Here is a QTVR movie (Panoramic view of a picture) named Snowy Mountain. The clouds sky is a newly developed seamless 360 Environment. What`s cool about this approach is that you can not only add Voyager clouds to it, but also that this enables you to add any other elements to the sky, like planets, moons, suns, sunbeams etc.

Another interesting aspect is the RGB Surface file. The snow, instead of taken from Voyager, is provided by the AM file.
The fact that the snow is generated by the AM file rather than directy by Voyager gives you more flexibilty.

1. You can make the snow appear where you like. It does not have to be altitude/slope dependent.
2. You probably noticed that Voyager snow, when used on edgy surfaces, is not smoothening out those areas. This tends to look unnatural.
When creating the snow with AM, all you have to do is make those areas, where the is supposed to be snow, look smooth (which is quite a challenge though).

As for the RGB Surface I made use of the newly added extra output option "Normal", which adds a bump map to the rock texture. The really tricky thing was to get the snow to appear only on shallow slopes AND to have no bump map applied to it, while having the rock texture on steep slopes with bump mapping.
As those techniques/features have great potential you will probably hear and see a lot about them.

See the QTVR movie - Snowy Mountains-

Tags:Voyager, QTVR, Environment 360, Tip, Advanced

Here are some examples of what Bump Map (one of the options for the AM extra outputs) is capable of.

Normal-Test-D
Normal-Test-K
Normal-Test-K3
Normal-Test-K5

Download Normal Test K5 (Voyager bundle file)


Leaving a comment won`t hurt...

Tags:Tip, Bump Map, Voyager, Test

Voyager 1.6 has improved atmospheric models. One good example is the way the sun interacts with the haze. Select "extra bright sun" or "stronger halo,fuzzy sun" from the sun menu.
Set the sun very low and increase the haze level.

Tags:Voyager, Tip

In Artmatic you can add extra outputs. Those outputs, in Voyager, serve to control wetness, ambience, reflectivity and normal (which lets you add bumps).
Let`s see how it works.


First download the files:
AM-Extra-Output


If it`s not done automatically, un-zip.

Launch AM and open the file "AM Extra Output" from the downloaded folder.



The tree is very simple. It has just 2 tiles as separate branches. The tile you see in the left branch uses a component that creates the texture and the surface. That`s why it has 4 outputs. It`s a 2->4 Ridged Noise component.
The right branch has a 1->1 tile with a Ax+B component. It is connected to the Global Input A2, which receives altitude information from Voyager.

We can say that the left branch provides output 1 to 4, while the 2nd branch provides the 5th output (or first extra or sub output).

This output will be fed back to Voyager to control what has been described further above.

Before we switch to Voyager, let`s have a closer look at what is actually output by the right branch.
In systems with several output tiles, it`s always the left tile which provides the main outputs. The sub outputs have no influence on what you see in the preview. To make it visible we need to move it to the left.

Click on the Ax+B tile, then press "m" on the keyboard.


This will place it left and makes it the master output.



The preview should show a gradient from white to grey in the upper part of the preview, while the lower part stays black.


On the picture below you see a horizontal line. It`s placed exactly in the middle and represents Voyager`s altitude 0.


Now the gradient here is a representation of the influence that the sub output will have in Voyager. With increasing brightness the influence increases.

What the sub-output does in VY (Voyager) is determined by Voyager itself. In the Preferences menu of VY you can make the corresponding settings. We will get there in a moment.

First we have to put back the sub output tile to its proper place again, which is on the rightside of the 2->4 Ridged Noise tile. To get this done click on the 2->4 tile,


then press "m" to move the 2->4 Ridged Noise tile to the left and make it the main output again.



You dont have to save the file because we have not actually changed it.


Now launch Voyager and open the Voyager file "Extra Output.am3d". It has already been set up to use the AM file we just discussed.

The preview should look like that:


You can see the surface and color that the main branch outputs ( In our case the 2->4 Ridged Noise component) provide. The 5th output has currently no influence.

Now, in order for the sub output(s) to actually have an influence we need to open the preferences panel. Press apple (command)/ "," or open it via menu.
At the bottom of the panel you can see some setting options for the Extra Outputs.


The AM file that we are using has 1 extra output. This is interpreted by Voyager as Extra Output 1.
As you can see, the Extra Output 1 is mapped to "nothing".

When you click on "nothing", a dropdown menu appears and you can select what the extra output controls.
Select "Wetness level".



Press enter to close the preferences panel.

On the preview you should now see the effect of the extra output 1 controlling wetness.


The wetness increases with increasing altitude, exactly as predicted in AM.


That`s all for now. I hope it was fun.

Tags:Voyager, Tutorial

As you have probably heard there are new versions of Artmatic and AM Voyager available. Those new versions are a great step forward. Thank you, Eric and Edward!

So all the future freebies, tutorials, lessons and Preset Collections will require at least Artmatic 4.6/Voyager 1.6.

More content will be added soon...

