How to use/exploit :) 8GB ram?

[Crayox13]

Vlado, how come you don't answer my question?

[Clifton Santiago]

Nice grass. Care to share all your fur settings? and grass material settings?

[voltron7]

fur

Nice grass. Care to share all your fur settings? and grass material settings?

Thanks, some setting I remember having siginificant effects are the bend, thickness, and "number" of hairs. I'm not near that scene (or even the building) but I think the variations for the the rotation, length, and thickness, were around 0.4. In this scene I had used the "per area" option and experimented with the values, ranging from 0.15 up to 2.5. The 2.5 was really making longer render times, but again, it really was very affected by the scene and geometry. I think even the rotation/angle of the HDRI was a factor in having it look okay, wierd...
The ground plane had a vray material using a single bitmap of grass from cgtextures. The fur material was also a vray material using a different bitmap of grass and it was a tiny bit glossy. I tried some 2sided materials. too, but I ended up sticking with this one, it was easier to adjust as scene conditions changed. Other things to note...it was in inche units, moer info in framestamp... Sorry for the long reply.
Keep in mind these setting may be totally useless to you, as even when I try merging into another scene, i must still tweak it...

[Clifton Santiago]

Thanks, I'll give some of those tips a try. I really like how some of the strands look yellowish, or kind of dead. It gives the grass a lot more realism.

See the link for my first attempt at vray grass a while ago. I have improved it since then, but it doesn't have the same realism as yours. I think it might have a lot to do with the texture map I am using.

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ght=vray+grass

[Jacob Hutson]

vista 64 vs xp64 - thread hijack

from our experience vista is slower than xp in the way it accesses data
by 15-25% in the real world, its clunky vs a very smooth xp64bit.
if your not in a hurry and not pushing the machine to the max vista 64 is fine.
in a production pipeline im not so sure.
the screen blank while it turns of aero (d3d in windows) when starting max is a joke too. alt tabbing is paintful with it on.

I changed one of our machines to vista and by the end of the week i was tearing my hair out.
very frustrating. (and this is with all the UAC crapola off)

at home for me its fine though, im in slow mode doing photo work and its works pretty good (although i did just recently change to OSX)

given the proximity of windows 7 to release getting into vista probably just isnt worth the hassle.

cheers

back on thread
we'll have to try the dynamic mem setting to see if it makes a difference to rendertimes.