...yeah the house I lived in was over 50 years old and drafty, particularly by the exterior side door/cellar steps and in the attic bedrooms ('energy efficient" was not part of the common vocabulary when the house was originally built). All windows were double hung wood frame with single pane glass requiring full frame storm windows to be hung in autumn which were replaced in late spring by full framed screens. Naturally this made for lots of air leaks all over the house and in winter, the storm windows would frequently frost up completely, particularly in the upstairs bedrooms . Thank heaven's for the old German "Federbetten" we had.

The gas furnace vented exhaust gases to the central chimney which the old coal one used. In the kitchen there was cover plate on the wall shrouding the chimney which used to be the where the flue pipe from the the old wood fired range vented as well..

Yeah it was definitely "old school" living. The house even had an external rain barrel (which was filled in and turned into a flower bed before i could remember) which was connected to a hand pump next to the cellar laundry sinks.

With all the environmental sealing in more modern homes today, I can understand that the risk of CO buildup is a bigger concern. What it sounds like you have is what is called a "dual fuel" setup where you have both an external central air unit and a furnace hooked together. If your place does not have a roof vent or chimney, than I can see the heat exchanger portion of the unit being needed to bring in fresh air and vent potentially harmful exhaust gases from the furnace outside.

Kyoto Kid said:

...interesting that the vents of the unit must be clear to avoid CO buildup when heating the structure with the furnace if it is primarily used for central air conditioning.

Again we just had a forced air gas furnace with no external system and never were in danger of CO poisoning.

Before that we had a coal fired furnace in the cellar, and nobody in the house ever felt any ill effects from it either

It is not primarily for central air conditioning. That was a secondary unit. It is for heat and air conditioning. I don't pretend to know exactly how it all works. I know that there's a thing in the back yard, near the house on the patio, that I think is a condeser. It's sort of a cube, with radiator-like fins inside and a fan facing down on top, and a couple of copper tubes/pipes that go inside the house into the furnace, where I think there are cooling coils or something and the air is forced over them to cool the house. But the unit is first a heating furnace. Without that thing outside it would still be a heating furnace. As I understand it, not all the units in this development originally had the central a/c. I'm not sure of that, though. A few (very few from what I can see) have fireplaces and chimneys, we don't.

How long ago was that furnace built? They started putting the intake and exhaust vents through the wall to the outside for safety reasons. You may think you were never in danger, but you were. They change the way things are done to improve safety. I'm not sure when they started doing that, really. This house was built in 1998. We bought it in 2001, it was 3.5 years old. Gas naturally burns clean, but with a furnace there's always the possibility of something being just a little off and you get CO. Even if it's just when it initially ignites. Like I said earlier, the exhaust vent is pretty high. If we had snow that deep, we'd have a lot more troubles.

I remember when I was young we had a gas space heater. it was this big thing in the kitchen with a couple of little vents in front near the bottom that had fans in them, and you could pull out the face and turn it and let it go back to change the direction of the fan's wind. But that was just a little extra boost, the heat mostly came off the top through vent holes. Nearly the whole top was like a sheet of metal with holes, like a screen but thicker and a bigger grid. I might not be explaining it well. Anyway, that didn't seem to have an intake but it did have an exhaust going into the refitted chimney port. I guess it used our air inside. But houses also weren't as airtight in those days as they are now.

If I had lots of money, I'd look into getting a geothermal heating system. No more fuel, except electricity for the pump and the heat distribution system. That tech is really cool. The fluid used reacts to pressure. The tubing goes into the ground at a certain depth, getting the ambient temperature from the ground. Then it is pumped through a choice of two tubing systems. The fluid reacts to pressure, with less pressure it cools down, with more pressure it heats up. So, for cooling wider tubing is used. For heating, narrower tubing is used. It's initially not inexpensive, but the savings in fuel cost over several years probably pay for it.

Dana

...interesting that the vents of the unit must be clear to avoid CO buildup when heating the structure with the furnace if it is primarily used for central air conditioning.

Again we just had a forced air gas furnace with no external system and never were in danger of CO poisoning.

Before that we had a coal fired furnace in the cellar, and nobody in the house ever felt any ill effects from it either

Kyoto Kid said:

DanaTA said:

Kyoto Kid said:

DanaTA said:

Well, it's still snowing here. The snowdrifts are crazy. My car is almost completely exposed, but the drifts next to the fence, a couple feet away from the car, look like almost three feet deep!

I had to go outside around 4:00 am to check on the heating intake and exhaust vents. I didn't want to chance carbon monoxide poisoning. I really hated to go out there at that time, in that blowing, sideways, snow. But it was nagging me and I couldn't get to sleep. Good think I did. A drift was pretty close to the intake vent. I'd say maybe eight inches. The exhaust vent was never in any trouble, it's pretty high.

