Go Back   AC3D Forums > General > AC3D General
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 21st November 2004, 02:44 PM   #1
ShaneS
Junior Member
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 15
Default Some problems

Hi all,

I've encountered a few problems that hopefully someone can help me out with:

1) When using a sky sphere, I still get shadows projected onto the sphere - the headlight is turned off, but if I position the lightsource too low, the shadows still show. Positioning the light higher in the scene results in it being toplit which doesn't look very good - the scene then looks too dark from the viewer's perspective. Is there an easy way to get around this? Ideally, something like a way to ignore an object for lighting purposes? This would be very useful for creating stars and other glowing objects too.

2) Has anyone had any experience in combining Terragen with AC3D? I'd like to use some of the landscapes in conjunction with models, but I don't really know how.

3) I'm probably going about this the wrong way, but when I want to mirror an object, such as an arm or a leg, I copy it and scale by -100 along the mirror axis. This sometimes (particularly with cylinders and spheres) results in some, but not all surfaces with normals reversed. Am I doing this the wrong way? I usually fix this by setting all the surfaces to double sided, as there are too many to fix individually, but this doesn't seem a very efficient method.

4) With the above scenario in 3), the boolean operations plugin doesn't always seem to work properly, although it seems much more accurate than it was before the upgrade. I should probably post this separately.

5) Can anyone recommend any good animation software (I have to do something with all the models I'm creating :-))? I'm looking at Anim8tor at the moment, but something that supports the AC3D format natively would be good - the last time I exported as a 3ds file, it didn't seem to retain the material colours.

Thanks all!
ShaneS is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 21st November 2004, 02:53 PM   #2
Andy
Administrator
Professional user
 
Andy's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 4,563
Default

I assume you are using povray or similar to render your sky sphere? Perhaps try making the sphere larger and having the light inside. Also ensure you flip normals on the sphere so that it's visible from the inside.

Terragen probably supports a file format that you can load into AC3D - but I don't know much about Terragen.

For mirroring an object use Object-Mirror - that does all the hard work for you.

For the boolean plugin to work weel, you must use 3D objects and ensure they are closed (no holes) and have all surfaces facing outwards. See the text in Help->about plugins.

You may need to edit the specular(?) values in 3DS in order to see the colors - a bug in AC3D's exporter.

Hope this helps,

Andy
Andy is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 21st November 2004, 08:11 PM   #3
Thaellin
Senior Member
Professional user
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 255
Default

For the skysphere in povray, you can use a special command to get the thing to ignore shadows (etc):

// Create an infinite sphere around scene and allow any pigment on it
sky_sphere {
pigment {
//gradient y
//color_map { [0.0 color rgb <0.7,0.7,1.0>] [1.0 color blue 0.5] }
image_map { jpeg "C:/Documents and Settings/Thaellin/Desktop/Textures/golgatha/greecesky.jpg" interpolate 2 }
//scale 1.5
}
}

experiment as desired...
-- Jeff
Thaellin is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22nd November 2004, 08:27 AM   #4
ShaneS
Junior Member
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Posts: 15
Default

Hi guys,

I was using povray - I think I'll have to go with editing the pov file to use the infinite sky sphere object. I was using a flipped sphere object already. Making it bigger doesn't seem to resolve the problem, since the shadow depth extends quite a long way (although I didn't try making it gargantuan, I'm not sure of the scene:sphere size ratio that I should use). A bit of a shame since it means I won't be able to preview the scene directly in AC3D
ShaneS is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 22nd November 2004, 10:03 PM   #5
LiveWire
Senior Member
Professional user
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Eugene OR, USA
Posts: 212
Default

1) The way to get rid of shading on an object in AC3D, is to right-click on the material of that object, and set all of its propertys to maximum value(except transperancy of course)

2) I have had experience with Terragen and AC3D.
basicly Terragen exports a Lightwave file, that AC3D can import, but it does a horrible and slow job, with little flexability.(at least last time i tried)
Terragen also exports a grayscale heightmap file(.bmp)
i have been working on a Heightmap importer for a while(see http://ac3d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=428), but AC3D always seems to have memory issues when i open the bmp file.(dont ask me why)

i have made a seprate application that opens a bmp file and creates an AC3D file out of it.
if you want i could give you that, until if figure out that damn plugin. :lol:
just send me a PM.

3) When you use the Flip x/y/z buttons(at top of ac3d) it doesnot flip normals, resulting in oposite facing surfaces than you were probly wanting.
just goto Surface>Flip Normals(or Ctrl-Shift_N) after the flip, to fix that problem.

5)until AC3D itself supports animation, thats a real problem.
the only cheap($30) animation program, that supports alot of formats ac3d does, that ive found, is CharacterFX(http://www.insanesoftware.de/).
althought ive not used it that much, i heard its not that great.
dowload the demo and see what you think.

--Philip
LiveWire is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:28 PM.


AC3D Forum
(C) Inivis Limited 2020