Category: Studio Computer Guides

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Oce Colorwave 700 Plotter

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We have a new large format / large volume plotter: an Oce Colorwave 700

colorwave700

This machine replaces the HP DesignJet T7100 Plotter.  It is a much faster and higher quality plotter and it allows for printing on various media types.  PRICES HAVE NOT CHANGED

Please note we will be testing and trying out different media types initially – please feel free to give feedback and suggestions on which media you like or would like to see.

To start off with we shall be offering the following media:

Paper Type Queue Name  A2/A1/A0   Roll
Standard
Top Color Paper 120gsm
.
 		 STANDARD-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q1 £1 / £2 / £4 R1 + 2
Premium
Top Color Paper 200 gsm
.		 PREMIUM-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q3 £2 / £4 / £8 R3
Tracing
Inkjet Tracing Paper 90gsm
.		 PTYPE4-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q4 £1 / £2 / £4 R4
Wallpaper
Wallpaper Non-woven 120gsm
.		 PTYPE5-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q5 £2 / £4 / £8 R5
Photo Paper
Instant Dry Photo Paper – Satin
.		 PTYPE6-PLOT-DST-CW700-Q6 £2 / £4 / £8 R6

You can plot from the Macs – but currently only to the Standard and Premium queues.

We shall leave samples of media types pinned up around the S11 Print area for you to have a look at.

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Rendering Good Practice

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Rendering, like printing, is one of those tasks that always takes far longer than you expect.  While it is important to have good quality, sharp final images simply dragging all the sliders up to maximum quality is likely to have little visible difference but will significantly increase the time taken – and also the likelihood of the machine crashing altogether.

Think about what you are rendering – turn off layers / objects that you won’t see; there’s no point having complex hinges included in a distant perspective for example.  Similarly, thousands of trees with dense branches,etc are going to kill a render as each twig needs shadow calculations etc. Consider adding people / foliage / rain / etc in Photoshop

For render sizes; the following is a list of image resolutions that will fill A3/A2/A1 sizes:

150 DPI (Sensible)

A3 – 2480 x 1753

A2 – 3507 x 2480

A1 – 4966 x 3507

200 DPI (Ambitious)

A3 – 3307 x 2338

A2 – 4677 x 3307

A1 – 6622 x 4677

300 DPI (At your own risk)

A3 – 4960 x 3507

A2 – 7015 x 4960

A1 – 9933 x 7015

 

Quick Render Speedup / Memory troubleshoot tips

  1. Reduce resolution of final image
  2. Lower the quality of the final render; there are some presets that can be loaded from the top of the Vray Options window:
    General – Preview / Very Low / Low / Medium etc
    (Start low and work up if the image quality is not adequate)
  3. Override materials (see below): Global Switches 

Troubleshooting Rendering / Memory Crashes

Often you can solve problems with render times and crashing jobs by being less pushy with your final images sizes.  Try at least rendering a lower resolution, and if you must then work your way higher.

Vray Settings : Rhino / Vray

The following are recommendations from Chaos; the developers of Vray, for reducing excessive memory usage in Vray for Rhino and Sketchup

  • Geometry – scenes with lots of objects and/or triangle counts require more memory to render. There are several ways to reduce this amount:
    • Adjust the raycaster params in the System rollout (reduce Max. levels , increase Min. leaf size , increase Face/level coefficient , or adjust the Dynamic memory limit.
  • Image buffer – large output resolutions require a significant amount of RAM to store the final image. There are several ways to reduce this amount:
    • Use the Render to V-Ray raw image file option and then use the V-Ray raw image file viewer to convert the resulting file to a different format (see below)
    • Render the image in several different sections and stitch the pieces in Photoshop
  • Image samplers (AA) – the image sampling algorithms of V-Ray require some amount of RAM to hold all the data for the sampled image. This amount can be quite large, depending on the chosen bucket size and sampling rate. To reduce that amount:
    • Reduce the bucket size.
    • Switch to a different image sampler – for example, the Adaptive DMC sampler uses less RAM than the Adaptive subdivision sampler.
  • Global illumination caches – irradiance maps, photon maps and light maps all require additional memory to store them. Each of these has different methods for controlling its memory usage: Rhino scene – Rhino itself stores a lot of information about the scene. V-Ray has no control over that memory, but you can adjust the quality of render meshes to reduce it.
    • For the irradiance map – the memory depends on the number of samples in the map; you can reduce this number by using lower Min/Max rate , and more loose threshold values (higher Colour threshold , higher Normal threshold , lower Distance threshold ).
    • For the photon map – the memory depends on the number of photons stored. You can reduce this number by reducing the Diffuse subdivs for the lights, or by increasing the Max. density .
    • For the light map – increase the Sample size .

