Indigo Renderer Forum

I thought i'd give you a sneak peek. I'm about halfway through.

Thoughts? Anyone with documentation of their own they'd like to see merged in - email me ben@indigorenderer.com.

First.



Some of those renders are rather fugly, Benn, but other than that looking good so far.

Looking good.
some simple typo's and other areas of confusion

some links lead to non-existent pages but I presume you know this and are intending to make these pages?

Page 6
"Select an object and press n to
see the position of the object in blender units to get an idea of the scale of
your scene."

For me N brings up the Transform Properties box. Whilst this does show scale,loc, etc it does not show Blender Units. This might be confusing for a new user


Page 6
Blender has some lightsources that do not exist in the readworld - real world?

Page 21
numbers, the effects focal distance becomes less apparent.
effects of focal distance?


Apart from those - its looking good. Great to see you guys getting the manuals sorted. Your starting to polish this up quite nicely
(grovelling to try and make up for my own mistakes )

Oh and yes I agree with Godzilla - render some better examples please - I could post some examples if you want

hi benn, nice work on this and the main indigo manual.

i think i only have a few small nit-picks on both of the manuals thus far. first, the pages are rather sparse, i feel you could pull the page numbers down and the section titles up to open up more usable space on your pages. second, the page numbers seem out of place, if you intend to ever print these, the page number ought to be near the outside corner of the page. third, also related to printing, your margins will need to alternate for facing pages.

may i ask what software you're using to piece these together?

keep up the good work!

Im doing it in openoffice - i'll share the .odt files later on and you guys can have a guy at modifying the styles if you'd like to have a go at typesetting.

Page 18: "F-stop controls the focal length of the camera." Should be "aperture of the camera". Also the explanation about "macro mode" and "telephoto lens" are wrong.

You got it explained better at the "Focal distance" part: "If you have a low fstop, items that are not in focus will appear blurry. With higher f-stop numbers, the effects focal distance becomes less apparent."

Doug Armand wrote:Whilst this does show scale,loc, etc it does not show Blender Units. This might be confusing for a new user

? Yes it does. All the items in the transform properties box are in BUs...or perhaps I am misinterpreting what you are saying...

I just read the manual.
LocX/LocY and LocZ are indeed in Blender Units, this is korrekt.
I think the most important things have already been mentioned, and Iif you need some better pictures, please tell us.
I'm sure most of us here would gladly help.
The current pictures are ..errm not really suitable for a product that's supposed to create visual pleasing pictures.

Next revision of the manual attached.

Page 19 :
'This controls the focal length of the camera. Small f-stop numbers will make
things that are out of focus more blurry (similar to shooting a photo in macro
mode). Higher f-stop numbers will make everything in the scene equally in
focus (this is similar to the effect of shooting a photo with a telephoto lens).'

Incorrect. telephoto lenses, like your macro example, will give less DoF, depth of field , at any given f-Stop as opposed to a wide angle lens which will give increased DoF at the same f-stop.

Also you might want to explain which end of the aperture range is smaller. You'd be surprised at how many photographers think a smaller aperture is at the F64 end - because in the real world when using an aperture like that and you look through the lens the aperture/opening in the blades in the lens look smaller than at say F2.8

Doug Armand wrote:Page 19 :
'This controls the focal length of the camera. Small f-stop numbers will make
things that are out of focus more blurry (similar to shooting a photo in macro
mode). Higher f-stop numbers will make everything in the scene equally in
focus (this is similar to the effect of shooting a photo with a telephoto lens).'

Incorrect. telephoto lenses, like your macro example, will give less DoF, depth of field , at any given f-Stop as opposed to a wide angle lens which will give increased DoF at the same f-stop.

Also you might want to explain which end of the aperture range is smaller. You'd be surprised at how many photographers think a smaller aperture is at the F64 end - because in the real world when using an aperture like that and you look through the lens the aperture/opening in the blades in the lens look smaller than at say F2.8

The aperture, f/64, is one of the smallest available lens apertures and therefore provides the greatest depth-of-field.

If you happen to increase the F stop you have to increase the time since it has a lower apperture less light will enter, it also will increase the DOF allowing to focus up to infinite, roughly...

WytRaven wrote:

Doug Armand wrote:Whilst this does show scale,loc, etc it does not show Blender Units. This might be confusing for a new user

? Yes it does. All the items in the transform properties box are in BUs...or perhaps I am misinterpreting what you are saying...

Hi WytRaven - missed this post of yours. I started using blender about a year ago and didn't know this. So your saying that the Transform Properties shows the size in Blender units? So if I make a default cube the box says scale x,y,z=1 thats means it's 1 blender unit?

Only problem with this is if you scale something, say to be scaled x,y,z= 2 and then at some point do a CTRL-A to it this resets the scale = 1 again. So unless your never do that it's not a reliable way to measure. Or is my noobness missing something?

Doug Armand wrote: So your saying that the Transform Properties shows the size in Blender units? So if I make a default cube the box says scale x,y,z=1 thats means it's 1 blender unit?

Almost. Scale and rotation aren't in BUs as scale is a multiplier of the dimensions at last application of scale (Ctrl - A or initial size after creation) and rotation is in degrees of course.

Location (Loc) and Dimensions (Dim) however are in BUs.

So you need to pay attention to dimensions rather than scale when considering the physical size of the object in the context of indigo scene scale.

WytRaven wrote:

Doug Armand wrote: So your saying that the Transform Properties shows the size in Blender units? So if I make a default cube the box says scale x,y,z=1 thats means it's 1 blender unit?

Almost. Scale and rotation aren't in BUs as scale is a multiplier of the dimensions at last application of scale (Ctrl - A or initial size after creation) and rotation is in degrees of course.

Location (Loc) and Dimensions (Dim) however are in BUs.

So you need to pay attention to dimensions rather than scale when considering the physical size of the object in the context of indigo scene scale.

That was very educational - appreciate it.

One more question. Is a Blender Unit generally seen as a metre?

Doug Armand wrote:One more question. Is a Blender Unit generally seen as a metre?

If you do not specify a scale in the blendigo exporter then the default setting is 1BU = 1m (1 x 10 ^ 0). As I tend to model and render small objects I almost always have the blendigo world scale set at 1BU = 1cm (1 x 10 ^ -2).