The new Artmatica website is still very young and there might be links that do not work.
Also there might be some changes to the site setup.
I forgot to say, the "News" page has been renamed into "Blog" since, in the future ,you will find more than news on this page (In fact it`s a growing number of pages). Things like new tutorials and tips will be added to the blog also.

Currently it might be a good idea to click on home first and then start from there

The free Artmatic and Voyager tutorials and tips will be posted directly as blog entries as they get ready. On the sidebar of the Blog page you can find the 2 categories "Artmatic Know How" and "Voyager Know How". So check out the Blog often.

I found a (non-artmatic) movie on YouTube that looks great in higher quality mode and it`s fun to watch too
Enjoy!

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008)

Tags:YouTube

The Clouds Sets can now be purchased for a lower price.

The new price is USD19.90 instead of 29.90!

See the previews.

Tags:Cloud-Sets

A links page has been added to the site. Check it out!

I did a bit of search on uploading higher quality movies on YouTube. Here is some of the information that I found useful.

You Tube says:

"All you need to do is continue uploading the highest quality video you have available. The quality of the uploaded video combined with individual viewers' bandwidth will determine if the video is displayed at "Higher Quality."

Not satisfied with that answer? Still need specific information? YouTube accepts a wide range of video file formats such as .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG. Here are a few things that may work well for you:

MPEG4 (Divx, Xvid) format
MP3 audio
Video resolution: 480x360 or higher
Frame Rate: 24fps or higher"

Susan made a post with some information when using Sorensen squeeze:

deal Settings For YouTube's New High Quality Option

By JP Shook, Director of Internet Development, Digital Juice Inc.



Now that YouTube have started offering higher quality videos, the old settings for encoding your videos should be tossed out the window. This tip will walk you through the steps required to compress your video for YouTube so it will look great. First, make sure your video is exported to the highest quality possible. Next, open Squeeze and expand the MPEG-4 presets. Click the "HQ" preset and copy the preset by finding copy under the audience tab or clicking the copy icon. This will create a duplicate preset that you can title "YouTubeHQ". Set your video data rate to 4000kbps, encoding method to 2-pass VBR and resolution to 640x480 (4:3) or 640x360 (16:9). During testing I found that by increasing the data rate up to 4000kbps produced a higher end data rate with YouTube's high quality encoded version. Next, set your audio data rate to 256kbps. You can now save the preset, apply it to your video, and click "Squeeze It". Using the higher resolution and data rates will ensure that your videos look great at the current high quality options and be ready for any future increases in quality or resolution offered by YouTube.
_____


Today I experimented myself using QT Pro with the following export settings:

MP4 / h.264 / 640/480 / 4000kps (according to Susan`s post) / 24 frames / multipass-encoding

And here are 3 HQ test uploads

Jane`s reaction (HQ Test)
Cold Play (HQ Test)
3D Ornament (HQ Test)

There is still this comment link underneath to give some feedback...

Tags:YouTube

I just found out how to directly show the high quality version on the movie page. It`s a tremendous increase in quality for some videos.
Most of the artifacts are gone. Text is displaying nicely and the playback is in stereo!
Some artists, as a reaction to my yesterday`s news seemed to have removed their videos from YouTube. Please upload them again in higher quality and let me know.
Also I have removed some videos that despite the higher quality weren`t displaying nicely.

You can find a lot of information on YouTube on how to obtain a high qualityYouTube video. Just do a video tutorial search.

I suggest that you revisit the video page and have a look at the increased quality.

A new page has been added with YouTube movies made by various Artmatic artists.
Simply click on the name and the video should show up.
When doing the page I realised that with very few exceptions the quality of the movies is far from excellent (I am not talking of the artistic quality of course).
You have certainly heard that movies can be uploaded to YouTube in a higher quality now. So in case that you make a new upload please let me know so I can readjust the link.
The choice of the movies on the page has been rather random and I might remove some after a certain time and replace them with other movies, The purpose is to have a selection of high quality movies.
If there is a movie that you would like to have on this page please send me a message with the YouTube link. But I would appreciate if they were in high quality since this has become possible now with the new YouTube options.
I have checked the new page but there might still be some errors somewhere. If so please let me know.

Underneath of each news entry there`s a comment link. Click on it and a small window opens where you can add a comment.
I would like to invite you all to make use of it.

I am happy to announce that the Artmatica website has been completely redesigned
I wanted to keep the design as simple as possible. As you will see it`s a lot easier to navigate through the pages,
For now there is no new image/movie/freebies /tips content added but this might change rapidly. (There`s a lot underway!)

I hope you will explore the newly designed pages anyway.

The mayor changes are:

1. Slick dropdown menus on most pages so you can quickly go to anywhere on the site
2. I have added this newsblog to keep you up-to-date with the latest. You can also your own comments.
3. Maintaining the site will be much easier now, which means that there will be more updates.
4. The new architecture will make it possible to embed YouTube and other external content to the site in an elegant way.
5. For the galleries I am using "shadowbox", which looks really pretty.

Cheers,

Dick