Learning 3D, Questions Options

[Sir-Kill]

ah, well 3ds only works on M$ iirc, however I guess it can run on linux wine

[HERD]

 H1.png ( 962.67k ) Number of downloads: 18


Texturing is getting better
Size turned out to be too small - What to use for uniformal units for BG buildings, still don't know.

[Sir-Kill]

comming along real nice

texture or model size? I use the door height at about 55-60 pixels. I render, zoom, and/or change the render size.

however if you make the model out of proportion to the rest of your models you can use scale to change its size. either by x, y, or z or any combo or all 3

for the texture you might want to just change (I assume you used uvw box modifier) the sizes from say 10,10,10 (or whatever you used) to 8,8,8 then re-render. this will make the stone (texture) smaller.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Oct 3 2008, 09:36 PM

[HERD]

 H1.png ( 200.21k ) Number of downloads: 13


Will try.
Q: When using Stucco, do I need a bump map, or just to change settings, so it would look like a wall surface, not paint blots?

[Sir-Kill]

need a bump? no but they look better if so, Ill explain latter
stucco's default setting is black and white it would look much better with closer shades of gray to give it a subtle look.

try this:
take your stone texture (or any other) you had earlier and load it into the stucco map slots (both)

once both slots are opened click on one map
under the coordinates and bitmap parameters you will find output click on output to expand it.

there are a lot of controls here but just change the output to .8 to .9 this should darken this map slightly.
render to see a difference.

now click 'go to parent 2 times and expand the maps section if it is not already.
copy the diffuse color by clicking on the map and dragging it to the bump channel (or right click copy and paste in bump slot) and use 'copy' not instance or swap.
now open up the bump map stucco and un check the 2 map boxes (or right click ->clear)
render
woah that is probably too bumpy and bumped the wrong direction.
first change the color 1 with color 2 to fix the wrong bump direction. click drag and this time use swap
then you can change the black and white to shades of gray or click go to parent and change the bump amount to something more subtle from default 30 to 13?

one more thing you can do but it can turn you rendered object plastic looking quickly is specular and glossiness change the spec. to 10 and keep gloss at 10. this will give it a nice sheen w/o going over the top.

now this can be used technique can be used on many of those procedural textures from cellular to dent to smoke or my personal favorite noise.

some times Ill use just a solid color (very thinly mind you because it can look fake real fast) like green for moss growth.

this will do very nicely for braking up repetitive texturing

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Oct 4 2008, 01:32 PM

[Sir-Kill]

addendum:

here is 2 sets of noise and they get progressively more detailed just to demonstrate that you can do this.
the left column has one more step than the right (sorry backwards)

just using a noise map in first row
changing the coordinates in second row
third row adding more procedural textures but keeping the general theme of stacking procedural textures but you can use a bit map anywhere in this process.

edit: messed up on the 3ds file the last map I did not copy the bump map to the last row left block pattern.
also note in the tiles map I made the grout gap bump a 1 instead of the diffuse being at .5 to kind of round over the rocks

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Oct 4 2008, 02:53 PM

[HERD]

I guess I took too complicated stone texture to be able to see the results.
How detailed the main stone texture should be?

 Stone.png ( 555.54k ) Number of downloads: 14


Everything else is getting better!
Should rendered pictures be this dark (or did I change camera settings accidentally) ?

 H2S30.png ( 941.22k ) Number of downloads: 16

[Sir-Kill]

no it was probably my fault, there is a lot of variables and it is tough to cover them all. either the noise needed to be more pronounced or something, again just play around with the controls nothing I say is in stone (pardon the pun).

as detailed as you want/need but you are looking down about 100 ft or so so you will not be seeing tiny insects.

it is looking great! tho a bump map or more bump if you are using one already.
what I like to do sometimes is to make a gray scale map of the texture I am using then increase the contrast a bit, and then use that as the bump. or nvidia's normal map plugin then I can also use a regular bump as well, again I love to get too complicated.

are you using 2 ies suns, if so turn the one casting shadows down a bit and the one that is not up a bit.
it does not look too off to me but there is always room for tweaking.

on hip roofs bg created some lines on all their angles to make texturing easier.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Oct 5 2008, 10:56 PM

[HERD]

Stone started to work, kinda.
Tried to ruin the tower, - major disaster.

 F1.png ( 1.04mb ) Number of downloads: 15

[Valiant]

Yep, HERD, that´s a good one for the start. About the lights - I´m usually using 3 IESun light system for my scenes. Main 2 light are emitting from the point of scene view, or camera view, one of them is generating shadows. And the third one is from behind to remove such black backgrounds you have in your render. The last light is set to very low values...

[HERD]

Thanks for the advice, can't use it yet, - don't know much about lighting, using SK's basic setup for now.
Q: Does it make sense to keep all the details for buildings in separate files and just merge them when needed?

Castle! (SK, chamfering all the way, where needed and where not )

 FLast.png ( 1.71mb ) Number of downloads: 13

[HERD]

Somebody asked for ref pictures, here are some:

 REF.png ( 1.79mb ) Number of downloads: 11

[Sir-Kill]

well with everything 3d there is more than one way. but as of lately I have been enjoying using the merge.

where needed or not is good for the future

[HERD]

SK, when you have time, could you explain how to do chipped walls or ruins...
In the tutorial there is very little info.

[Sir-Kill]

why dont you paste a pic showing where you want the damage and maybe the 3ds file in zipped form or load it to ftp.

[HERD]

I want a hole in the wall and a chipped corner (and a million bucks)

 AreaT.png ( 1.1mb ) Number of downloads: 17


Link to max file

http://www.blackwyrmlair.net/~herd/Flast.max

[Sir-Kill]

does the hole go all the way through or is it just a huge bashed portion?

[HERD]

huge bashed portion

DL wanted his walls ruined, that is why I want to learn it asap

[Sir-Kill]

it looked mostly like a good solid build but I added some geometry one of the towers for the following operation works better with quad sided.

All you have to do is go to the create panel
change from Standard Primitives to Compound Objects

Select the tower and pick Boolean

under the parameters make sure it is set to Subtraction A-B
Click the 'Pick Operands B' button
then select the Chunk01 object

this should remove the part you wanted. you can click undo and make the shape closer to what you wanted. then try again. please note where the center of Chunk01 from the top VP and notice that I left the center slightly outside of center to save on unneeded polys.

once that is looking good you can move on to the Blast01 object. BTY I left the modifiers on this object so you can change or delete them note the quad sphere .

you might want to get in to the good habit of good/unique naming of you objects, this will save you many headaches with selecting and merging because you will have a half a million boxes.

if you needed to make any changes to the boolean objects just convert them to editable polys again.

some notes: I moved the outer vertices of the window so that they were all level with the others. added extra edges to make quad sided polys. detached the polys that made the window grates to its own object. this will make editing geometry and mapping of both objects. then I added a small detail to the ramparts that you can clone, edit, or delete.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Oct 7 2008, 12:51 AM

[HERD]

Thanks , now I have a lot of new stuff to study.
Just learned about Compound Objects half an hour ago, while attempting to make random Grass
Lots of fun, but computer complains, when I ask it to make 8000 copies and scatter