Problem with 3D line rendering

[chucky]

I was just wondering, while you are talking about the render .
How does the lighting work, is there any control over it?

[Rudiger]

I was just wondering, while you are talking about the render .
How does the lighting work, is there any control over it?

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way of controlling the light direction in this version. Having a light direction dial in the Project Settings dialog would be the best way to do it, in my opinion, as well as having one in the 3D options tab of each layer, so you could override the global setting for a particular object.

I'm also hoping we will get to select the threshold for controlling the boundary of the darker tone of the toon shading, as I don't like how you only get a narrow band of the primary shading before the darker one comes in.

[chucky]

Does changing the lighting in poser make any difference? Weird thought, but worth a shot.
I'd love to try a demo or trial of this.... but I'm not going to play SM's dirty bank games, looks like there's plenty of reasons to withhold the trial from the eyes of general public. I guess accidental purchase is what they are relying on rather than rational decision.
No editable light source means that this is no a feature yet, more of an experiment.
Eve with shortcomings, normally I would buy this without a second thought, but after the way we've been insulted over the demo issue, it looks like the actual app might be a little insulting too, if it's so short of complete features.
Is that why we don't get a fair test drive?
These kind of things make people very suspicious, we want to know what SM is hiding from us, maybe it's........ crappness?

[Rudiger]

...Eyyy! Thanks for your reply (and other things )

Well, as far as I can imagine for the tries I did in the past, it seems to me like the old mode could be much more complicated that you describe (surely for simplification reasons), cause with it, you even got that intersecting strokes going into the object (I mean, that "internal" strokes when certain pasts of the object appeared superimposed) and, in fact, I think it worked just reverse, like if the stroke never go beyond the structure and maybe taking into account some other structure factors? I really don't know, but some thinks make me think that it could not be easily fakeable at all...

Anyway, sincerely, as in this case I'm not too much directly affected as in other "similar" retro-issues (like the dreadful "Shape Effects" one (yeah, I'll never forget it )), I'm not losing sleep over it, but it doent deny that with this kind of decisions (someone said patterns?), I be always a "little" frightened about what feature that I like and I used to use, will disappear or suffer weird changes unexpectedly and with "no refunds".

Of course, in this case I can see some positiveness and promising possibilities so I won't complain too much, but... I'll always see it like a dangerous play

I couldn't agree more about how frustrating it is when features that you come to depend on suddenly go missing in a new version. I don't want to complain too loudly, because at least the Anime Studio renderer still supports the Splotchy effect, even if there's no way of selecting it in the actual program. Maybe Mike has put in a special code to unlock it, but just hasn't told anyone yet .

About coming up with a way to fake the fake edge rendering, it seems like the technique Mike used to use is very similar to this one:
http://www.independentdeveloper.com/arc ... /rendering

I think you can reverse the surface normals of .OBJ files in AS7, so I think you could apply the same technique manually and get very close to the old edge rendering effect.

[Rudiger]

Does changing the lighting in poser make any difference? Weird thought, but worth a shot.
I'd love to try a demo or trial of this.... but I'm not going to play SM's dirty bank games, looks like there's plenty of reasons to withhold the trial from the eyes of general public. I guess accidental purchase is what they are relying on rather than rational decision.
No editable light source means that this is no a feature yet, more of an experiment.
Eve with shortcomings, normally I would buy this without a second thought, but after the way we've been insulted over the demo issue, it looks like the actual app might be a little insulting too, if it's so short of complete features.
Is that why we don't get a fair test drive?
These kind of things make people very suspicious, we want to know what SM is hiding from us, maybe it's........ crappness?

Hehe, I refuse to try changing the lighting in poser to see if it affects the lighting angle in AS, as I'm too afraid it would work . I strongly doubt it would have any effect, though, as AS appears to use the same renderer on imported OBJs, converted 3D shapes, and poser scenes, so I can't imagine us being expected to import a poser scene to change the lighting for a 3D shape.

Even with these limitations, I think the way the 3D shading has been implemented, it will provide a fantastic foundation for future improvements, and let's face it, we'll probably only have to wait another year before the next version.

Also, about having to use your credit card to get the trial version, I can kind of understand it. Serial numbers for AS are floating around all over the place, so I guess this is there way of limiting unauthorised distribution of the program.

[Rai López]

Wow! Really it was so simple! I never thought a trick like that could offer so nice results, I tend to think that usually fakes have some contraindication or "glitch" here or there, well mines at least

In fact, for curiosity, I've been testing it with the AS torus figure with no the results I expected yet, especially for the inner lines we talked about, so I wonder if won't be necessary two copies of the object, one bigger for external strokes and another a little smaller for the inner strokes... Plus, seems that ASP 7 doesn't let you to choose a "Default Color" anymore , and have a black copied of the object could require to do it into the 3D external application, so... so much steps and complications for my taste... although, as far as it seems, technically possible.

Oh! And again with the scale compensation issues, yes ...that added with the impossibility of changing the light source position, broked and unexpected lines, etc... well, makes me think about all this 3D issue like a curious developers experiment by now, so let's look towards the future...


Well, thanks for the info!

[Rudiger]

In fact, for curiosity, I've been testing it with the AS torus figure with no the results I expected yet, especially for the inner lines we talked about, so I wonder if won't be necessary two copies of the object, one bigger for external strokes and another a little smaller for the inner strokes... Plus, seems that ASP 7 doesn't let you to choose a "Default Color" anymore , and have a black copied of the object could require to do it into the 3D external application, so... so much steps and complications for my taste... although, as far as it seems, technically possible.

I did the torus experiment as well, but got both interior and exterior edges. Here are the steps I followed:
1. Create torus 3D shape by drawing a circle and applying the lathe 3D effect.
2. Set the color of the torus to black by selecting its circle profile shape and setting the fill color to black.
3. Export the scene to .OBJ file using File -> Export OBJ... command.
4. Reimport the .OBJ file back into AS using File -> OBJ 3D Model... Oddly, the normals were already reversed, so while this may be another bug, it saves us a step in this case.
5. Set the color of the original torus to a different color by selecting its circle profile shape and setting the fill color.
6. Select the points of the circle profile shape and scale them down slightly, so the black torus overlaps it by the desired amount.
7. Put the two layers into a group so you can rotate them as a single shape and there you have it - a fake, fake 3D edge shader!

fake-fake-edge.zip

Yeah, a lot of steps to go through, compared to AS6, but perhaps some of them could be scripted. It's a pity, but I don't think importing and exporting .OBJ files can be scripted. Hope this helps, anyway.