Lose the Materials

Lots of materials can add to the complexity and RAM requirements – even if you haven’t explicitly used any materials you might find some imported models might have had them attached.  You can override any materials with a plain colour quite easily in the VRay options window.

  • In the Vray options dialogue box, expand the GLOBAL SWITCHES section
    vrayoverridematerials
  • Tick Override materials
  • Click Override colour and select a colour to use for everything (white or light grey is good)
  • this will eliminate any material related errors / overheads that the file may have had.
  • NOTE: if there is a material that you still really need then you can make an exception for it by going to the Material Editor and for that material Options turn off “Can be Overridden”

 

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Don’t render to Image Buffer – render straight to a VRimg file

This is a big RAM saver; it means you are rendering directly to a file on your hard drive rather than into RAM. The advantage of this method is that the rendered chunks will be streamed to a file (in vrimg file format) and will then released from memory once saved so preventing out of memory errors common to large resolution renders.  If you have to render large resolution images then this technique is very useful.

 

To make use of this option  IN VRAY FOR RHINO AND SKETCHUP

  • In the Vray options dialogue box, expand the OUTPUT sectionvrimg
  • Below Render Output
    • Tick Save Output
    • Save your file – AS VRay-Raw Image File (VRIMG extension)
    • Tick Render to VRImage
    • Set VFB Mode as No Memory
  • Render your model – you’ll see a big red cross in the render window rather than the real image (i.e it isn’t using any memory trying to display the model)
  • When the render is finished then it needs to be converted from Vrimg format to OpenEXR format :  There is a tool for doing this in
     

    •  Start > All Programs > ChaosGroup > V-Ray Advanced for 3ds Max > Tools > VRImg to OpenEXR Converter.
      vrimg-convert
    • Select your VRimg file via the INPUT FILE button > Convert > select a destination for the EXR file
  • Open this EXR file in Photoshop
  • It is quite likely that the file appears lighter than expected – this is due to differences in gamma settings of Vray.  This can be easily altered in Photoshop:
    • Image > Adjustments > Exposure and set Gamma corrections to 0.4545

[divider]To make use of this technique IN 3D STUDIO 

  • Disable all Frame Buffers (Max and V-Ray)
  • browse to the V-Ray:: Frame Buffer rollout in the Render Scene dialog
  • enable Render to V-Ray raw image format and select a folder and filename where to save the output to.
  • When render is done converted the file from vrimg format to OpenEXR format :  There is a tool for doing this in
    •  Start > All Programs > ChaosGroup > V-Ray Advanced for 3ds Max > Tools > VRImg to OpenEXR Converter.
  • Open this EXR file in Photoshop

 

 

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Render Farm Provision

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We have a BOXX Technologies Render Pro machine – essentially a simple, mini render farm in a box.

RenderPRO-Final

This machine is a 10 core Intel Dual Xeon E5-2660v2 2.2GHz processor and 32GB Ram.  It does nothing else but process render jobs from 3DS Max / Vray / Blender.  

It is part of the Vray for Sketchup / Rhino distributed render system; see

But it may also be reserved for single high processing tasks such as Mandelbrot, Blender CPU render, etc.

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Epson 4900

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Within the photography studio we now have an Epson 4900 for you to use. This wonderful machine sadly led a sheltered life for a while, but with a little tlc she’s back in business and ready to print*

ES_Pro_4900_Front_w.paper_

Features:

  • Sheet based media from A4 up to A2+
  • Paper thickness’ from 0.08 mm – 1.5 mm
  • 12 inks that can reproduce 98% on the Pantone colour range
  • Very good registration for double sided printing

The machine is hooked up to an iMac that has Adobe CC installed and has a colour calibrated screen to help you reproduce your artwork more accurately. To book time on the printer, simply email Robbie on mr22@gre.ac.uk

There will eventually be a small fee to cover the cost of the inks, although this is not in effect at this time.