No power loss!

Dana

...your place has a heat pump I take it?

I'm not exactly sure what that means. The furnace burns natural gas and there's air ducts throughout the house and a big fan pushes the hot air through the ducts. There is a return air shaft as well. The central air uses the same blower and duct system. The compressor is outside, of course. I think that's the compressor.

Dana

..yeah that sounds like a heat pump, basically a unit that sits on the ground beside the house which forces air (heated or cooled) through the structure's internal vents. Lived in Wisconsin where we had a gas furnace but it had it's own internal forced air system.

No, the furnace is inside in the basement. The blower is in the furnace. The only thing outside is the condenser or compressor (I think condenser), whatever, for the central air conditioning.

Dana

DanaTA said:

Kyoto Kid said:

DanaTA said:

Well, it's still snowing here. The snowdrifts are crazy. My car is almost completely exposed, but the drifts next to the fence, a couple feet away from the car, look like almost three feet deep!

I had to go outside around 4:00 am to check on the heating intake and exhaust vents. I didn't want to chance carbon monoxide poisoning. I really hated to go out there at that time, in that blowing, sideways, snow. But it was nagging me and I couldn't get to sleep. Good think I did. A drift was pretty close to the intake vent. I'd say maybe eight inches. The exhaust vent was never in any trouble, it's pretty high.

No power loss!

Dana

...your place has a heat pump I take it?

I'm not exactly sure what that means. The furnace burns natural gas and there's air ducts throughout the house and a big fan pushes the hot air through the ducts. There is a return air shaft as well. The central air uses the same blower and duct system. The compressor is outside, of course. I think that's the compressor.

Dana

Kyoto Kid said:

DanaTA said:

Well, it's still snowing here. The snowdrifts are crazy. My car is almost completely exposed, but the drifts next to the fence, a couple feet away from the car, look like almost three feet deep!

I had to go outside around 4:00 am to check on the heating intake and exhaust vents. I didn't want to chance carbon monoxide poisoning. I really hated to go out there at that time, in that blowing, sideways, snow. But it was nagging me and I couldn't get to sleep. Good think I did. A drift was pretty close to the intake vent. I'd say maybe eight inches. The exhaust vent was never in any trouble, it's pretty high.

No power loss!

Dana

...your place has a heat pump I take it?

I'm not exactly sure what that means. The furnace burns natural gas and there's air ducts throughout the house and a big fan pushes the hot air through the ducts. There is a return air shaft as well. The central air uses the same blower and duct system. The compressor is outside, of course. I think that's the compressor.

Dana

I'm missing this one thankfully, but in '78 I was in central Jersey for a 24 incher. And again in '83 for both an 18 incher and a 24. The 24 was the most fun because I shoveled the driveway in preparation for ex's homecoming--but he got stuck in NYC. It blew all night and the next day I had to shovel it again.

BTW, I picked up a couple of little lanterns from Amazon because we're plagued with outages here (usually lightning related but sometimes ice) and they both take D batteries. Love the little things they're very powerful and useful.

Also an AM/FM/NOAA crank radio. Comes in handy but I don't know which is more boring: having no word from the outside world or sitting there cranking the thing.

Good luck everyone and hope you get through this fine. We're just getting rain tonite, tomorrow, and maybe a little snow when the backend sweeps through.

Be aware that right now (3pm central) several of us are having trouble with the checkout. It's not going through with paypal, and one person is having trouble even with credit cards. With paypal, it says can't access gateway. The orders are NOT going through. I have already reported it to the moderators. :)

I'm picking up Rons Sci Fi Custom Shapes Bundle, Ron's Ink, Whimsical Border Brushes and #2. That is, if the order goes through.

We're totally repainting the interior of our home, so that's why I am not online much this week. :)

LeatherGryphon said:

Golden Orb Web Spiders: I've seen 'em by the dozens (possibly a hundred) in groves of Cabbage Palms around cow pastures in central Florida. Webs span the distance between trees. Thankfully most of the webs are above head height. Probably because they seem to prefer to attach to the palm fronds at the top. Or possibly because the cows walk through any lower ones.

But at least I could see them, they were not moving, and mostly out of my way. I think I'd freak if they were raining on me!!!!!

I saw one in a house and it charged toward me AFTER I'd hit it with the business end of a broom!

Hey, this "Golden Orb Spiders Web"
I see a lot of it here in my region ... And really, she loves to dwell in orchards ... But here in Brazil this spider is a greenish color.
is harmless, and if it drops the web, she can barely walk on the floor.
I've lost count of number of times in which I have given to my face, covered by their webs, all because I always wanted to get the most orange orchard before my cousins or siblings

Golden Orb Web Spiders: I've seen 'em by the dozens (possibly a hundred) in groves of Cabbage Palms around cow pastures in central Florida. Webs span the distance between trees. Thankfully most of the webs are above head height. Probably because they seem to prefer to attach to the palm fronds at the top. Or possibly because the cows walk through any lower ones.

