...?

A couple of people I know use 1080p HD TV's for monitors but there's a couple of things I don't understand:

My little 22" monitor (which is now too often sounding like a 50cc scooter with a bad timing chain and starting to spaz out occationally so will need to be replaced as soon as someone finally pays me) has a max res of 1280x1025, close to the 1080 vertical already: so how can stretching 1920x1080 over 32", or 42" as one of my buddies uses, give good res...I don't get it?

Also...60hz or 120hz: how important for computer use?

Lovely!

WOW and a half!

Impressive...and I like it a lot!

Guys, I think most of the 2.5d trees (mine and others) are already pretty dynamic...:`) as the color of the leaves are easily changed in the material editor and they can also be turned off for winter (though my trunks don't have near the beauty of these Solo is working on: too much poly for my intent at the time).

A Union Business Agent at a Convention in Las Vegas decided to visit a brothel. He was a stickler for the rules of the workplace and asked the madam: “Is this a union house?”

“No it is not,” she replied.

“So if I pay 100 dollars, what do the girls get?”

“The house takes 80 dollars and the girls get 20 dollars.”

“Well I think that’s grossly unfair,” said the business Agent. “I shall take my business elsewhere.”

Further down the street he found another brothel. “Is this a union house?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the madam. “It is.”

“So if I pay 100 dollars, how much do the girls get to keep?”

“The girls get 80 dollars and the house keeps 20 dollars.”

“That’s more like it,” He said. He looked around the room and pointed to a pretty girl.

“I’d like her for the night.”

“I’m sure you would sir,” said the madam, gesturing at a 70-year-old woman in the corner.

“But Ethel here has seniority.”

Sweet image, intense pumpkin, and I really love the moths!

Lovely image, Gareth! (I wonder if dialing up the shadow softness a bit might make them match the "over exposure" better?)

Thanks, Guys...but where's yours, as in: let us get scary? Surely you can do better!?! :`)

Since the spacebar in autocad acts as a return, and thus I hit it a lot when I'm stressed and switching back and forth with SU, I set the SU spacebar to do nothing: so if I hit the spacebar after a shortcut key it does nothing (except when the cursor gets stuck in a material editor dialogue bar...damnit :`)

Also...are the components made using images with transparent backgrounds (like pngs)? If so, SU (especially versions 6-7) sometimes lets the back image pop to the fore.

Marcus...Richard is right (the reason I never got into using DC's for anything): besides, replacing a tree component with another in SU is so easy I personally don't think it's necessary. My comment for using leaf-bunch components was about the time I save building the trees in the first place.

Richard...no I don't know: some render apps don't recognize SU color changes? Which ones?

Thanks Richard...I'll just have to do more playing with SU7. I never really used SU6 except to beta test and play a bit with LightUp (which had the same trouble with some of the trees)...all of my trees, as with all of my modeling to date, were done in SU5.

They still may be done that way since it's starting to look like exploded images is the way to go...using components, though, may remain as well since greyscale doesn't really work for the PR intent and I will maybe need to switch out pngs per the seasons.

@richard said:

Tom, mate is that the same tree in both images? Yes!

Strange results indeed, I know there was a battle in the maxwell exporter with any use of instances where mirrored items would break apart when exported. It seemed to be a SU related issue and one that you may have found now fixed in V7.1!! Huh?

Not sure with twilight and instance support? Are these just direct copies or instance enabled versions? Nothing done for Twilight...just copies of the SU component (copied in SU).

I also ask if it is the same tree in each render as the render quality also seems to have failed (definition of the leaves) in the first set! Not sure though I'm seeing that correctly though! Same model...just didn't wait for AA to finish for the first one (obvious why? :`)

Mate I dont think 30 faces and 140 edges is a big increase! I know dale (whaat) and I think in testing and discussion of ways to speed SU's engine, commented that the use of components where for small levels of geometry (1 face / 4 edges eg) is actually more of a processing cost than gain! When I started doing these trees the operating theory was to make everything copied more than once a component...and from personal experience in SU5, the exploded leaf-bunch images did indeed slow the model down once a forest of them were added. Also, my early trees didn't use the greyscale png to change colors easily...so I wanted components to change out the different seasonal pngs easily.

I don't know if you have tested the speed relationships in nav and refresh within SU with both versions to note the differences when using multiple copies?? Would be interesting! I have been suspecting since the release of SU6: there is no total speed difference from SU5, the newer versions just orbit faster then make you wait longer for shadows and edges to catch up...but I haven't done any real testing.

Is there anywhere to download both 6 and 7.1 versions so I can see if they have the same issue when exported from SU > MR? MR-V2 now has the ability to use clips direct from alpha that it didn't previously - thank god! Though the use of instances is a bit of a waste as in any case of the instances intersecting (which is near impossible to avoid in a tree as you would know) draws and rendertimes close to a hault! Really don't understand this bit...but I can say none of my leaf-bunch images intersect or touch at any point.

...explode!

Playing with Twilight I've noticed several of my previous trees were doing strange things, but in full model context the scope wasn't obvious. (Others I believe have had the same problem in other render apps...?) So doing the first render of the first tree of the new set of PR image trees hit me pretty hard:

But exploding the image (only the image inside the leaf-bunch component...which are grouped together inside the whole tree component), then hidding the four edges of course, solves the problem:

For some reason, doing this will also speed up the AA phase of rendering (4 times faster on this little image)...but it does add 30+ faces and 120+ edges per tree to your model, so only you know when it is time to explode the leaf-bunch image.

I've also noticed, but haven't yet proven with certainty, that creating the original tree in SU7 alleviates the problem without exploding the image...? Anyway, I will create future tree sets in SU7 (saved back to SU6 I suppose) and with Twilight am now able to verify the rendering results of my product, thank you very much.

Pete...I am once again amazed at how you can time and again disappear into the boards then emerge with something brand new and so beautiful...WOW!

I worked CA with Mortenson as the contractor on a couple of projects way back in the day (actually had a hand in the hand drawings for the project it was so long ago :`) and they were quite progressive back then...this extensive use of SU doesn't surprise me a bit.

Thanks, Guys, a bunch! I decided to do one more...partially because the trees are starting to turn here and partially because it's so easy to change the color of tomsdesk growies :`) I'm happy (except for the grass, sorta, sometimes)...you like? Why not, please and thank you?

Not water...just the sub-terranean end of a hemispherical sky: cool base for the render, huh? :`)

That said, thanks all for the response and kind words...I'm quite pleased with the range of likes (and several of you are even spot on with my triggers, thank goodness).