Top tips!

Whilst the printer will print on any paper type, ink will tend to bleed on non treated paper. Please make sure your paper is inkjet compatible for the best results.

If you which to print double sided and without ink bleed, please ensure your paper is treated on both sides, as 90% of inkjet paper is only treated on one side.

Borderless printing is only achievable on A4 & A3 paper sizes and quality is not guaranteed 3mm from the edge

It is best to use paper larger than you need for double sided printing so that you can print crop/trim marks

Double sided printing is not possible direct from inDesign, it is best to print from a PDF or a Jpeg/PSD file

 

*As mentioned above, a bit a work has has gone into bringing this machine back to life. She is still not printing perfectly with some images having faint lines running through them due to the Light Grey printhead not yet printing up to spec. This will dissipate with use however as these types of machines need to be used regularly to keep in tip top shape. Due to this, we will not be charging for the printers use until this minor fault has corrected itself, all we ask is that you supply your own paper.

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Wireless Printing from MAC / PC Laptop to MFD Printer

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You can print to the MFD printers found in the print area (and in the library) from your own laptop (Mac or PC) as long as you are on the University GreenNET or Eduroam wifi network

This machine prints A3 / A4 mono or colour.

1. To print wirelessly you need to access the GreenPrint page at https://webprint.gre.ac.uk

2. Log in with normal username and password

greenprint-1

3. Upload the document that you want to print by clicking the ‘Choose File’ button and navigating to it, then click ‘Next’ – files accepted are:

  • PDF
  • MS Office (Word / Excel / Powerpoint)
  • Image files in the following format – JPG / GIF / PNG / TIF / BMP

greenprint-2

4. The document will process for a few seconds and then show its status as ‘Awaiting release’

greenprint-3

5. Select the printer for use. Here, it will be Greenwich – GM-MFD

greenprint-4

6. To pick up the print you need to swipe your card on one of the printers just like you would for a regular print

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Waypoints: OBJ to VR Headset Translator

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“Waypoints” is our Virtual Reality (VR) conversion tool to enable users to view their 3d models in real time with a VR headset.

The software will translate files from standard 3D packages such as 3D studio, Blender, Rhino etc into a format that can be viewed on a VR Headset – or rather a mobile phone in a suitable headset holder like Google Cardboard.  The converted file is loaded into the browser window of a mobile phone and fitted inside the headset where it will respond to head movement to allow the user to look around their design.  Additionally “waypoints” are generated around the model to let users navigate around the VR space;  simply “stare” at one of these points to select it, then that point is moved towards.

‘Waypoints has been developed for the department by Joe Green, using three.js and NW.js.’

vr-headset

Instructions

Waypoints Beta r1 Documentation

This is beta software and may contain bugs.

You will need:

  • A copy of Waypoints.
  • A Windows PC and a mobile device connected to the same wifi network.
  • A mobile browser with WebGL support (most modern smartphones and tablets will have this)
  • A VR viewer for your mobile device, such as Google Cardboard.
  • Mongoose Binary Free Edition (‘the easiest to use web server on the planet’). Download it from https://www.cesanta.com/mongoose.

Getting Started (Windows 7)

Copy the Mongoose Free executable file to a newly created folder in an accessible location such as the Desktop.

Open Waypoints. It will start up with a basic demo scene already loaded. Click ‘Export HTML’ (at the bottom of the panel on the right). Save the file in your Mongoose folder.

Minimise Waypoints for the moment and browse to your Mongoose folder (it should now contain a copy of Mongoose Free and a file called index.html). Double click the Mongoose icon and index.html will open on your computer. Ignore that, and check the system tray for a yellow Mongoose icon. Click the icon, and look for a menu entry that begins ‘Go to my address:’. Carefully type the given address into the browser ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICE and the demo VR scene should load. Attach your VR viewer to your device and you should be good to go (you may need to turn around to find the scene). Keep the floating crosshair aligned with one of the cyan spheres for one second (until it fades out) and your virtual viewpoint should animate to that location.

