Scene with many spheres... best method?

[TrevorM-L]

Scene with many spheres... best method?

Hi Cheetahs buffs...

got a problem... my better half works for a children's book publisher as an art director and she asked if I could may an image of 3D semis translucent, semi reflective spheres of different but similar sizes... like a lot of translucent gum balls... in a variety of colours all mixed up...

so... in SketchUp I made a model with a lot... can't remember how many... of spheres... coloured them and exports as .fbx... imported into C3D and adjusted the transparency and relectance of the spheres

I then set it with full radiosity... one area light to give a slightly softer lighting with shadows set to the best settings... etc etc... can't remember the settings exactly... at work now on a PeeCee... the effect that would look good would be like Peter's (?) neon example eslewhere in the forum done with v3beta... which I have...

http://cheetah3d.de/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=448

so... other than racing out and replacing my only 12 mnth old 15" PB with a new MacBook speed demon... somehow I don't think the missus would OK that budget hit just for this job!!!!.... how can I get a render out in some decent time... set it for 2000x2000 and after 8 hours it had only done a fraction of a fraction of the scene in the first pass

the final output need to be OK for atleast 175 screen print output and with no jaggies...

would have posted the scene... but the .jas file was around 34-35MB... and did not have time before work to zip it and put on a flash drive to put here from work...

any suggestions about settings etc would be most welcome indeed...

cheers
Trevor

 

[peer]

Wouldn't it be easier to make the sphere's in cheetah? If you use a chain modifier or similar, the scene wouldn't have to be big. If you have a scene, you can mail it to me, or post it. I'll render it at work on the dual 2.5GHz G5, if you like?

Regards,

Peter

 

[TrevorM-L]

Thanx Peter

will have a go at modelling in C3D tonight... have not tried that aspect of the app... always used SU to do any modelling since everything I do is archi related and use C3D for the rendering (an absolutely brilliant combo)

and thanx for the offer of render time on your dual

cheers
Trevor

be interesting to see how far the render is when I get home in an hour or so... and if I screwed up any of the settings

 

[TrevorM-L]

OK... getting a hang of chaining...

can one use a random looking bezier type line/spline object... and can it be made in C3D :?:

can one change the different links on the chain... in this case spheres to have diff sizes/colours/reflectance/transparency etc :?:

here is an example of the type of effect that is desired... but with more reflectance and some transparency... courtesy of gettyimages.com

 

[tg_jp]

Hi, TrevorM-L

I try to write script for random array. I'm not sure it will help at your scene, but I hope.

this is for duplicate polygon object at random position, scale and random polygon selection each copied object, so you can set different material each objects.
Ball object has 450 polygon by default, too many polygon to copy, cost too much for script. I think, it is better to use low polygon like Polyhedrra or reduced polygon Ball, and after positioning by script, do make editable, then attach Subdiv modifier.

you can make random spline by script with a few lines. but now I have no idea to next question. :?:

I updated script, please check this url. Random Array.js

tg_jp

 

[peer]

TP. Once again great scripting! Arigato Gozai-mas!! (I believe that it means thanks you in Japanese. :lol: I did a small course in Japanese, but it's a long time ago and I don't remember much of it. I don't use it everyday you know :wink:

Your script can also be used for weathersystems: Snow, and rain for instance. Just make a 6sided poly and you have snow, a raindrop shape and you can have lots of rain!! Great!!!

Regards,

Peter

PS the translation came from the translator widget in Tiger.

 

[Martin]

Hi,
wow tp_jp you are becoming a true scripting wizard. Francois asked me some time ago if I could open a scripting forum but I was anxious that there would be to few posts. But now I'm really considering to create such a forum where all the scripts can be collected.

Now to Trevors render time problem. In general that question is difficult to answer. Because there could be many reasons. In general scenes with radiosity and many reflections tend to become quite slow.

If you render a complex scene you also have to have enough RAM. For a 2000x2000 image alone the frame buffer takes approx. 100 MByte. Plus the scene geometry and texture and you run quite fast out of RAM. And once the OS has to swap data to the hard disc the good rendering times are gone.

By,
Martin

 

[TrevorM-L]

Thanx everyone for the assistance...

I ended up re-doing the scene in C3D as per Peter's suggestion... thanx Peter...

having never done any modeling etc in C other than rendering if was great to look at other part of this brilliant app... the chaining worked very well once I figured out what I was doing...

thanx for the script tp_jp... unfortunately I did not get to see it until I was at work this morning... took my PB with me to finish the render that was started at 2am and had to use a flash drive to transfer the image to my work machine to email the image to my wife's work (urgent mockup was required today... typical in the publishing industry!!!!) since I can not connect to the work network...

will definitely have a play with the script tonight and see how it goes...

any chance that it could be made to have the spheres only just touching each other rather then joining... they are hard gumballs ... not chocolate that would melt soft enough with the PB processor heat as it renders so that they join/flow into each other... :lol: :lol: :lol:

Martin... I figured that I would be getting a long render time... kept on trying to explain to my wife about all of the reflections and transparencies etc etc... but after around 18hrs and still only about a cm of the initial scanlines processed I figured I may as well try Peter's suggestion....

the C3D file size dropped from 34-35Mb using the SU import... to 1.4MB with the C3D generated scene...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW...!!! what a drop...

and render time... down to around 10hrs... altho did drop it down to roughly half the res for the output... but still a heck of a difference... Cheetah3D is the best...!!!!

 

[tg_jp]

TrevorM-L, at your scene my sample script is not work as you want, I think. that script make some collisions if a object position is close to others.

this script works fine in some scene like snow or rain scene as peer wrote, like attached picture.

I update this script with rotate option,
please check this url to download.

Random Array.js

tg_jp

 

[TrevorM-L]

OK... after about 3 1/2 days of rendering on my 1.5GHz PB 15"...!!

I think I may have overdone a few of the settings...

this is the image I got back... looks pretty good... except on completion I realised that I had fprgotten to subdivide the balls a couple of times so they came out facetted on the edges... you can only just make them out on the large transparent pink ball...

the large pink ball I have also rendered alone without transparency as there will be some post-render work done in Photoshop where an image of a kid will be added on top of the trans ball and then the non-trans one put on top so that the opacity of this one can be adjusted in PS so that the kid appears inside the ball... could possibly have inserted the kid in C3D but my knowledge and the turn around time did not match up very well... :lol:

looks like I will be tying up my PB for a while again... :lol: ... after I maybe lower a couple of the setings... ... still getting my head around some of the finer points of the render settings...

so if anyone wixhes to test a new Core IntelMac dual processor and run the render again.... as the result has to be very high res as it is for a press printing job of around 175 lpi screen... :wink: :wink: :wink: :wink: ... I am more than willing to email the file... anywhere... (as it is a littel too large for the forumn... 1.2MB zipped...

cheers
Trevor

 

[peer]

Hi Trevor,
It looks very good, but I'm willing to give it a try on my 2 x 2.5 G5, just to see if there's some tweaking possible with your render params. Which pixel resolution will it be?

Regards,
Peter

 

[TrevorM-L]

Thanks for the offer Peter... I think I will take you up on it... as it definitely could be better... and I slightly screwed up on the sizing... forgot to add the bleed into the file dimensions...

the resolution is for a finished size of 138 mm x 208 mm (including 5mm bleed) @ 300 dpi... which equates to 1630 x 2457 pixels... and saved as a .png so that it has lossless compression for easy emailing

you can contact me by PM... or email... if you like with your email address...

cheers
Trevor