So many Alias Problems! Please help Alias Demi-gods.

OK so I’m learning Alias and getting pretty good at it but I’m stuck on a few things. I have gone through almost all tutorials yet need troubleshooting on real projects. I am finding it sooo frustrating how difficult Alias is compared to other programs just to use simple functions. And I find myself spending hours and hours trying to figure this program’s quirks out.


Then I find their website is just as confusing to get to information, who are these people??? Argh!

OK enough bitching, does anyone have a link to a forum to seek alias help?

  • if you can answer any of these, I’d be greatful.
  1. How in the world do you get projections to work correctly? Mine ALWAYS come out dark. You can see the image but its always dark no matter what I adjust (like 50% bright)

  2. Direct lights aren’t casting shadows on my objects, why?

  3. How do you get the blur motion in a rendering to work? IE how do I take a tire/wheel and spin it in a rendering to look as if it’s rotating?

  4. How do you airbrush an object? Every time I try and airbrush an object (after it’s sellected) I only get the image plane painted?

  5. Can you have more than one projection on a shader? I want to place several different images on one object or do I have to cut that object up and assign it different shaders with their own projections?

projections come out dark - is your lighting fine otherwise? try a specular map using the same projection object to modify the highlight there. just save out the projection texture then apply it to the specular channel using the browse in the texture procedure selector window (the thing that pops up when you hit “map”). or do an incandescent map the same way to punch up the graphic. just tone it down by using an rgbmult of less than 100%.

direct(ional) lights only cast shadows in raytracing, and only when shadows are turned on in the light editor. raycasting calculates shadows only for spotlights and point lights (with their shadows on).

motion blur is only really noticeable when the object is going through some fast motion and the apeture is cranked (in the render globals). this assumes the wheel is animated, yes?

studio doesn’t paint 3d geometry, only 2d image planes. get maya (or cdrs in the old days, or bodypaint, or amazon paint, or an old sgi with studiopaint on it) for that.

to project multiple textures onto an object with only one shader use the overlay channel near the bottom of the texture editor. apply another projection procedure, turn its display on, and place it as you need. be sure to turn wrap off for all projection procedures in that channel.

Thanks Sam,

The added projections with the overlay worked like a charm (excellent directions).

I have gotten to the others yet.

I knew that I would have to animate the wheels to get the blur. But a few more questions arise on that. I went through the alias help site and it only mentions that animation by rotating (revolution) is possible but no explaination how to. Unfortunately all I can think of is to set a keyframe, rotate it several times and set the keyframe again later. I gotta think there’s a better way though no? Is there a way to assign the wheel to revolve about a certain axis at X# of revolutions per sec/min?

Also when I try and get this motion blur going will that also only show in raytracer or can it be seen in raycast? And when you said that the aperture needs to be “cranked” that you meant similar to how you would do that with a real camera? If so I only thought that you get that blur by decreasing the shutter speed. When you say aperture are you speaking of “shutter angle” listed under blur effects?


BTW, I really appreciate you helping me.

the other method of animating a rotating wheel in studio besides keyframing is to use an expression based on the current frame number but that’s only available to autostudio and studio + advanced animation users. unless you have one of those you’re stuck with keyframing, which will indeed work to product motion blur in the raycaster.

or use maya, which is made for that sort of thing.

when i say “aperture” you are right, i mean “shutter angle” under blur effects in render globals. crank it up for more moblur. for more moblur in a single image just set globals to render one animated frame and crank the by frame number to something higher than 1.

in my tests with v9.7 the raytracer ignores motion blur settings, hence no moblur there.