So long as Mongoose is running, all you need to do to update the scene on your device is make changes in Waypoints, overwrite index.html, then refresh the browser on your device. Once set up, it should be quick and easy to experiment using this method. To stop Mongoose, just click its icon in the system tray and choose ‘Exit’.

Note: University machines will require administrator permission to run Mongoose properly as it requires firewall changes; you will need to get one of the technical staff to open a port for you.  Alternatively use your own laptop which you will (presumably) have administrator access to.

 

Importing Models and Textures

Drag and drop a 3D model (.obj format) or a texture (.jpg or .png) onto the window to replace the currently loaded model or texture. To import multiple objects, you will need to export them from your 3D modelling software as a single .obj file. Waypoints does not currently import normals or provide realtime lighting, so your model must be UV unwrapped and textured. Lighting and materials can be ‘baked’ into a single texture as per the demo scene. The pixel dimensions of your texture should ideally be powers of two (256, 512, 1024 etc) and your texture should not exceed 2048 x 2048 pixels in size. 1024 x 1024 is the recommended maximum, and should allow for a reasonable amount of detail.

Instructions on how to generate UV mapped textures varies between 3D applications; see this link for instructions on Baking Materials in with Blender

 

Top Viewport

The top viewport gives an overview of your scene.

  • Left mouse button – rotate view
  • Middle mouse button (or mouse wheel) – dolly in/out
  • Right mouse button – track left/right, pedestal up/down

 

Left click a waypoint to select it, and drag the transform gizmo to move it around.

  • Red arrow – x adjustment
  • Green arrow – y adjustment
  • Blue arrow – z adjustment

 

  • Yellow plane – xy adjustment
  • Cyan plane – yz adjustment
  • Magenta plane – xz adjustment

 

Note that the coordinate system used (which is dictated by WebGL) may differ from your 3D modelling software.

The amber coloured pyramid extending from the currently selected waypoint represents the extents of the view from that location. This view is always displayed in the bottom viewport.

 

Bottom Viewport

The bottom viewport shows the view from the selected waypoint. Drag the view to look around and find out what will be ultimately be visible by turning your head in the exported VR scene.

 

Panel on Right

 

Drag values up or down to modify them, or click to select then edit using the keyboard.

 

  • World > Hue / Saturation / Brightness – Set the background colour of the scene.
  • Waypoints > Hue / Saturation / Brightness – Set the colour of the spherical markers
  • Waypoints > Sphere Diameter – Set the diameter of the spherical markers. If your waypoints are spaced a long way apart, or you have chosen a wide angle focal length setting, you may need to increase this to enable the viewer to easily get a ‘lock’ on distant waypoints using the floating crosshair.

 

Selected Waypoint > X / Y / Z – Another way of positioning the selected waypoint.

 

Camera > Pan / Tilt – Rotate the camera. These settings will have no effect on the exported scene, as the camera orientation will be controlled by device orientation.

 

Camera > Focal Length – The focal length of the camera – in other words, ‘zoom’. Lower values = wide angle lens / wide field of view / exaggerated perspective. Higher values = telephoto lens / narrow field of view / flattened perspective.

 

Stereo > Separation – The distance between the two virtual cameras used to create the stereoscopic effect. Increasing this will increase the impression of depth in the exported scene, but at some point it will become difficult or impossible for your brain to fuse the left / right images.

 

Stereo > Projection Plane Distance – Objects closer than this will appear to pop out of the screen toward you, while objects further away will appear to be ‘behind’ the screen.

 

Not all combinations of Focal Length, Camera Separation, and Projection Plane Distance will work, and small changes can quickly destroy the 3D effect or make for an unpleasant viewing experience. Aim for viewing comfort rather than ‘extreme 3D’. Further technical info on these parameters can be found here:

http://paulbourke.net/stereographics/stereorender/

 

Export > Export HTML – Export your edited scene for viewing using Google Cardboard or similar (see ‘Getting Started’ above).

