Rendering with ArtLantis!!!! but which ArtLantis?

[Anonymous]

can anyone tell me which version of artlantis should i use
i dont know which one does what and which should i buy?
i have ARTLANTIS 4.5 and Im waiting for v. 5.0
but i heard that there are versions like ArtLantis R and ArtLantis classic
what are all these and which one should i use?
is there a version that compines all these?

thank you

[Thomas Holm]

Dwight wrote:
Yes, they do take time, but they are worth it!.

I bow to the master!
That image is exquisite. However, i've decided not to upgrade my hardware until the next generation of Macintels. THerefore today, those 3D plants aren't worth it, for me that is.

[Thomas Holm]

Karl wrote:
Nice, Thomas.

As to the background, this raises one of the many poorly documented features. You can drag a background image into the background thumbnail of the inspector seen in the attached screenshot. By double-clicking the thumbnail, you get the dialog shown which allows you to alter the way the image is handled.

Thanks Karl. One of many things I haven't noticed. I have found, though, that if you're patient enough to let your mouse rest at points of interest, there are several quite helpful tool tips that appear. I wish there were a small symbol, color or whatever, like a 😉 to tell that tips are available at these points.

Karl wrote:
If you right mouse / cmd-click, you get the system color picker with much more control IMHO.

I've found that I can access several kinds of color pickers (I'm at home now etc) I think I managed to get a submenu there by click-holding the right mouse button.

Karl wrote:
You've probably also noticed how you can duplicate your camera position, and assign different 'sets' of heliodon/lamps to it, in order to get different illuminations of the same (or of course different) shots... which can then be batch rendered.

Good tip! I'll try to figure out that too!

[Thomas Holm]

jocontreras wrote:
Should I write another book? / Dwight Atkinson
But of course! But probably we would get it when artlantis "R II" gets out.
Keeping the pace for program releases is no easy task...

If I know Abvent right, there will be no R II. Instead they'll write a "completely new" application. It will be a kind of crossing of Studio and R, called Artlantis SR, with a partly new interface and a couple of new features, (that is, it will be like Artlantis 5 should have been) and they won't offer upgrades but instead charge us all anew. I won't hold my breath, but I just hope they'll get a Universal Macintel version out of ArtR before they kill it. I have reason to believe it would be an order of magnitude faster, if compiled with Intel's C++ -optimised compiler. OSX screams with these kinds of apps on the Core Duo chips - see Cinema4D soon out. (Check Maxon's web site).

So if Dwight asked me, I'd say that he should make this book short and concentrated, skip general lighting issues and Photoshop enhancements (those could be separate books), and call it "ArtR Quick And Dirty" to get it out fast. Half as thick as the LWinAC book, half the time to produce, and half the price should make it a best-seller as long as there's no Abvent manual available. (Well, as Dwight writes legibly, even if Abvent tried to compete with a manual, they'd problably be an easy match for Dwight)

[Anonymous]

Dwight wrote:
Should I write another book?

Sure. And, as an idea, you could go heavy on general rendering concepts when applied to architecture (I know your former books go deep into this subject, but I still think there is room for some more digging)

Dwight wrote:
I've been making trees with OnyTree Pro - now with a garden plug-in.

Are you planning on selling this trees? (are you allowed to?), If so, maybe you could include them in you new book, as a bonus.

Thomas wrote:
I don't understand how to control the transparency - in the Shaders inspector, there's only a color field under that label?

AfaIk, it is the color that controls the transparency level. The darker the color, the less transparent (French logic I guess).

Thomas wrote:
Some Photoshop has been applied to the grass as well.

Looks great! Btw, why does everybody use photoshop? I mean, its the standard, and surely the best in the market, but it always seemed to me it is extremely overkill for my needs. I use GIMP (should be called wimp, I know), but it works good enough for me and ! Its FREE !

Thomas wrote:
Is there some way to make the 2D billboard plants to throw more 'accurate' shadows?

If the sun is not in front of you, you can rotate the billboard slightly, so as to face somewhere between your direction and the sun's. It works pretty well most of the times. Still, since artlantis started to handle objects, I gave up on bb entirely. My advice would be, buy a better machine, you will need it anyway for Artlantis Studio

Thomas wrote:
I'd also like to know how ArtR actually handles reflections.

Beats me. One of the many things to look out in Dwight's new book "Artlantis R Made Easy for Non French".

Karl wrote:
By double-clicking the thumbnail, you get the dialog shown which allows you to alter the way the image is handled.Karl

Live and learn... Thank you Karl

One way to find out about some of the hidden treasures of artlantis is reading the keyboard shortcut list in the help file. I know this is devious, but you have to be to keep up with these guys.

[Anonymous]

Thomas wrote:
Billboard vegetation is mostly much more realistic anyway.

Ah, I almost forgot:
There are two things 3d trees can do for you.
If you put them in front of a fresnel window, but behind the camera, you get these really nice looking reflections.
If they are near the camera, you get this very nice depth on the leaves, which give a tridimensional look to your pic. When Art Studio comes out, you will be able to move your camera sideways underneath this tree, and I bet this will give your film a VERY good look.

[Rakela Raul]

Looks great! Btw, why does everybody use photoshop? I mean, its the standard, and surely the best in the market, but it always seemed to me it is extremely overkill for my needs. I use GIMP (should be called wimp, I know), but it works good enough for me and ! Its FREE !

i down loaded it, and actually i liked it...durn quick 2 btw..thx !!!

but i said the same about phshop elements and psp and for reasons i dont recall i came back to phshop cs again...will c.

[Thomas Holm]

Interesting... Rakela uses the same chatspeak as my children... I have to think hard to understand it. 🙂

I use Photoshop simply because I've got it. The Gimp is available for MacOSX too, in at least two incarnations. And there's also Graphic Converter et al.

I'm back to this reflection/background issue in Artlantis (I posted a question about this in the Abvent forum but no answer). In my last rendering (above), i think the foremost upper windows to the left are too dark. They should reflect the sky. Since other camera-facing windows do reflect the background picture, I don't understand why these doesn't. When the backgrund is a "streched image", it seems it stretches around the horizon even behind the camera but only horizontally, not vertically? Or how do you make accurate sky reflections?

[Anonymous]

Thomas wrote:
Or how do you make accurate sky reflections?

Can´t help you there, sorry.
But you can allways cheat, putting a 3d tree behind the camera so it reflects in the window.

[Rakela Raul]

chatspeak

sorry about that mister thomas..never again !!!

[Thomas Holm]

Krippahl wrote:

Thomas wrote:
Or how do you make accurate sky reflections?

Can´t help you there, sorry.
But you can allways cheat, putting a 3d tree behind the camera so it reflects in the window.

OK.

Karl?