Back in my old Imagine days, a programmer named Richard Jennings created some amazing procedural textures for imagine and sold them for very reasonable prices. He has since expanded to Truespace, Lightwave, Carrera, SoftImage and Darktree. Not being a programmer, I’m not sure how easy it would be for him to port them to EIAS, but I don’t think it would be too hard. Here is his website.

http://www.ifw2.com/

He released a test version of Enhance, which allowed you to play around with the settings for the various textures. It doesn’t have a save feature for the generated texture, but it gives you a good idea of what his textures are capable of. One of the few remaining Imagine forums (http://www.imagine3d.org) still has a link to the viewer and it is still active.

http://www.ifw2.com/Enhance_Viewer.zip

The viewer is for windows only, but his textures will also work on the Mac.

Anyway, I thought I would throw this out to everyone.

Ross

Hi, Ross

Thx for the viewer, we are familiar with many its ideas (did similar things in past thus it was an enjoy for us to see how it works.

1) About “hard or not too hard”. Here the programmer created a common engine, a rest (at least 50%) of work is for designer/artist. So, maybe that we should ask “how hard it is?”

2) It looks very clear: many (if not most) of those textures can be created via EI shaders (many even with shaders came first with EI 2.9 ?). Althought we personally would prefer a “solid/big generator” instead of tenths of shaders. Anyway: IMO EI user has enough procedurals to create “some colors” and “some bump”. Need a bunch of fresh ideas, fractal noises cooking and cooking is not so interested now as in 2001. It’s normal, the life is going on.

3) What are those “fresh ideas”? We don’t know. Writting shaders is not so simple as it looks first. There is always a risk that shader can be “too banal” and produced result can be achieved via other ways. In other hand a nice non-trivial idea can be really complex to implement and far away of “little pretty shader” bounds. Say shorter “a good idea” = what defines shader’s success.

Hi Igors,
How difficult is to have a multishader(stacking various shaders on top of the other to make a material) kind like reactive shading for EI?  Is these too much to ask for or is the host not allowing to access these parameters?
Thanks
Edgard

Hi, Edgard

ednumber0 - 01 July 2008 05:57 AM

How difficult is to have a multishader(stacking various shaders on top of the other to make a material) kind like reactive shading for EI?  Is these too much to ask for or is the host not allowing to access these parameters?

Please address all Q to VRay or Mental Ray. Bye

ednumber0 - 01 July 2008 05:57 AM

Hi Igors,
How difficult is to have a multishader(stacking various shaders on top of the other to make a material) kind like reactive shading for EI?  Is these too much to ask for or is the host not allowing to access these parameters?
Thanks
Edgard

If you mean a ‘nodal texture manager’ such as Maya, then many ideas have been discussed, some very promising, but we will have to see what decisions are made at the top levels of EITG.

Ian

Hi Ian i was talking more of lets say two or more different materials with an alpha channels to make them visible just like in Maya the Multishader, is this a nodal texturing approach? if is so i dint know these term for me Nodal only means interface wise Shake approach to compositing or Maya Nodal system of Animation or Shading where you can assign which channel to be used by which material. That is more powerful. Am i right ?

By nodal I mean a ‘texture tree’. And yes, it would allow to combine textures in the way you describe, in theory

I hope we see these ideas develop into a serious project.
Ian

Sounds great Ian, but dont we need to be able to have displacement maps. They never work for me at least not like in other applications.John Knoll was commenting about this feature .

Displacement maps work really well since EIAS 6.0.

Here, take a look at this, with and without displacement… http://homepage.mac.com/cake_or_death/displacementwake2.png

Ian

I see but the difference is barely noticeable, even if you subdivide a whole lot your object i still cant get it to work . WHat is the trick?

When I was using Imagine, you could stack these textures. The panels were a great example. You would create the base panel look, and then stack the rust, dirt, and rivots textures on it. This gave instant weathering effects that looked great. The only thing you had to be sure of was using the same seed number.

Hi, Ross

rtrowbridge - 01 July 2008 08:19 AM

When I was using Imagine, you could stack these textures. The panels were a great example. You would create the base panel look, and then stack the rust, dirt, and rivots textures on it. This gave instant weathering effects that looked great. The only thing you had to be sure of was using the same seed number.

