material issues

Pierre · Oct 14, 2006

material issues

1/ material (animation) in editor
2/ transparency ghost

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1/ material (animation) in editor

Actually that is not specific to materials. But materials typically have a lot of properties. How can you access the bottom properties in the editor ? Would a scroll bar make sense when some properties are not visible ? Note, I do not have a particularly small screen (1280x1024), and I already use all the custom layouts available.

By the way, no connection with main topic : I have one layout used only because there is no short-key to go back to active camera view. Could this be added at some point ?

2/ transparency ghost

When piling objects with material transparency set to one, it happens (often) that ghosts are showing. Is that normal ? Is there anything to be done about it ?

Thanks

p*

frank beckmann · Oct 14, 2006

Hi P*,
maybe I´m lost in translation, but there IS a scrollbar right under the open lock and it works properly; you don´t have to touch it, if your an owner of a scroll mouse. And your "properties window" as shown won´t need that much width. And if you find it annoying to click those tiny triangles to crease/increase some settings; left-mouseclick+hold near the arrows and push/pull the mouse a bit will work fine!

The ghost disappears by letting air between the blocks, so that not two meshes/polygons will occupy the same space.

With kindest regard
Frank

Pierre · Oct 14, 2006

Thanks Frank for your answer.

frank beckmann said:
Hi P*,
maybe I´m lost in translation, but there IS a scrollbar right under the open lock and it works properly

Sorry, I have not been clear enough. I am talking about viewing the material properties (name) in the ANIMATION Editor (Key Editor/F-Curve Editor), to select them or not, especially in the F-Curve Editor.

frank beckmann said:
The ghost disappears by letting air between the blocks, so that not two meshes/polygons will occupy the same space.

I thought of something like that. What if I don't want letting air between the blocks (when they are visible) ? Moving the blocks position between trans=1 and trans=0, is not really an option,
first it may not look nice, then I do have 3 x 55 instances x 4 blocks (660 single objects).

option 1 : Get this changed in the engine. Why trans + trans = black ?
option 2 : letting 0.001 between the blocks (but it is not enough to solve this problem on all camera angles).
option 3 : create a dedicated group of 4 blocks that is animated (but that is not clean nor practical on the global animation point of view) + some of the group arrangements are not compatible with this.

Do I have to live with my ghosts

?

Looking forward

p*

Martin · Oct 15, 2006

Hi,

Pierre said:
1/ material (animation) in editor

Actually that is not specific to materials. But materials typically have a lot of properties. How can you access the bottom properties in the editor ? Would a scroll bar make sense when some properties are not visible ? Note, I do not have a particularly small screen (1280x1024), and I already use all the custom layouts available.

By the way, no connection with main topic : I have one layout used only because there is no short-key to go back to active camera view. Could this be added at some point ?

I'm aware of that weakness and it is already on my todo list. Sorry for that but you are totally right. The naming conventions of the material properties also need an enhancement.

Pierre said:
2/ transparency ghost
When piling objects with material transparency set to one, it happens (often) that ghosts are showing. Is that normal ? Is there anything to be done about it ?

That is caused by the maximum raytracing depht. If you have 4 boxes the light has to path 8 planes. Which might be to much for your setting in the Render preferences.

But there is a easy work around. Just add a render tag to the transparent boxes and disable the "cast shadows" property.

Bye,
Martin

Pierre · Oct 26, 2006

Martin said:
That is caused by the maximum raytracing depht. If you have 4 boxes the light has to path 8 planes. Which might be to much for your setting in the Render preferences.

But there is a easy work around. Just add a render tag to the transparent boxes and disable the "cast shadows" property.

OK, Martin

How do I do that in practice ?

You may have understood by now that all my objects are referenced through Smart Folders (or "worse" ;-), they are SF made of simpler objects referenced through SF).

As far as I understood, the render tag does apply only on polygone objects, not on folders nor on SF ?

Does the render tag behave as a material tag ? I suppose not, it is not "imported" in the parent jas. Assume I place the tag on all the original objects part of the final SF, will I be able to animate the tag ? Content of SF aside materials cannot be animated...

If there is no way to animate the tag :-( in a real animation file ;-) ...

What about if I render in two passes ? A first pass over the entire animation with the current depth of 6 and a pass for every bits where the transparency is close to zero with a higher depth (32, 35 ?).
Will the two sequences match or will the produced images will be noticeably different (aside the transparency, knowing that I have nothing reflective visible in the frame) ? In other words, will I be able to post-mount the sequences without image glitches ?

Thanks

p*

PS : what's the max depth value ? It happens that at some point during the "transparency effect" I have 32 "planes" overlapping...
PS2 : could the ray depth parameter be animated as some camera parameters ? Transitions would be nicer and not post-editing would be necessary...

Martin · Oct 27, 2006

Pierre said:
How do I do that in practice ?

You may have understood by now that all my objects are referenced through Smart Folders (or "worse" ;-), they are SF made of simpler objects referenced through SF).

As far as I understood, the render tag does apply only on polygone objects, not on folders nor on SF ?

You are right. You have to attach these tags to the polygon objects. In case of smart folders you have to add these tags in the referenced files.

Pierre said:
Does the render tag behave as a material tag ? I suppose not, it is not "imported" in the parent jas. Assume I place the tag on all the original objects part of the final SF, will I be able to animate the tag ? Content of SF aside materials cannot be animated...

If there is no way to animate the tag :-( in a real animation file ;-) ...

Normally animating that tag in the referenced file should work.

Pierre said:
What about if I render in two passes ? A first pass over the entire animation with the current depth of 6 and a pass for every bits where the transparency is close to zero with a higher depth (32, 35 ?).
Will the two sequences match or will the produced images will be noticeably different (aside the transparency, knowing that I have nothing reflective visible in the frame) ? In other words, will I be able to post-mount the sequences without image glitches ?

The max. raydepth is currently 8. So I would first try depth 8 it if that is not enough you have to disable some shadow casters.

Pierre said:
PS : what's the max depth value ? It happens that at some point during the "transparency effect" I have 32 "planes" overlapping...

Its 8 and 32 planes are quite extreme in my eyes. You need a very transparent material to see to 8 planes at all.

Pierre said:
PS2 : could the ray depth parameter be animated as some camera parameters ? Transitions would be nicer and not post-editing would be necessary...

No, these parameters can't be animated and it is currently not planed. Until now I saw no real need to animate these parameters.

Bye,
Martin

Pierre · Oct 29, 2006

Martin said:
Normally animating that tag in the referenced file should work.

Do you mean :
a/ inserting the file in the source("object") file and animating it in the "animation file", or
b/ animating the tag in the source file before it is referenced ?

(a) Would be like materials and would be great. (b) Prevents object reuse - can always duplicate objects but not desired - and is a nightmare when synchronizing peaces of animations.

Martin said:
Its 8 and 32 planes are quite extreme in my eyes. You need a very transparent material to see to 8 planes at all.

Big pile of small objects and you get easily those 32 layers. As the trans is used from 1 to 0 to get objects appearing or disappearing, I may create a temporary object with groups of objects merged to reduce the layer count. The consequence is that the effect wont be exactly the same and it prevents me from animating the objects while the trans is changing.

Martin said:
No, these parameters can't be animated and it is currently not planed. Until now I saw no real need to animate these parameters.

Well, post-editing will do the job...

Martin · Oct 30, 2006

Hi Pierre,
I meant "b".

Raytracing with 32 levels of refraction is quite CPU expensive and with the current material system not possible. Higher levels of refraction will make it into the new material system which is quite some time aways. Sorry.

Bye,
Martin

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