XSI to chan

Started by JohnnyBoy, December 30, 2006, 05:25:30 PM

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JimB

#15
I've tried both with and without GI now, and the latter is looking nowhere near as good as the former on a single frame basis. Just so you know  ;)

I also tried switching from GI to Ambient Occlusion, but that flickers as well.
Some bits and bobs
The Galileo Fallacy, 'Argumentum ad Galileus':
"They laughed at Galileo. They're laughing at me. Therefore I am the next Galileo."

Nope. Galileo was right for the simpler reason that he was right.

Oshyan

I'm saying that *in its current state* GI may be problematic for animations, particularly on clouds. That doesn't mean it will always be that way - there's lots of room for improvement.

I don't know for sure why it's an issue with clouds and not terrain but I would guess the light transmission and volumetric nature of the material has a lot to do with it. It's a much more complex interaction than light on an opaque surface. Perhaps it is subject to more variability, particularly where sampling is involved. It may be that upping your cloud samples or GI samples would help, but this would of course increase render time. We do plan to support GI baking though, so you may just have to wait for that.

The Enviro Light can be used without GI and it should still have an effect. You may then be able to still control the strength on surfaces and in the atmosphere separately. If so this might give you a more stable lighting solution. Fill lights would affect both terrain and sky, yes, but then so does GI. Do you have the Enviro Light affect turned down for terrain or something?

- Oshyan

JimB

Thanks Oshyan, I've just set off a render using a potential workaround which involves increasing the light propogation mix ad other bits. It means the clouds look 'murkier', and don't pick up the freshness and the blues in the distance, but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself a bit.

Anyways, Happy New Year.

Jim.
Some bits and bobs
The Galileo Fallacy, 'Argumentum ad Galileus':
"They laughed at Galileo. They're laughing at me. Therefore I am the next Galileo."

Nope. Galileo was right for the simpler reason that he was right.

Oshyan

Sounds good. Let us know how it goes as we certainly do want to enable quality professional-level animation work with TG2. Knowing the issues with current workflows will help us get the final product where it needs to be for these kinds of tasks.

- Oshyan

JohnnyBoy

#19
I had a problem with a worldmachine .ter that I had to adjust vertically in TG2 to be level with the rest of the world. The camera from XSI would then be below the ground in TG2. Added an adjust vertical parameter in the script.

Ex. If you add 1000 to the height in TG2, just enter 1000 for the adjustVert field in the script.

JohnnyBoy

Quote from: JohnnyBoy on December 31, 2006, 11:25:08 AM
4. Select a folder (This doesn't work properly- If you navigate to another folder nothing is saved)
    Just click on the Select button and it saves to your current project folder.

This really bothered me, so I fixed it. It will work like your standard XSI UI now. :)

JimB

Just done a test, and it works perfectly!!  ;D ;D

Thanks for that, you are a star!!

I duffed up earlier because I forgot to make sure I had horizontal FOV switched on. That always gets me scratching my head for a while and then giving it a big old slap.

Cheers,
Jim.
Some bits and bobs
The Galileo Fallacy, 'Argumentum ad Galileus':
"They laughed at Galileo. They're laughing at me. Therefore I am the next Galileo."

Nope. Galileo was right for the simpler reason that he was right.

JohnnyBoy

Great to hear :), I noticed that sometimes the fov doesn't seem to be imported and I have to check and uncheck the FOV box in TG2. ??? Let me know if you have any suggestions or problems.

nixx

Hi everyone,

Great work Johnny boy :)

I assume that, for all this to work, you need the commercial (paid) version of T2TP, right ?

thanks,
nick
I 'm child, and man, then child again; the boy never gets older

JohnnyBoy

Yeah, you need the version with animation capabilities. Get it while it's cheap. ;)

nixx

Heh, yeah I 'm very seriously tempted to do that :)

Thanks for clearing that up !

nick
I 'm child, and man, then child again; the boy never gets older

Adam Chrystie

Yup I have the same issue with my height fields brought in by World Machine and the same tip made mine work too.
Now i can go back to testing out the Terragen --> Maya--> Terragen pipeline via chan files some more.

Quote from: JohnnyBoy on January 01, 2007, 07:21:46 PM
I had a problem with a worldmachine .ter that I had to adjust vertically in TG2 to be level with the rest of the world. The camera from XSI would then be below the ground in TG2. Added an adjust vertical parameter in the script.

Ex. If you add 1000 to the height in TG2, just enter 1000 for the adjustVert field in the script.
--------------------
Adam Chrystie
3D Artist & Infrastructure/Pipeline Developer

JDex

Thanks so much for the script.  Works very well.  Anyone have any thoughts on the best method to use to match a sunlight accurately between the two apps?  I tried some complicated mathematics to convert the direction of an infinite light in XSI to the Heading/Elevation in Terragen, but did not get like results.  I may have fubar'd one or more of the calculations, or equations... so I was wondering if anyone has already outlined a workflow that searching may have missed.

JohnnyBoy

#28
Funny, I asked the same question yesterday:

http://fl-tw.com/InfinityForums/viewtopic.php?t=4259&start=50

Scroll down about halfway through the post, I plan to add an export for lights to this script along with "other things" in the future, I've been waiting until a final release though.

JDex

Haha... coincidences are always great.  I'm going to keep at it, and maybe I'll come up with something based upon those responses.  Thanks for the link.