I've had the same issue (in Maxwell). Basically what I found out is that many times places will provide a high quality HDRI image and a low quality one. The low quality one is really just for the Illumination channel since you don't need much detail for that and it makes things faster. Then you use the high quality one for your background and reflections (could do low quality for reflections too if you don't have mirrored glass or anything like that).

The 10 or so HDRI images that come with Maxwell all seem to be the low quality version . Not sure if your sky was one of those (I don't recognize it but I usually just stick with RADSKY017 or something like that) but that seems to be the issue.

I don't know if I have the best solution yet (other than getting a high quality HDRI), but here are some work arounds I've played with. If you ran a materialID or objectID you can select just the sky portion in Photoshop and do a diagonal motion blur. This gets rid of the pixelization and gives the clouds some 'movement' but unfortunately it looks like airbrushed clouds so you loose some realism (an improvement on that is to duplicate the cloud layer before editing motion blur the top layer and then turn the opacity down a bit to reveal some of the detail underneath but not enough to show the pixelization).

I've also created my own background by just taking a big sky image in Photoshop and saving it as an EXR image. I used it for reflections and checked the box to map the image to the background (can't recall exactly what maxwell calls it) so it's just a flat background image like a SU watermark.

Lately, though I've been using an HDRI for the reflections and just photoshopping in a sky later.

Let me know if you figure out anything else on this issue.

-Brodie

My first thought would be to make 2 barrel vaulted shapes (just by drawing upside down U shapes and closing them at the bottom and then extruding them) then position them so they're intersecting eachother in the form of a cross. Then select all, right click, Intersect Geometry (or whatever that command is). Then you could delete the unwanted geometry.

Of course the closed shapes aren't exactly U shaped, basically they're the profiles of the box thing if you were looking at it from the front and side respectively.

Make any sense?

-Brodie

If I'm not mistaken once you've imported the texture into your SU file you can right click on that texture in your Materials panel and theres a Save As option or something like that. Click that and you can browse through your folders until you find SU's Materials folder and drop it in the appropriate one, or make a new one.

-Brodie

Yum, thanks! They were quite good although I must say they may have added a few polygons to my belly, if you catch my drift.

-Brodie

Cool, it's like finding an easter egg! Thanks Remus.

If I'm not mistaken if you select 50 of them Right Click -> Make unique it will make all of those 1 unique component (not 50 different unique components).

Other option would be to go into the component and paint it with the default material. Then once you're outside the component you can paint the component Red, for example, and whatever objects are Default within the component will turn to Red. That way you could use the same component but have different colors.

-Brodie

Am I blind? I'm trying to set a shortcut key for the Explode function but I can't find it in the Windows->Preferences->Shortcuts section. What am I missing?

-Brodie

Depending on what you're doing with your SU model you should be careful with how you make your texture files smaller, in particular if your rendering. For example, I use Maxwell, which takes the UV mapping info from SU when I export. So if I have a brick building I need to use the same brick texture in SU that my Maxwell material is using. The problem is some of my Maxwell brick materials are over 5000x5000 pixels. If I reduce the size by making that same image 1024x1024, for example, it can mess up the UV later on in Maxwell. So what I do is save a copy of the brick map w/o changing the number of pixels but instead I'll make it a .jpg compressed at about 2% quality.

-Brodie

I've experienced the same thing before, and for some reason occasionally even purging doesn't seem to get rid of everything (although if you haven't done it, it's always the place to start). What I do is turn on all the layers copy everything and then go to a totally fresh SU session and Edit -> Paste in Place.

Of course if you have scenes set up already that might not be feasible. If the file is still large after that, then you know it's something in your model, maybe a 6000x6000 .tif texture map or something like that (yeah, I've made that mistake before too )

-Brodie

I'm afraid I don't know much about laptop hardware but I wonder if a good solution would be to get a nice cheap laptop but one that has good upgrade capability. You could throw in a lower/mid range video card and be set. Then, if things changed down the road and you were going to use it more extensively or for presentations you could always put in a better card. Would that make any sense?

If you went that route, I'd suspect Dell wouldn't be the way to go. The integrated video card on the desktop is a hassle, on a laptop it could make upgrades even more tricky.

Just a thought.

