Question to Emel

[ivan louette]

I appreciated the nice textures in your artifacts, Emanuel !

About textures, I saw your name in Realsoft 3D Gallery. Did you try their rendering engine (or did anybody else)?

Here is an extract of what they very interesting say about it :

" ...The Realsoft 3D ray tracing engine is a true NURBS renderer. This means that NURBS surfaces are not tessellated into polygons before rendering and consequently, the surface renders without any polygonal artifacts. Similar quality would require millions of polygons. This is also true for subdivision surfaces. The powerful displacement mapping of Realsoft 3D also adds detail to NURBS and SDS surfaces during the actual ray tracing, making it possible to model hairy objects, groovy surfaces, bumpy terrains, fibers of cloth etc... "

ZBrush next release promises also a displacement mapping like that which doesn't moves the polys and adds true 3D details at rendering time.

I would be interested to know the impressions of somebody who has used this kind of effects.

kindly,
ivan

My mini-tutorials
botarosa

[ivan louette]

I appreciated the nice textures in your artifacts, Emanuel !

About textures, I saw your name in Realsoft 3D Gallery. Did you try their rendering engine (or did anybody else)?

Here is an extract of what they very interesting say about it :

" ...The Realsoft 3D ray tracing engine is a true NURBS renderer. This means that NURBS surfaces are not tessellated into polygons before rendering and consequently, the surface renders without any polygonal artifacts. Similar quality would require millions of polygons. This is also true for subdivision surfaces. The powerful displacement mapping of Realsoft 3D also adds detail to NURBS and SDS surfaces during the actual ray tracing, making it possible to model hairy objects, groovy surfaces, bumpy terrains, fibers of cloth etc... "

ZBrush next release promises also a displacement mapping like that which doesn't moves the polys and adds true 3D details at rendering time.

I would be interested to know the impressions of somebody who has used this kind of effects.

kindly,
ivan

My mini-tutorials
botarosa

[Mike Bailey]

Hello Ivan, there was some talk about the use of normal maps at ZBrush Central.

http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ult...c&f=1&t=011260

More,

http://amber.rc.arizona.edu/lw/normalmaps.html

Carrara offers displacement mapping via a plug in from Digital Carvers Guild that uses shaders, I have it installed but didn't have much success with it, it was to complicated for my taste, I put it on the back burner for the time being.

http://www.eovia.com/powerpack/product_intro_pp.jsp

The new version of ZBrush looks promising, you still need a rendering engine capapable of using Normal maps, animations seem to be the area of interest where normal maps can be applied most effectively.

[emel]

Hi Ivan!

I have Realsoft3D V.4.5. The rendering engine is really great but it is a dificult program to learn. I'm still studing the shaders and that's the dificult part of the program. But rendering results (high quality mode) are great although a little slow on my computer. The shading implies some programming and applying decals it's a painfull thing. At least for me. The SDS modelling is very good and brilliant. For NURBS Rhino interface is much more productive. So for me this is more a long therm learning experience. In fact I've interrupted my deep study of RS and move to Rhino because it goes better with my brain.

Cheers,

Emanuel Brito

[ivan louette]

Hi, thanks Mike and Emanuel !

Mike, I knew the plugin for Lightave you say. This technique could be a must for games, but unfortunately it doesn't displace pixels around the external edges of the objects at rendering.

More examples of what will come in ZBrush next release is shown in this thread and in this one or even in this one

Emanuel,

I would be also very interested by nurbs and I have Rhino2, but it's a pain to learn for me. In the past I have tested demos of Solid Thinking which matches more effectively my personal brain, but it's far too expensive !!! I saw that Marcel Laverdet, the fantastic illustrator in ZBrush Forums uses extensively Rhino3, which seemingly has a lot of improvements in its GUI (including anti-aliasing, which is so important for visual comfort).

kindly,
ivan

My mini-tutorials
botarosa

[WilliamHere]

Hello Folks!

Marcel Laverdet is a great artist. I am a big fan.

His software toolbox consist of:
-Carrara 4 Pro
-Rhino
-ZBrush

Here is one of my favorite images that Marcel did:
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php...5&page=1&pp=15

Cheers!

[ivan louette]

Thanks for the infos cgntoonartist !

Marcel's Hook picture is amazing !!!

At the moment I just purchased Messiah Studio Workstation. It's not too expensive and seemingly very powerful. It has the advantages of better handling the models I created initially for rigging and rendering in LightWave, and it has also some new possibilities as sub-pixel displacement and true subdiv rendering.

Thus in the future my (perhaps transitional) toolbox will be :

Silo for modeling
Modo for specific questions and as an intermediate for UV mapping or for improving files format exchange (I use it already for that)
Messiah Workstation for rigging and rendering

Kind regards,
ivan