Wide MA2 is coming soon.


Why would you need to pay $5?

The texture would have to be re-wrapped to fix this and maybe it's not possible to fix with the current vertex count. The outline of the mouth is 'flesh colored' or tan but the inside of the mouth is most certainly not piercing yellow, but black. It's the food hole. :)

Prolific generally did not select fish that appear on our Wishlist.

I think they did the fish they like, instead of the fish that are the most popular. Otherwise they might have started with a Moorish Idol and a few other popular ones. I like what they chose. There are probably other reasons they did not hit the Wishlist. Two of the fish they put ARE on the wishlist anyway, the Imperator and Annularis Angels. :)


It does not help that there are so many websites that mix the two...
http://www.riebesell.net/aquaria/livestock.cfm?fid=101
http://www.marinedepotlive.com/763714.html
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/M...6/trigger.html
http://www.aquacon.com/html/images/sp11.htm

Here's the real Humu Humu Trigger...

http://store6.yimg.com/I/marinedepotlive_1726_15859222

This page even talks about the difficulty between these 2 fish...
http://saltaquarium.about.com/librar...y/aa100600.htm

Good reading, Morgan. Sorry for yapping about it. – Guess I was just eager to show that I too knew one thing about reef fish.

Then again, If so many mix 'em up – All the more reason not to use them incorrecly.

/Tiny Thanks

There was an internal project at Prolific specifically for confirming that we are using the "correct" names for all the fish in the Aquarium.

It involved Reichart, an ichthyologist, etc.

I still don't know how the Wimplefish became a Long-finned Butterfly or how the Picasso Trigger became a Picassofish, but great minds made these decisions. :D

The Hawaiians don't discriminate between slightly different types of Triggerfish -- they are all Huma-Humas (Pig-faced).

As with many marine fish, there is a question whether variations in coloring actually constitue a different species.

Morgan,
Shouldn't that be "February 22nd, 2002"?

OOPS! At least I was not accidentially over-inclusive.

What is being done with the Pictures being used for the coral. Would recommend going back to the original photos and creating higher resolution images for use on large screens. When projecting on a 60 inch screen with a DPL projector the fish look great but the coral starts to look really really pixelated. Maybe a highres coral option with the satament it will effect frame rate.

Would still love to see more work being put into the coral and live rock etc.

Ahhh, so those of us who have been here since the beginning aren't required to pay the $5, I guess that slipped by me. :)Hmmm, so are you saying this problem may never be addressed? Or am I misunderstanding your response Morgan?

Southpaw,
As the background image eventually will be replaced with a 3D background, there won't be any more work done on the "old" background. As for when this will be implemented – Well, Nothing's certain except that it will come after the Freshwater Aquarium.

/Tiny Southpaw Too

Every day spent on the flat 2D background now (which was never intended to be permanent or to even be in place this long) means that the 3D background is a day further away.

Is the 3d backgroung being done by an experienced 3d artist using maya or 3d studio to create the high polly count model to create the texture map, lumanance map, reflection map etc.

I guess you are not happy with Jim's work?

The 3D background will be done by the experienced artist James D. Sachs who has done some other work on this screensaver (Just kidding – Jim Sachs has done *everything* on this one, programming as well as the graphics)

/Tiny Want Your DPL

Edit:
Seems like a lot of double-answering right now, eh Morgan?

Jim Sachs has done beautiful work on the screensaver so far. But building models in Maya or 3D studio with trillions of polygons proper reflections lighting luminance takes tremendous experience. Then converting them to maps for use in directx takes even more experience. Now This screen saver isn't doom 3 but it takes the same expertise just less time.

Doom3?
 

1. Q: But building models in Maya or 3D studio with trillions of polygons proper reflections lighting luminance takes tremendous experience.
A: What? The BG will be photo realistic in 3D with a lot less than trillions, billions, or even millions of polygons. Lets consider this from a different point of view.
Imagine that every single pixel were its own polygon (like a texil, http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/teaching/cs4...s/glossary.htm)

Assuming a screen res of 1024x768, and assuming the coral is about 30% of the area, then we would be talking about 260K polys. But the simple FACT is that this will not require a 1:1 ratio. Usually photo-realism can be done using between 10:1 and 30:1 ratio. Or 26K on the high side, and less than 10K on the low side. Then there is the magic factor, which is where a well trained and skillfully and talented person like Sachs, spends day and night for weeks to months on end creating illusions as these number are shoved even further down.

2. Q: Then converting them to maps for use in directx takes even more experience.
A: It does? I think we just use a little program we wrote to do this.

2. Q: Now This screen saver isn't doom 3 but it takes the same expertise just less time.
A: You seem to have this backwards. While the artist that do video games are often very good, they are not even in the same league as what is required for this type of production. The artists at ILM, Disney, or Dreamworks would be a better match.

Cinematic rendering in DirectX 8 and 9 requires that the models be built with millions of polygons and then rendered with High Dynamic Range. These models are used to create bump maps, reflection maps, luminosity maps, light map, 3D transformations, per-pixel lighting and Projective Texturing for hardware rendering. Thes are the things that will let a Pentium 4 render images in real time that look alotbertter than pixars work in "Finding Nemo".

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney...emo/large.html

I guess we'll have to settle for something less than "cinematic rendering" then – or at least your definition of it SP. ;)

This one *will* be possible to run on a system not equipped with a 3.06GHz P4 and a DX9 vid card. Also, the background won't be a 3D "world" – It will be seen from one side (sidescrolling) which would lower the poly count considerably, don't you think?

Really enjoyed that trailer yesterday, btw. "Look, Krill!" :D

/Tiny Polygon Count

You are missing something for instance bump map. http://webreference.com/3d/glossary/bump.html
Lets say to create a 2000 polygon sphere apply a bump map and you could make the sphere look like a dimpled golf ball that would nomally have 200,000 polygons. From the CPU end it is rendering a 2000 polygon sphere the graphics card does the rest of the work.

http://mirror.ati.com/vortal/r350/fl...nal/index.html

http://www.ati.com/vortal/r300/dx9demo/main.html

Yes?

You know, for all 3D experts that keep coming here and telling Jim and Prolific how to do their job, why is Jim the only one doing anything that looks this good?

There are no plans for Maya (why would anyone use this to make something in DirectX that must run 60fps on a GeForce 2 MX?) or 3D Studio Max (excellent animator, horrible modeler) to be used in the creation of the 3D coral.

Now you are just being insulting.

You are talking to 3D artists who have been doing this for 15+ years. I think it is hilarious how everyone keeps coming in and saying that bump mapping technology will solve the world's problems. Well, no, not if your model sucks. Bump mapping is an addition, it is not its own solution. And animating a bump map is more intensive than moving geometry around. You are talking pie-in-the-sky numbers here.

2,000 polygons for a sphere? Jim is using 994 vertices for SEVEN FISH!!!

Pixar films take weeks or months to render on server farms of 200-300 computers. Before Monsters, Inc., NOBODY had done hair that realistically before. It took days to render sequences with Sully in them.


Actually, I have had 3D coral on the brain lately. Daunting is not the word for it. When I look at a small anemone suitable for the False Percula Clown we have in the tank right now, I see ~600-900 vertices at least. And that's just one anemone! How many polygons can we push around here? Jim initially said that the the 3D background would take up "about 5 fish" worth of geometry. In my estimations, we're talking about 30 fish worth of geometry for an undemanding 3D scene.

Hmm...