Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Actually, the way it's set up is exactly how it's supposed to look (not that the rest of the material is correct, but the texture is fine). Size is close enough, too. See the original image that this is based on:
http://www.well.com/~zoran/movingsale/chess_full.jpg

Also, I think most of the problems are because of mental ray (and because I don't really want to bother with making it look good in mental ray). I'll be doing a vray version as soon as I find time to convert all of the materials (most likely today).

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Mental ray and V-ray aren't all that different. If you know how to use them you can get the same result. You just have to render in layers and use a third party to tweak the results.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

I'd actually have to disagree with you here. No matter how much Mental Ray is tweaked, it never receives that V-Ray finish, because of the way V-Ray handles lighting and shadowing differently.

Although you can render elements, composite, and tweak them, that's more or less lying and kidding yourself :P Though the result can look similar.

But Mental Ray CAN look really good, it's just a different look. It all depends on the skill of lighting, shadowing, and painting (textures and shaders that is).

Here are a 2 things I've done on my free time, as small art projects quickly, probably posted before, but some are new. Guess which one is Mental Ray, and guess which one is V-Ray.


High Res: http://i29.tinypic.com/2i9nm02.jpg



I was walking around the Autodesk Booth in the pits at Atlanta for a long time. (wearing a camera bag and a team 75 sweatshirt haha) It was interesting to see so many people doing 3d work.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Heas at the aouto desk booth it was pretty cool there. It was the first time i met any one who knew how to use 3ds max, It was really awesome there. Buddy you still having problems with those particles? :)

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

No, I got particles down now, thanks to Loui. If you were at Atlanta and never talked to him at the autodesk booth I suggest you kick yourself in the rump right now. He knows EVERYTHING about 3ds max and cleared up the questions I had.

Now if you used the same scene and re-textured it, it would be a fair guess. I can't compare them because one is organics and the other is architectural.

Urgh, everyone is saying V-ray is great, I see nice stuff with V-ray. But I messed with it a little bit, I got 20 min frame renders. I never bothered with it to much. But I guess I will take a stab at it. Anybody know of some really good website that will bring you up from the basics? I don't want to sit and watch a video tutorial.

I've made this with mental ray. Yes its too ultra shiny and new and there is this odd reflective thing going on with the the glass in the door. I haven't finalized the materials on it yet. That will come later.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Render it together with the same object but no materials applied (and a nice photometric or soft light) with FG and GI, I'd love to see some of the modeling on that (as it looks as though you modeled some of the details). For metal objects I tend to paint a diffuse map and a specular map in photoshop to realistically spread the reflections and detail. (Though you said you had no materials so it makes sense).

V-Ray can take a long time, but if adjusted it's basically the same rendering speed as Mental Ray if set at the same quality level. You have to play around and learn on how to balance the light bouncing and illumination with the different settings, as it's a completely different system.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Decided to put a little cameo in the background of the first scene in my animation I'm making.
That would take quite a while to render. I'm making an animation out of this dryer so I have to keep some of the render times low.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

I was there! I was the guy with the blonde hair i was talking to you. but i was just wondering if you figured out the dripping cloth particle system.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

ooooo..... thats going to take me some time. But never fear I have and Idea!!!


Here is another cameo that is going in my animation i'm doing. Look for it on a bill board in the background.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Well I figure I should keep this thread alive. here is a frame of my current animation "Appliance night out" still some clean up to do.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Been playing with vray a bit more:

[click for 1280x800 full-res image]

Ring design shamelessly stolen from this image by Abdu Rasheed. All done from scratch (other than chrome material, pulled from internet resource for that). This is straight from Max/Vray, with no postwork at all. For now, I'm trying to learn to learn by imitating and/or improving on other work, or taking ideas/designs from other work and applying the somewhat originally. With this one, as the modeling was simple (just a high-poly tube with a multi/sub object material on it), it was much more a work on lighting, with a little bit of camera work to play with in the future (DOF, maybe focused in the front).

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

oh you kids... you and your V-ray and GI and caustics. This is another shot of my animation all rendered without v-ray or any other fancy renderers. Just simple mental ray and *gasp!* SCANLINE!. I'm also using standard lights. Layer rendering, much faster than everything and you have more control. I have to clean up the reflections in the dryer. I'm thinking about adding a glow to them and bluring them to give it a nice metal glowy feel. Also I have to change the tint to more red. But since this is a rough render of the scene I'm not to worried.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

As much as I hear some disdain for GI etc., the lights in the background look like they could do some work. Also, is the washing machine supposed to be floating/flying/bouncing?

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

There in mid-bounce. This is still a rough render, I tried to use final gather and GI but it jacked up my rendering time to ungodly amounts. I left for 30 mins and came back and it was still calculating. I decided that all that time I could have spent faking GI but setting up some extra lights to mimic light bouncing. That is the appeal of layer rendering. For example, if I look back at a completed scene and think "hmmmm I think there should be a little bit more light bouncing off that wall and hitting that plant." All I have to do is render a single light and use it as a mask for the color/blending layer. If I was using GI I would have to wait for it to calculate again. Mostly tweak and wait , tweak and wait.

I will say that GI and Final gather is good for single metallic object render like the one you have of that metal-glass dish. (good job by the way) But for complex scenes I personally vote for complete control and saving time in render over complete realism.

Could I spend forever and make the render look picture perfect? Yes I could, But you also have to keep in mind that I have 32 other camera shots to make for this animation. What I'm creating are the "Must haves" first and then if I have time I will create the "Want to haves" I would like some bugs to be flying around the lights and the grass and bushes blowing in the wind. But that is not necessary for a good shot. So GI, Final gather, and Caustics are tossed due to their lengthy render times.

Re: Off-season Projects in 3D Animation
 

Very true. I should probably brush up on my layer rendering =P.