Ian Tips- generate Raytrace Tranparency Alpha!

http://www.eitechnologygroup.com/forums/viewthread/278/

EI7 tips from Ian (halfworld)

some tips about the new HDRI and multilayer Rendering, from Ian post on CGTalk, here are the link.

Import into EIAS, idealy 3ds!

just a note of memo .3ds is a better route to import UV model from others into EI, all UV and group are bring in nicely... and Blender can act as PC's Object2Fact! model from any package with UV, Bring into Blender, Than Export to .3ds, import into EI with skip file validation Check! thats all! NO PROBLEM AT THE MOMENT!!!

Ivy Generator to EI

found this ivy generator recently in CGTalk forum...read
download the free application here

here is the work flow how I bring the ivy into EI
1. model a building, in my case I model in silo, after finish model, I tessellate the model into Tris (Ivy modeler will convert any quad to tris, but it will cause flip normal problem) add in texture which is optional, than export to obj.

2. import the obj model into IvyGenerator, (read the 'readme' file for view control) double click on the on the building which of desire... for the Ivy growing point, than click on the grow button to see how the little thing "explode" click on the grow button to stop, than click the build button to build the ivy, after that export the ivy to obj (UV will generate by itself).

3. I notice that IvyGenerator will create 3 groups, 2 different leaf, and 1 branch, but when EI import the obj...or via transporter, it will merge the 3 groups into 1, and UV data will lost when save into .fac, sadly we pc user didn't have O2F, so I bring the Ivy to blender to save it separately in to 3 different files(3 groups) than import to EI.

4. I think there is some axis flip when import to EI, but that is not a huge problem, and IvyGenerator do come with some texture, just use it... :)

the render will take some time, the image above take about 20 minutes to render with my amd3800 but using 1 core (1280x1024) and RAM plays quite an important rule in generate ivy, don't push it too hard...

creating shadow in a glow object

a thread in cgtalk showing how to create shadow in a glow object, and a tips of using negative shadow to achieve that...