[Zax Dow]

Thanks for the message.

We’ve discovered that some of the Flag Tutorial projects need updating so they will open correctly.

Did you get the “tracked leaks” message after a crash? Can you send us a series of steps to reproduce the problem?

thanks,
Zax

[Zax Dow]

Good creating problem solving, Laurie.

This brings up the point that we need an easier way to identify which materials are missing maps. I’ll add this as a feature request.

Currently if a material is missing a map there will be a little question mark (?) where the thumbnail of the map appears. The only problem with this is that you have to load each material one at a time, into the material editor to see if it has one of these questions marks.

Perhaps a command such as “select materials with missing maps” or “select problem materials” would help smooth out this process?

Anyway, glad you’re running smoothly again.

Best,
-Zax

[Zax Dow]

This is pretty strange. The Invig never asks for Illustrator files, it only asks for missing maps used by materils or object styles.

1- Is it possible that you opened the .ai file in Photoshop and then saved it as a .tga or .jpg or .pct file but left it’s name the same?

2- Do a search on your computer for this name and see if it appears more than once. The fact that the file is dimmed when you navigate to it shows that that really isn’t the file it is asking for. It may have the same name, but it’s not the correct file type.

3- Are you restarting with a “template project” each time? Does this problem happen when you create a completely new project from scratch?

4- If it is asking for a map there is a material or object style in this project that uses that map. The material or object style doesn’t have to be applied to an object to get this message. At some point in the past you have saved a material or object style to the bins and then moved the map that it needed. To fix it you need to figure out which material or object style wants this map and then delete it from the bin.

Best,
Zax

[Zax Dow]

You can move the lights so they are behind the objects but you won’t get that “hair light” effect or the “rays of light” effect or the “light wrap” effect. Each of these effects are created by other optical phenomena.

The best you can do with just the Invigorator is to angle the lights to get a “rim light” effect where the highlights are right at the edges of the objects. It looks pretty good but it’s not one of these other effects.

Each of the other effects can be achieved by using other plug-ins such as “Shine” or “Light Wrap”.

-Zax

[Zax Dow]

Here’s a little more detail to add to what Matt is saying…

The 3D Flag plug-in is a completely physics-based cloth simulation, so you can’t set exact start/stop keyframes. However, wind in this simulation is very very smooth, it doesn’t suddenly dip or turn unless you tell it to. So if you set the wind speed to be constant the flag will fall into a rhythm. You can then render out a few seconds of the animation and find a decent looping point to do a crossfade and, viola!, you have a looping segment of video.

Here it is in steps. . .
1- Set up the flag.
2- Set the wind speed to 11.
3- Set Pre-roll to 8 (you want to make sure the flag is well into the simulation before you start to render)
4- Render out 10 seconds of animation.
5- Take the clip into an editing program.
6- Duplicate it and make the top layer partially transparent.
7- Slide the bottom copy back and forth in time, until you match up the wave patterns.
8- Set the transparency back to normal.
9- Do a short dissolve from one copy to the other at the match point. (“short” means something like half a second)
10- Render out the looping section of flag.

There you go!
-Zax