New Build (303)

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

• Work continues on Engine 4.  I made a bunch of "improvements" in this round.  I like the direction this is heading.
• The Preparing Rendering phase of the pre-process should go faster for the Path Tracer and the new engines.  Packet Tracer is unaffected by this change.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Pyramid bump:

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Better Pyramid:

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Not sure exactly what you mean-- but bumps concentrate the light in some areas at the expense of others.  That's how a caustic works.  It can't add any energy.  The more concentrated the light is in certain areas the darker the shadow gets in others.  When you're trying to make a leaf catch fire with a magnifying glass you get a very dark shadow and very bright caustic.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I just took your glass and added a bump map.  I played around for about a minute to get something interesting.  I'm happy to post them here if you like-- although I don't think I even saved them.

Mario Schipflinger said:

Pyramid looks realistic to me! rubble looks also nice, more like cheap glass for my feeling. you can share material to give a try?

[George Ioannidis]

File which did crashes sent.

Regards.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Thanks George-- downloading it now. I did find a problem this morning which may be the source of the crashes.  I'll update this afternoon or tomorrow.

[akinlolu olugboji]

With little or no improvement on the Packet Tracer except for new features in Nxt I fear for it's future.

[George Ioannidis]

Great!

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

What are you afraid of?

akinlolu olugboji said:

With little or no improvement on the Packet Tracer except for new features in Nxt I fear for it's future.

[akinlolu olugboji]

That it maybe stop and all will be forced to upgrade hardware at great cost and for folks like us who still have to work on tight schedule, it is the greatest yet. 

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

You can worry about that if you want.  I wouldn't bother.

akinlolu olugboji said:

That it maybe stop and all will be forced to upgrade hardware at great cost and for folks like us who still have to work on tight schedule, it is the greatest yet. 

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

Use bumpmapping whenever possible.  Displacement mapping will slow you down a lot, cause numerous problems such as aliasing and precision, and add very little to the overall quality for most applications.  Displacement mapping's problems will be exaggerated when used on transparent materials.

Mario Schipflinger said:

after trying this, its not a problem of nXt - as usual PEBCAK. the preview is standard to pakettracer. this keept me away in the past from using displacements on transparent surfaces.