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Newsflash - RPC Parking Lot (Review by Jeff)


nisus
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Hi Jeff,

 

After reading your article, I still got some questions about the RPC parking lot:

 

- When placing the cars is there an option to change the colors of the car? I just think it doesn't work well when every yellow car is the same type...

- Can you tint the windows differently per car?

- Can you add a random rotation to their placement?

- Can you add a random wheel turn/steering to the cars?

 

tnx!

 

nisus

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When placing the cars is there an option to change the colors of the car? I just think it doesn't work well when every yellow car is the same type

 

No these colors are set, but there is no reason you could not adjust the colors in post if they were rendred out to a serpate layer.

 

 

Can you tint the windows differently per car?

 

Yes and the licence plates too.

 

Can you add a random rotation to their placement?

 

Yes using their updated RPC plugin, this is the reveiw for next week so stay tuned.

 

 

Can you add a random wheel turn/steering to the cars?

 

 

No only the standard Automobile series can do this. If you are close enough to see the wheels tunred then add a few of the standard cars mixed in with the parking lot cars.

tnx!

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Tnx for the quick answer Jeff ;)

 

I think it's strange that every copy of the same car can have a different glass transparency, but

the cars do all have the same color per type... wondering why...

 

random rotation: next week... curious!

 

nisus

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Not quite sure I follow, but the bitmaps are not external items they are built into the RPC file.

 

Originally posted by Ernest Burden:

What about duplicating the cars (i.e. make new ones of your own) so that you could have at the maps (duplicated also) and change their colors that way, just have more cars available?

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Did you read the review?? I have listed a bunch of times based on the number of cars.

 

Originally posted by sergio rocha:

just one question jeff :

when using this pack heavilly in a scene, how are rendering times? are they optimized for that?or each car represents a rpc car with no motion?

thanx.

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Originally posted by Jeff Mottle:

Not quite sure I follow, but the bitmaps are not external items they are built into the RPC file.

I was thinking maybe one could copy the yellow beetle to, say, 'beetle2' and open the maps in Photoshop and change the colors that way, then you would have two beetles to place.

 

ArchVision did answer an email recently to tell me you CAN create your own content, so I wondered if that applied here. Because that would eliminate any issue with all the beetles being yellow, al the PTs being white, etc.

 

Opening the rendering in Photoshop to do a color change is fine if you are only doing a single image (or just a few) but problematic on an animation, where rendering times become a significant issue.

 

Still, I think the collection would be a great help. I used to use a special set of low-poly cars for aerial shots that had parking lots, so this does that technique one better--maybe two.

 

Thanks, Jeff, for the review!

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Hey Ernest,

 

Yes you can create your own content, but in that process you wrap it all up into an RPC file, which as far as I know can not be opened again and edited, well at least not by the general public. The focus of ArchVision in the future will be to faciliate the creation and use of user content, not just the libraries they offer.

 

For more on this you can read this PR back from SIGGRAPH: http://www.cgarchitect.com/news/newsfeed.asp?nid=582

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If it was that easy to change the color of the cars the developers should provide more colors...

 

If it's not possible to change the colors quickly, the developers should implemente this...

 

Imho this parking lot sounds but like only half a solution so far... curious for updates

 

rgds

 

nisus

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If it was that easy to change the color of the cars the developers should provide more colors...
Agreed. We know that RPC is a hybrid of geometry and texturing, though not a small number of textures, I suppose. To make more colors you obviously do not need to address the geometry, just the maps. Even if there are many of them, its very easy to record a script for a whole folder of images. So that's what should be done here. If ArcVision does not make that ability open to their users, then they should do it themselves. Is it 'that easy', as I described it? I don't know, but it should be. If it isn't, what are they doing that is making it so complicated?

 

From Jeff's images the cars look about as good as I've ever wanted--not a big compromise. The 'regular' cars must be great.

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Really?

 

I thought there was a slider for glass opacity, steering AND color of cars... *damn* I should get a job at archivision as a content designer/optimizer... But maybe I will get paid for spawning these ideas anyway... ;-p

 

nisus

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