn't seem to be working... all I'm getting is a sphere that looks like it's solid. If you lower the rgbt value it has two spheres, but how do you make it look more engine-like? I would imagine that the density function would be able to make a glow that fades as it spreads, but I can't figure out how. If anyone's got any examples of engine glows in POV-Ray, I'd appreciate it. Even just basic stuff, I can probably figure out the rest. Also, how do you make an engine glow cast light?

Mr. The Kid

Quote

Originally posted by Mr_The_Kid:
**Hmmm... that doesn't seem to be working... all I'm getting is a sphere that looks like it's solid. If you lower the rgbt value it has two spheres, but how do you make it look more engine-like? I would imagine that the density function would be able to make a glow that fades as it spreads, but I can't figure out how. If anyone's got any examples of engine glows in POV-Ray, I'd appreciate it. Even just basic stuff, I can probably figure out the rest. Also, how do you make an engine glow cast light?

Mr. The Kid**

Well Wyvern's sphere looks like it should work, here's my suggestion:

sphere {
<0,0,0>,1
pigment {
color rgbf <1,.5,.2,.5>
}
hollow
interior {
media {
emission rgb <3,3,0>
}
}
}

The manual gives a pretty good explanation, but you really need to experiment.

What you could do, though, is render the image twice, one with the ship (and an alpha channel), and again with the background and the glow. You then go into photoshop and feather your glow there, and then paste in the ship. Since the ship has nothing around it, it'll blend with the other layer pretty seamlessly.

Currently (in 3.1g.r2), there's no way to make a glow emit light in one step. You have to add a light source to give the illusion that the glow is making light on its own.

Matrix

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"Nothing is fool-proof to a sufficiently talented fool."

On the other hand, if you're using 3.5 beta (which I am b/c 3.1g.r2 can't run in OSX), all you need to do is turn on radiosity - though you'll probably need to make a bunch of other changes then to make the scene look right.
global_settings{ radiosity{ media on } }

And, as to the glow I mentioned earlier: it'll scale down from full intensity in the middle to lower intensities towards the edges just due to the decreased thickness of a sphere as you get farther from the middle. However, for a more dramatic dropoff you might want to try the following:
sphere{0,1 pigment{rgbt 1} hollow
interior{
media{
density{ spherical }
emission rgb <whatever>
}
}
// scale & translate as appropriate to put the sphere where you want it
}

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Aha! Thanks, now I've got it. BTW, if you make a light that looks like the glow, that works pretty well for making it cast light. Now I get to start figuring out how to make interesting ships... Thanks, everyone.

Mr. The Kid

Quote

Originally posted by MadFax7:
**Bryce 5 Kicks the friggin' **** out of Bryce 4... I'd hate to see what it does to Bryce 2.1.;)

FYI, you can try Bryce 5 for 30 days. No options are disabled, either. You can save scenes, and render to your hearts content. 🙂

**

heh. Ive got Bryce 1.0!
works fine for me

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