-Brodie

Very intriguing. I see this as a commentary on the struggle of the proletarian struggle, and a rebuttal to Marx's views on the subject. The suspense, the longing to see what's "behind the door" just ahead. You finally stumble through the darkness in the still of the night hoping to achieve your dreams, increase your position in society, attain greater insight and wisdom...only to find a bathroom and a kitchen. And upon so doing the doors fall down and knock you back down on your rear because someone took the hinges off.

-Brodie

"Media accelerator" sounds similar to what my cheap Dell desktop has @ home. As was mentioned it's basically an integrated video card of sorts, and a really poor one. I bought a GeForce eventually to do what I needed. W/ the integrated video I had to turn acceleration off. That said, you mentioned that this was a computer that isn't for you and that it'll only be used for SU occasionally so if your models aren't big and you'd be ok w/o acceleration turned on I think you'd be ok.

I think the Quadro FX, mentioned above, is overkill for what you're talking about. GeForce would be plenty for occasional SU use. I have an GeForce 8800GT on one machine and a Quadro on another and don't see much difference with SU.

-Brodie

At work we just got a new computer for rendering (I think the specs are in my sig) but my old computer is in the cubicle next to me so right now I've got 2 computers and 4 monitors about 12' apart. I've been having huge issues trying to do site work (sandbox + JPP + 1 square mile = 3-5 hour coma or Bugsplat). Several times lately I've ran some of the more lengthy operations on my old computer so it could just sit there and I could at least glance over at the progress bar occassionally.

Sadly, this hasn't helped much. I'm resolute to try and learn Rhino enough to be able to do my site stuff there asap.

-Brodie

@gaieus said:

This is true. I also wonder sometimes whether I should go out for a drink with the buddies instead of staring at the monitor hoping it will finish soon...

I say compromise. Have a drink in front or your computer screen. If you have dual monitors, you can have Windows Media Player open on one monitor and you can zone out to the psychedelic colors it makes.

Hrm...perhaps a thread is in order so that we can collectively come up with a list of things you can do while SU is comatose.

-Brodie

I think the main problem with the coma, for me, isn't even that those operations are so slow. But the lack of a progress bar on so many of those functions is quite scary. Is it doing something? Is this something going to take 2 minutes or 2 hours? Is it almost done or should I just End Program and restart?

And worse than no progress bar is that if I do anything other than just sit and stare at the little sands of time icon, say click over to the internet window, SU goes totally white until it either Bugsplats or finishes its operation.

-Brodie

It opens up in Monochrome mode

-Brodie

Great, thanks. I'm playing with it right now. A little tricky to get the hang of but it'll definitely improve my textures!

-Brodie

Great, that's good to know. I might have to test that out. I glanced through the walkthrough briefly but I'll really have to go through it again w/ Kerky open to grasp it all. It mentioned setting the number of threads in one of the settings menus. Will Kerky take advantage of a quad-core machine?

Also, you don't have to explain the details, but you mentioned that it uses the SU cameras at keyframes but that you can add more. I guess the question is, how much does that help the issues w/ SU's camera pathing? For instance the jerky starting and stoping of the camera (sort of like flying around a building in one of those teacups at a carnival).

By the way, your animation looked very good. I was very impressed by the sky in the background, super realistic. HDRI?

-Brodie

Richard,

Thanks for the comments. Whether you know it or not your my mentor when it comes to SU -> Maxwell

I agree w/ needing to 'mess things up a bit.' I've been doing that w/ Photoshop as time permits (obviously time didn't permit very much this time!) but I've heard you mention something like this before w/ your grass, how you applied a large map to it for some variety. However, I'm not quite sure I know what your suggesting. I know all the words, but I'm not sure how to fit them altogether to do what you're saying. Could you give me a bit more detail or perhaps just send me a .mxm so I can understand how to ugly it up?

I see what you're saying on the trees to. You've caught another of my current flaws. I bought some trees from Dosch in Rhino format but almost all of them are somehow corrupted and can't be used so as of yet my tree library is quite small. The best trees on there, in my opinion, are the palms, which are Solo's creations.

-Brodie

Thanks for all the info. I will check out that link, EarthMover.

So Kerky does animations? How does that work? I played with Kerky awhile back and it seemed to have some promise but that was back when I was looking for a still-image renderer, not an animation tool. Does it just export your SU animation or can you configure your own camera w/in Kerky? And it doesn't do animated cars and such?

-Brodie