But at least I could see them, they were not moving, and mostly out of my way. I think I'd freak if they were raining on me!!!!!

I saw one in a house and it charged toward me AFTER I'd hit it with the business end of a broom!

DADA_universe said:

JoeMamma2000 said:

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

What you said about visual clutter, if only I could remember it half the time. I love Dustrider's renders but I remember struggling with the October version of this one without exactly taking the time to figure out why.

JoeMamma2000 said:

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.
Thanks Joe!

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Thanks for the critiques - some good food for thought and future renders. Agreed, it is a bit busy, but as this image was primarily "fan art" (using the term art very loosely), the time machine was a requirement. The image seems to be much less busy and confusing for fans of "The Time Machine", a movie that came out in 2002 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(2002_film)). Even though the white glass on the time machine should have been transparent glass (which would increase the visual noise compared to the white "glass"), most fans of the movie immediately recognize the time machine, which reduces the confusion on the left side of the image immensely (comparing responses from fans of the movie versus those who never saw it). All the "shinny" stuff on the lower left is the time machine, so it kind of had to be in the image as it's an iconic prop in the movie.

I probably should have dropped the little flying droid thingy for this version, as I made/included it in the original contest entry as one of my "Made in Carrara" items, and it was not in the movie. But I liked the way it sort of pulled the two "halves" of the image together that are sort of divided by the tree. But, in retrospect, omitting it may have reduced the visual clutter quite a bit.

The lighting could have easily been better, but one of my goals with this render was to light it with a single mesh light, and to keep the guy with all the teeth more or less in the dark behind the tree. This really restricted my lighting options, but made for an interesting and useful learning experience.

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

This was really one of those projects I just wanted to do after the first time I saw the movie, and I decided to make it a bit of a learning experience as well. The learning elements included using a StoneMason scene with at least two clothed figures (without using Octane procedural s, and both having resource intensive hair models), lighting a complex scene with a single light (don't know that I would try that again, but it was a fun exercise), and of course fitting it all this in 3Gb of video RAM for rendering..

JoeMamma2000 said:

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

What you said about visual clutter, if only I could remember it half the time. I love Dustrider's renders but I remember struggling with the October version of this one without exactly taking the time to figure out why.

Dustrider, I love the poses and expressions on the two females in your image, especially the one on the right. Excellent.

My only comment on the image overall is that it is a bit too "flat", and your eye wanders all over trying to figure out what's going on. As with may CG renders, I find that it's difficult to figure out what's going on because people tend to want to showcase all the cool objects they built or downloaded... :)

The right half of the image is great, the two females, great poses and expressions, you know exactly what they're doing and thinking.

The left hand side, however, is very confusing. Partly because there is so much "stuff" all jumbled around, and the lighting doesn't lead your eye to a central focus, but rather allows you to see all the stuff and, IMO, it's just too jumbled and confusing to figure out. I *think* there's a dinosaur inside a tree with a bunch of stuff around him, but I can't figure out what he's doing, why he's inside a tree, and what all the stuff is... :)

I'd suggest you re-think your lighting to provide a central focus to lead the viewers' eye to the important stuff, and don't try to make the viewer see all the cool stuff you inserted in the scene. Often, less is more... :) :)

Anyway, I think you should get some sort of award for those very natural poses and expressions. Very nice. BTW, the tree texturing is also very nice... :)

TroutFace said:

It's 8:30AM.. been up an hour installing new musical instruments, backing up my new tools, and pouring coffee down my throat. :blank:

Soon, it's out for breakfast, then off to shop all morning.. ran out of a bunch of stuff all at once! :bug: Then, finally home to record some music! :cheese: :coolsmile:

Supposed to hit 60F tday, then 64F tomorrow.. omg.. and it was 18F last week! :ahhh:

Hopefully, due to the warmth, they'll put a big screen out on the patio at the bar and we can sit outside and watch football!! :)

Everyone have a great weekend!

I remember once when it was in the low 70s just before noon and snowing three hours later. The reason I left Milwaukee for the central region of the state was the effect of Lake Michigan. it could be 80°, then the wind would swing around off the lake and the temperature would drop into the 50s (often accompanied by a thick fog) in the span of ten minutes or so. On the old Allen Bradley building there is tower with a digital temperature display visible from downtown and a good part of the near south side on which you could actually watch the numbers tick down like a NASA countdown before a launch once the wind changed. Never knew how to dress as it was so unpredictable. Not good for the ol' arthritis and sinuses.

...just saw this.

A belated happy, how ever many trips you made around our central stellar primary.

Is The NTransform Brick Really Needed For Environment Mapped Reflections?

