hi it's possible to render normal map passe please

The one part you understood was the one part I didn't quite get. 

External textures?... as apposed to the shaders that are there already?

As for the other parts.

I think Guy is saying that he created a set of UV maps to bake ambiant Occlusion into the objects. For those maps, NO UV coordanates can be overlapping as it states on the first page.   The  other UV maps (the ones that came with the objects) is what he used for the textures.

I'm guesing with the DAZ objects, at least the deffuse map carried over I think. Too bad iClone can't read .mtl files. Oh well. So I'm guessing he had to remake the bump and specular maps.

For objects he made from scratch, I don't think he needs TWO sets of UVs, because he can just make a set of UVs that don't overlap from the start and he'd be just fine.

I also don't THINK he has to make different physical versions of the city thing... just different versions of the textures so he can compile them later. 

So he could just be modifying all the textures and saving it as a different project so that he can render each one and compile them.

Gee... sorry if that didn't help much. I hope I could make at lest some of it a bit clearer. I've not tried this yet, but let's hope a future version of iClone will just let us do this in realtime with SSAO (Screen spaced Ambient Occlusion) and other techniques that current game engines use... yes it's not AS good as pre-rendered stuff YET, but it'd be a LOT closer.

Take a look at Heavy Rain for the PlayStation 3. That has some pretty nice lighting and effects and all that's rendered in OpenGL.

----------------------------------------------------
***BEST OF THE CORE**
:A music reel demonstrating the different types of music I produce for multimedia. Hope everyone enjoys.


Player not working? Use this link.

My other audio work.

Facebook page:

Creation begins at the core.

Hello,

I'm not sure to follow you here, but no, I've not removed the defaults assets from their install path.

Cheers,
Guy.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Thanks very much for your reply Guy,



Unfortunately this is about all I understand :) And that took me about 24 hours of thinking before I understood it. :P

do I understand you properly - you move all preloaded content out of the default directories and start iclone with very little default content. I guess this gives you better performance?

I'll keep at it - I'm keen to understand what you do and produce similar results myself.

thanks again.

Hello,



No, I only use XSI to create the second set of UVs for baking an ambient occlusion map per object, wich means in this case there is only one material or surface for the entier object, constant white.

For Daz3d objects, I export them from DazStudio in *.obj then import them directly through 3DXchange. I import them also into XSI to create the second set of UVs and bake the aoc map. For object I'm creating from scratch into XSI, I export 2 versions, one for the usual maps with a first set of UVs, one for the aoc map with a second set of UVs, unique uvs.

I don't set the materials in XSI because I have no real way to see how it will look into iClone. This could be possible, eventualy, but I would have to create realtime XSI shaders that would replicate iClone rendering. I did that a while ago for the game Supreme Commander, but it was easy because the sources of the shaders were available into the game install directory. ;) The compiled iClone shaders are embedded into the iClone executable so I can't retrieve the sources, and recreating thoses realtime shaders would take some times.

I don't deal with material settings from 3DXchange either, for a very specific reason :

There is no 'session' you can save/load in 3DXchange, wich means if you import an *.obj file into 3DXchange, then start setting materials, then if 3DXchange crashes, you loose everything and you have to redo it all again. This happened to me several times, so I gave up settings materials there. I just smooth the normals, set pivots if needed then export to iClone.

Then in iClone I set the materials. Here I can save a project so if iClone crashes for any reason while I'm setting materials, I don't have to redo it all again. ;)

I create a 'full' version with all material settings and textures channels, then I create the different versions needed for each pass from there, by removing textures and setting the right attributes for each version.

I always use external textures, for memory efficiency.

Cheers,
Guy.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Hi Guy,

I just dropped by to say a heartfelt thanks. Your work is very inspiring. I split your animated gif into frames and tried to get them into Blender and then use the compositing tool to make a basic pipeline. I quickly gave up (Blender is very hard to learn).

Now I'm trying to make shapes in Sketchup and import them into iclone - I think this pipeline will be easier. I don't want to go through each material and manually turn off textures, etc. I'm hoping I can do this in Sketchup somehow and then import the different passes into iclone.

Did you turn off the various attributes globally in XSI for each pass before you imported the meshes into iclone?

Thanks

Hello Steven, thanks.




I'm not just using several atmosphere settings, I have first to prepare several versions of each asset used in a scene. Check this post for more informations :
Post50670




You can check this post where I sumarize the blending modes in an animated gif:
Post50623

And here for more informations :
Post50752




When I'll time, sure. Check this post for more informations :
Post51107


Feel free to ask for more informations if you find those unclear.

Thanks again.

Cheers,
Guy.

--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Amazing results guy. so are you saying use various atmosphere settings, rendering out each of this passes separately....them composite those renders together in a third party app such as after effects. Then if thats what your saying, which blending mode do you arrive at as being best for this task. Again, my hats off impressive rendering for Iclone. Might you consider a video tutorial on YouTube?
Thanks
Steven

Hey guys, thanks a lot !




You are right, I posted here first as this started as an experiment to see if it was doable with iClone but you are right, I'll continue in the "Showcase Yourself" forum.

I'll create a thread for the movie I'm trying to do for the Sci-Fi contest.

( -> [RADFAC] Sci-Fi - Remember.. )

Cheers,
Guy.



--
guy rabiller | GOETZIWOOD STUDIOS
"N.O.E." (Nations Of Earth) Sci-Fi TV Show, Showrunner.

Oh, I almost missed this one... (You should post in the showcase yourself thread!) 

Amazing work Guy !

Come and visit my store by clicking on the banner below.