 

 

 

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ArcGIS – Software for Students

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ArcGIS 10.3.1 for Desktop is now available to students.  Full hardware / software requirements are here but broadly you need a PC running 64 bit Windows 7, 8 or 10.  Apple OSX is not natively supported though virtualised and BootCamp versions of Windows have been seen to work.

There is a form that must be filled in before you can have access to the ArcGIS install DVD.  Once you have filled in this form then it should be given to your ArcGIS tutor

ArcGIS Student Copy Application Form

The software can then be obtained in the form of an ISO file which you must burn to DVD or install via a virtual CD drive (advanced)

How to burn an ISO from Windows 7

Advanced users may want to install without burning a DVD by utilising “virtual drive” with Magic Iso

Once you have your DVD (or virtual DVD) you can use this PDF file to carry out the installation.  Note: The procedure here is written for ArcGIS 10.1 – it may differ from 10.3 cosmetically but the procedure is the same.

ArcGIS-Desktop-10-Installation-2013-2014

 

 

 

 

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Top Ten Printing / Plotting Issues

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Here are some common issues and solutions that can occur in the computing areas:

Issue: Print is sent but but the PCounter Popup window telling you the print cost *DOES NOT* appear

Solution: Check your G Drive – if there is no space free there then delete some files (click start – my computer – look at “G” drive).  Look in your documents folder, desktop etc. Delete or move files so that G drive does not show red.

g-drive

Start – Computer
If your G Drive shows up in red then you are too low on space

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Issue: Nothing is printing, but the PCounter Popup window telling you the print cost *DOES* appear
Solution: CHECK BALANCE has credit (you can check by trying to print an a4 and watch what the popup says; then cancel the print).

Note: if your print is going to cost more than what is in your account then it will NOT print your file.  If you then top up your account you will have to send it again.

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Issue: The correct printer / plotter does not appear in the drop down list:

Solution: Printers are meant to be setup on login; if this doesn’t happen you can force them in using this method:
– Press the Windows Start button
– In the search programs and files text area type \\GM-PS-N

gm-ps-n

– This brings up a window with a list of lots of print queues – in the top right hand search windows type DST
– This shows only the printers in the print area; double click the one you want to print to

printer-list
– The printer queue is installed and will now be available from the print choose drop down menu
– NOTE: to add the A3/A4 colour / mono MFD printer type in MFD into the printer search windows instead of DST and choose the printer GM-MFD-STU-COLOUR

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Issue: Printing files from Windows Photo Viewer but image prints out small in the corner
Solution: always untick the Fit Picture to Frame click box

dont-fit

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Issue: PDF not plotting at all / plotting with chunks of graphics missing but taking money
Solution: Complex or large PDF files can be cause problems for printing; e.g. if they have many layers in them.  Tricks to get around problem PDFs include:

– In Adobe Acrobat from the print dialogue select Advanced then Print as Image

print-as-image

– In extreme cases you can drag the PDF file into Photoshop.  This will rasterise it to make it a flat image (if you keep the resolution at 300dpi there will be no loss of quality or sharpness).

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Issue: Sheet feed plotter – someone’s file is ready to print but they are not there to print it and someone else is waiting.

Solution: if someone has a job ready to go but they have not come to feed the paper then please wait at least 10 minutes for them to come back. Then either:

a) Be kind and feed a sheet of paper for them

b) Be unkind and ask one of the support staff to cancel that job

 

 

 

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Baking in Lighting and Materials for use with VR Headset

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For 3d models to retain their texture mapping and lighting when translating into VR compatible files you need to “bake” these textures into your model first.  Otherwise the model will just show as a flat solid white colour.

The process for this varies according to the 3d software –

 This is the process for Blender (tested in version 2.76)

blender

Create your model, add materials and set up lighting as required.

– Note: Stick to ‘Diffuse BSDF’ and ‘Emission’ surface types when creating materials.