Back to Kadix query about whether the NTransform brick is required for environment mapped reflections.

For the first image in this post I set up raytraced reflections on each plane/sphere pair using the standard NON-ShaderMixer material. That's our 'control', and I'm taking this as being 'correct' reflections.

For the second image I used 'File > Import From Scene' in ShaderMixer. With the central sphere/plane pair I added just a 'Reflect' to this (as Kadix suggest). With the right sphere/plane pair I added a 'Reflect' and 'NTransform' as millighost initially stated.

The third image shows screenshots of the added bricks.

To me both central and right sphere look okay in the second image (although a test with a more strongly coloured map is probably required to confirm orientations are correct), but (surprisingly) both central and right planes still look wrong (i.e. they don't match the first image). The central one obviously so, but the right one more subtly - note the colours of the '+' signs, which indicates that they're not showing the same part of the environment map as a reflection.

Once again I'd appreciate if somebody else can confirm/refute this - I may have made a mistake in setting up even these very simple networks, and I didn't save the scene!

Eyos said:

Thanks for all the advice guys, it is really helpful and teaching. The animation I'm working on is of a dinosaur, and I find handling the walk of a 4 legs creature is quit laborious.

As with the same principals I talk about in Carranimation Part 1 – Rotation of the Hip, at the Carrara Cafe, I begin each next movement frame with the moving and rotation of the hip of the beast, watching carefully how far I want it to travel between leg changes - how far do I want the 'drive' legs to move before they lift and relax forward, letting the other two legs drive for the next movement forward.

I am more of an Asymmetrical animator, rotating each joint separately according to how my eyes and mind tell me that the motion should take place, rather than to perform symmetrical copying from one half of the body to the next for sake of speed. We all walk differently on our left sides than on our right, due to some kind of pain, weight load, thought going on in the head, person walking by... whatever. So instead of settling for a cheat like copying one side of the body to the other, I'd rather copy the first frame to the last, so that I know the cycle becomes fluid, and then animate the rest by hand.

Don't get me wrong... I do cheat, and it saves me a lot of time! I buy motion-capture aniBlocks. But those are recorded from real people's motions, so they, too, are asymmetrical in their own right - and tend to look more natural than one side cloned from the other.

Anyways, I start by moving the hip, and rotating it according to how the hind drive leg is going to have to be bent at the end of it's pushing motion. So the next thing I work on is the rotation of all of the hind drive leg's various joints - shaping the end of it's push. I'll often have to go back and forth between the hip and those leg joints - placing the tip of the foot (or hoof) exactly where it will look right compared to where it was in the first keyframe. Once I get the hip and the hind drive leg sorted out, I finish the hind quarters by addressing the other hind leg as it travels forward - imagining where it will be... has it touched down already? Has it touched down before this point and has started it's drive? I sort that out right here and now, and work it out between this frame and the first, ignoring what happens in between for now.

Now I have to focus on the fore drive leg (the one pushing or pulling the beast forward) and where it needs to be. To do this, I start countering the rotation of the hip with the other joints leading to the shoulders - often over adjusting with the next joint, like the abdomen, so that the next (chest) can counter that one, and the weight of the beast on that driving foreleg. So now I'm rotating the joints of that leg as well as the joints between it and the hip, to help the motion show the viewer the weight of the creature. This is where I'll keep in mind what's going on with these central spinal joints between this frame and the first, and begin anticipating what happens next, and so forth.
The final leg has to travel forward and get ready to take over, and the neck and head need to counter everything that has just happened with the spine behind it. This will give a natural feeling towards how to finalize the initial stages of this frame with the tail joints.

Did I just say "Initial Stages"? Yeah... before you'll really enjoy your cycle to it's fullest, you'll likely have to come back to each major frame and tweak some joints about.

The big thing to keep and eye out for with something like a massive Dinosaur is that the drive legs will have to give the impression that they are firmly planted into the ground during their drive movement. Massive weight begets a certain firmness... no sliding.

Another thing to keep in mind:
To help that lumbering motion, just make a walk cycle at first. You'll see in the end that the drive legs stop driving and begin returning a bit too quickly. This is where you can try playing with the ease in and ease out of the tweeners to try and really get the weight of this massive creature to become apparent through the walk cycle. Try playing with the tweeners before trying to add more keys. This is where you might try opting for linear tweeners instead of Bezier, and experiment with a very high ease in and out... see how it looks.

Turn your render settings and output resolution way down to simple renders. Don't worry about how the dino looks right now... just look at how it moves. Make some changes and Ctrl R to get that render done, so you can compare it to the last animation.

Oh... and save various stages as you go! :ahhh:

Temperature is 64 degrees in central coastal California. I love it. We are getting sme warm weather after a cold spell.

You all will have to forgive me, but I think north-central Wisconsin has you east-coasters beat (at the moment ;-) )