Rich_Winsor

Well I must be doing something right as that plan is titled "Flat Head Screw". I just wanted to add a spot of realism to some hardware I was modeling. Apparently Mr Phillips felt the same way you do.

You do know that you can control the image size and the duration of the ray trace in the Ray Trace Options DBX? These settings must be made before the ray trace is started, and once started can't be altered other than to stop the ray trace. You can set the ray trace to run from 1 minute to 24 hours or you can set it to run from 1 to 999999 passes. If you really need a million passes you can set the ray trace time to no limit and it will run until you stop it or your machine melts into a tiny puddle on the floor.

In this case why would I want to..... On the other hand something like this....

Hi Levina. What the little green guy is showing is the effect the backdrop can have on the model. In that plan we have the model (in this case the saucer) and no other objects. The saucer has a 100% reflective surface but there is nothing else in the plan to reflect except what might be in the backdrop. Everything that is showing on the skin of the UFO is a reflection of what is in the backdrop. It's interesting that the reflected effect wraps all the way around the saucer like a Spherical Panoramic View even though the backdrop is flat. Anyhow, in the situation you describe the challenges will vary depending on the type of view you are creating. But whether it be an overhead or street level view the process involves getting a good quality photo of the existing situation from the viewpoint you want and then recreating that viewpoint in the camera view in your plan. As Glenn mentions above (nicely done BTW) it helps to have an image editing software program to tweak your backdrop image to suit your needs. Once you have an image you want to use for the backdrop open your Library Browser and right click on your User Catalog. Then go to New and then Backdrop to add your image to the list of backdrops you can choose in the camera specification DBX. Of course there are many other considerations to deal with such as matching the sun angle shadows and how much, if any, of Chief's terrain to include and how it blends into your backdrop image. Good Luck, hope this gets you started.

I will volunteer my thoughts on backdrops in ray traced renderings. Backdrops in PBR's behave entirely differently and can cause unexpected effects on the outcome. Backdrops certainly make a difference in ray trace quality but have very little effect on rendering time. They are after all just image files. The higher the quality of the image you turn into a backdrop, the better it will look in the rendering. To have a backdrop or not will depend on your intended results. If it's just the view out of an unimportant window in an interior scene, maybe a backdrop will just be a distraction from your intended focus. In other cases the background is everything. As below. Plan View corresponding Ray Trace

This topic lingers like an unwanted virus. Do a forum search for GDW (Garage Door Wizard). After numerous resurfacings of the topic I have no idea where we stand on the availability of the program from the creator. PM me if you are interested in a free trial. GDW Test-2.calibz

I believe @lbuttery has worked on this kind of project. He might have a lead for you.

Looks good to me Glenn. I don't know about the others but I'll give ya a +1 for the effort. What really caught my eye however was the "close but no banana" reference. Is that a Southern Hemisphere thing? Maybe with smoking so out of favor the trusty old "close but no cigar" in no longer acceptable.

If you don't want to roll your own (so to speak) Chief has some distressed and rustic materials available in their Bonus Catalogs. You might have a play with them and see if you can find something useful there.

Or maybe a good reason to upgrade to a Windows rig..... OK OK, just joking, lord knows you Apple guys can be touchy.

Seems like a lot of work for a God awful effect. If it's for a faithful representation of the existing condition, yeah, spatter it with MR's. If it's for anything else, ditch the effect. JMHO

Like this? I may have misunderstood the question.

Very impressive. Did you model that door in Chief as well? Looks like you are definitely in good hands as far as the fabrication goes. The Live Oak Estates are really our inside joke. They are actually a pair of 480 sq ft one bedroom, one bathroom rental units that we are now passing off as an exclusive gated community.

Nice Job JB. At 20' I'm assuming that gate is going to be a slider. Will you need to put a horizontal bar near the top for the rollers to ride on? It can detract from the intended design. While no where near as ornate, I too designed a 12' x 7' entry gate for the duplex on our property. It turned out pretty nice. Hope you have a good metal guy to bring it to life.

??? That's the tire symbol you made. BTW, that EPDM rubber material ray traces very nicely.

Perhaps I should have chosen my words more precisely. Would "one can get a surprisingly believable old tire that mere mortals could never model in Chief" have been more appropriate? That's a damn fine tire Michael but I will still maintain that for my particular situation my cheesy 2D image works better. If I needed to model the tire in 3D I guess I should model the dragonfly in 3D as well. Does that tire look familiar?

What the heck Mike. That free cup of Joe in the morning doesn't do it for you? Maybe you need a good soak in the indoor heated pool.

So here is the original cropped image I purloined off the internet to use for an old tire. I didn't really notice the little guy on the left side of the tire until I was editing the image. Using PSP I reversed the image to match the sun direction in my camera view, edited out the web site watermarks and changed the water surface to a transparent background. Then I changed the color to match the terrain. Convert the .PNG file to a Chief image and sink it into the terrain a couple of inches and you get a surprisingly believable old tire that you could never model in Chief.

I too like to 'dress the scene' with a combination of both 2D images and 3D objects. Here is a 100% Chief image I have been playing with recently. All of the items in the 'debris field' were created in this manner. In this case the main point of adding the debris was to disguise the transition between the terrain and the backdrop. BTW, bonus points are available if you can spot the dragonfly in the scene.

What are the odds? It's the +1420 Club.

Sheepishly admitting that I never even opened the file. Check with @Greg_NY61. He supplied the file. BTW, how is it that dogs can look sheepish?

Thanks Greg. Let's see if @ericepv can use this.

Personally I'd rather see models of Orthodox Jewish Men. What is the end game (exit strategy) for this charade? How do I opt out?

Armageddon it. Now we know how the dinosaur's felt. Thursday the sky was so dark that by 3:30 in the afternoon all the outside lights that are on photo cells came on.

When I was just getting started with Chief I was struggling with trying to create a swaybacked roof. Bill Emery helped me to accomplish it using Polyline Subtraction. Along the way I too encountered some unusual results.