Here is an interested “effect” we noticed many times When a some feature is unachievable yet - it’s really a “magnet”, people talk and talk about how it’s cool, about “unlimited abilities” etc-etc.  But when the feature is implemented… same people lost interest to it totally and momentary ) Be sure, “nodal manager” is such case exactly Be sure we would see only few enthusiasts who are patient with long “stacks” (btw: very free/artistic usage of this term). Just because this feature itself gives no “immediate results”. It’s only “a combine tool” and need to apply a lot of personal skills, taste and hours of work to get something really interested.

Nevertheless we are “pro” this feature, not “cons”. Any “unsatisfied dreams” is harmful (and not in sofware only). Just let’s not overestimate its “uncredible powerful”. And, of course, all depends on top level EITG solutions, as Ian said

Hi Edgard,
Just wanted to second Ian on displacement working in EIAS. I use it quite a bit. Here’s a link to a short quicktime movie I made for someone I was teaching some basic 3D techniques. The displacement caused by the sphere on the water in the movie is inaccurate, but it does show a non-textured and fully textured surface being displaced.

http://www.geocities.com/aziz_cg/wavefx/wavewake.mov

Aziz.

Here is an interested “effect” we noticed many times When a some feature is unachievable yet - it’s really a “magnet”, people talk and talk about how it’s cool, about “unlimited abilities” etc-etc.  But when the feature is implemented… same people lost interest to it totally and momentary ) Be sure, “nodal manager” is such case exactly Be sure we would see only few enthusiasts who are patient with long “stacks” (btw: very free/artistic usage of this term). Just because this feature itself gives no “immediate results”. It’s only “a combine tool” and need to apply a lot of personal skills, taste and hours of work to get something really interested.

Nevertheless we are “pro” this feature, not “cons”. Any “unsatisfied dreams” is harmful (and not in sofware only). Just let’s not overestimate its “uncredible powerful”. And, of course, all depends on top level EITG solutions, as Ian said

Hello Igors,

I have had no regrets about moving from Imagine to the 3DToolkit and now 7.0. Imagine was a great program in its time, but has been overshadowed by other programs. I can do things in EAIS that I wouldn’t have dreamed of in Imagine. EIAS is a great program. I only wish I had a bigger budget to be able to afford more plug-ins.

I do have to admit I was a little cautious at first about getting the full program. I went through the full life cycle of Imagine. Impulse (the publisher) dragged the users on for quite awhile before finally giving up and letting the software die. I was concerned that I might be coming on at the tail end of EAIS’s life. And though there have been several doom and gloom type messages, these forums are what convinced me to go ahead and make the purchase. The owners and programmers are still excited about the program and what it’s going to be able to do with the next incarnation.

I’ve learned quite a bit since making the switch, but have a long ways to go. I still haven’t figured out UV mapping (hint, hint, Ian! ). But when I have a problem, I know I can get an answer by coming to this forum or looking to see if there is a new video tutorial. I have a three inch 3-ring binder on my desk filled with all of the tutorials I could find on the internet. It’s totally full.

This has rambled on long enough, so let me just say thank you for a great program and that I look forward to what you come up with in the future.

Ross

Hi Igors,
If i remember well , for what i have been using Multishader came out with Maya about 9 years ago,well when i got to Spain . So is not a new term being used and talk about is there it does breath Is not something artist talk about for nothing, like IPR or because is a new system is being there for ages.
If there is another way to do these than let us know probably stacking materials is not doable probably you have some other terminology but the ability to satck different materials is so much powerfull than having to duplicate the surface or isolate it with clip maps.
Thanks
Edgard

Hi Aziz thanks for the tip but in the movie description it says it was create with After Effects probably Wave World. I mean kind like others display these Displacement like Maya does incredible well. Just using a sphere and map a grid into the sphere set the with to a small size and for a penalty in render you get some beautiful Displacement no need for Bump just pure Displacement.
Probably because Displacement is not a Camera effect it was not yet reimplemented in EIAS. These example you just showed me Aziz if is done in EI we are in the same thing, i guess what i men to say is SupPixelDisplacement. Is this the same thing than Displacement or is more accurate?