Combine multiple meshes by selecting them and pressing Ctrl + J (not crucial but seems to simplify things). Then:

  1. Unwrap the mesh (3D View)
    Select the mesh, press space, start typing ‘Smart UV Project’. Choose it from the list when it appears and click OK
  2. Create an image to bake to (UV/Image Editor window)
    Click the ‘New’ button to create an image. Name the image (eg ‘baked’), leave the width and height at 1024 px, uncheck ‘Alpha’ and click OK.
  3. Select a material (Properties window > Material settings)
    Select a material from the list at the top.
  4. Set image to bake to (Node Editor window)
    Click Add > Texture > Image Texture then, in the orange-highlighted ‘Image Texture’ panel that appears, click the small image icon and select the image that you created in step 2 (‘baked’).
  5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 for every material used by your mesh.
  6. Bake materials and lighting (Properties window > Render settings)
    Scroll down to the ‘Bake’ settings, uncheck ‘Clear’ and click the ‘Bake’ button. Noise can be reduced by increasing the number of render samples under ‘Sampling’ in the render settings.
  7. Save the baked image (UV/Image Editor window)
    Click Image > Save As Image.

 

 

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Laser Cutting: Preparing the File

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File format required is Adobe Illustrator (any version)

You can import many common file formats into Illustrator for preparation; e.g. AutoCAD DWG, DXF, Adobe PDF

Illustrator objects are made up of FILLS – the inside of the shape – and STROKES – the outline. Correct preparation of the Illustrator is all about the stroke colour and thickness:

lasercutting-strokefill

Fills are only relevant to laser cutting if you want to engrave solid areas, for straightforward line cutting and etching none of your objects should have fills; if necessary set the Fill property as “none”

lasercutting--fill

The Stroke sets the colour and thickness of the graphic and this is what directs the laser cutter to etch or cut – the stroke thickness needs to be 0.1pts

lasercutting-strokethickness

Colour of the stroke is important too – and it has to be a particular type of colour: RGB. It is best if you set you Illustrator document to RGB color space with:

File -> Document Colour Mode -> RGB

Then open up the colour window

Windows -> Colour

The look varies between different versions of Illustrator but the function is the same.

lasercutting-colourguide

Make sure the swatch is set to RGB by clicking and selecting from the little down arrow in the top right hand corner (circled).

Now when you select a graphic in the drawing its colour value is shown – and can be changed – from this window

The colours you are most likely to be using here are Red – for cutting, and Blue – for etching. Black works too but that is for a much slower raster etch where it will draw one dot at a time.

Select your graphic and set it at RGB Blue or Red by setting the RGB values in the Colour Window at

Red
R: 255 / G: 0 / B:0

Blue
R: 0 / G:0 / B:255

lasercutting-checkcolour

This star is now proper RGB red, at 0.1 stroke thickness. If this was sent to the laser cutter it would cut out a shape of a star in the materi- al. Had it been drawn in RGB blue it would etch a drawn shape of the star into the material.

You can do a select multiple objects – or even all of them – and set their colour correctly all in one go. Keep an eye on the Fill property while you do this and make sure it really is None and not just white.

The example above is a very simple one; but problems are likely to arise with more complex shapes and drawings that come in from oth- er sources. Typical issues are:

Multiple Lines

This is when there are two or more lines on top of each other. It often occurs when drawings are brought in from a big AutoCAD file. What it would mean is the laser going over those lines again and again cre- ating inconsistent width lines (and taking longer to complete).

If it is just two lines on top of each other you could probably get away with printing it anyway, if there are more then you really should de- lete the duplicates. Unfortunately this can be a tedious job; a couple of things that might help you are

  • The AutoCAD 2013 has a tool called “Overkill” that will detect and delete duplicate objects in a selection set. Just type “overkill” then follow the prompts.
  • In Illustrator you could window select an instance of multiple lines, then shift select, to deselect the top one, then hit delete to delete all but that one.

Nested Groups

An Illustrator file that appears to be non-filled lines may still have fills and wrong line-weights hidden inside groups. This is quite common in stock illustrations grabbed off the internet. You may have to ex- plode groups to investigate this.

Errors like this will show up when you bring your file into the laser control software –

If you have lines to be cut in red, or etched in blue and they preview in the laser software as black then they won’t laser in the proper way.
The onus is on you to go back and investigate!