Learning 3D, Questions Options

[Sir-Kill]

I never used smoothing groups I jsut put in a check in the box and see if 30 gets it if not up to 46% if not then I might add more polys/edges.

what is fire effect? in the effects tab? I do not have 3ds open right now.
Edit: ah yes that is what I thought it was. but why would you need that in this circumstance?

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: May 29 2009, 08:08 PM

[HERD]

I thouhgt of making a fireplace.

[Sir-Kill]

ahh, then something like that would be needed
there is afterburn and fumeFX too.

[HERD]

 01Indoors05fplace.png ( 598.63k ) Number of downloads: 18


What kind of light supposed to be used for fireplace and grill, omni of something else?
Should it be in the middle of the flame?
Will BG animatoin light overlap it, so it's not needed at all?

[Sir-Kill]

I am mostly going to defer this one to Val. I placed 2 light system in the firebox and one outside for mine, yeah just omni lights.

[HERD]

 01Indoors05fplace01.png ( 390.2k ) Number of downloads: 16


Fire with particle flow (little problem with size and position)

[Sir-Kill]

nice

[Valiant]

For grills, fireplaces etc. I used to use colored omni light with high multiplier and small attenuations...

[HERD]

Ok, thanks, will try.
My progress so far
 IND_02_25.png ( 434.71k ) Number of downloads: 25

[Valiant]

good stuff

[Sir-Kill]

I took another look at the last 3ds file you posted. 2 things caught my eye: one was that your specular level seems a bit high I try to use something at about 10-15 for most items, keeping the glossiness at 10 as well. and the other thing is that you don't seem to use bump maps at all. using bumps can solve you specular problem.

glass, water, and highly polished wood could be placed in the 60+ specular levels. these things seem to take on a plastic look anyways.

now that is out of the way, the area is kicking it has an inviting feel to it, it is not too bright, a good selection of items in it, and not too crowded.

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Jun 3 2009, 10:09 PM

[HERD]

Yes, textures are pretty bad, gotta get used to the new lighting process - when render with shadows (very slow), everything changes.
Will use bump and blended maps to make objects look older etc., can't decide on intensity of lights yet (multiply should be 1 - 1,5 maximum or shadows will be too sharp?...)
And again, in BG everything seems to be so detailed, even small items, will practice on LoD too, need samples of good work - people, share your non-classified creations

[Valiant]

Use Shadow Map as shadow type for the fastest render. And don´t worry about the sharp shadow edges - if you decrease shadow map dimensions, edges will remain soft...

Here are few examples from my earlier work:

 Art01.jpg ( 331.49k ) Number of downloads: 23


 Art02.jpg ( 42.3k ) Number of downloads: 28


 Art03.jpg ( 49.07k ) Number of downloads: 24


This post has been edited by Valiant: Jun 4 2009, 12:57 PM

[HERD]

Wow! Thanks, now I know what to aspire to

[Sir-Kill]

I thought your texturing was nice.
using bmp, large textures, compiled with high poly models and textures that are not a power of 2 will slow things down as well.
your textures do not have to be any larger than what they are shown in your final render they could be even smaller with blending and bumping.
bump maps will also slow render times, but the trade off is worth it.
with lighting I try to stay away from lights more than 1.0

one thing about shadows if you have shadow Dens. (density) less than 1.0 the light will not be stopped by your objects (such as a lamp on a table) and you will get light where there should be shadow. On the same note, planes or objects w/o a back poly will also not stop light as well.

sharpness of shadows depends on the settings in the' shadow map parameters' rollout. the only setting I know is to set 'bias' to 0. the 'size' to something around 2000 or greater and 'sample range' to 3-7 (4 usually works).

EDIT: Nice stuff VAL

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Jun 4 2009, 01:20 PM

[Valiant]

Thanks

[Sir-Kill]

found a better use than a 2 light system.
you can use projector map under the Advanced effects rollout. set any map you want but I used a gradient map and set the colors from dark red, orange-yellow, to yellow-white. I also changed the gradient type from linear to radial.

[HERD]

Interesting tut in 3dtotal.com ---> Beginners --->

"Wired Lights - Video Tutorial" by Michael Bauer

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/wi...ed_lights01.asp

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Jun 10 2009, 10:59 AM

Reason for edit: SK Added Link

[Sir-Kill]

I watched the tut. it might have some uses someday. thanks
I added a link to the tut please try to do that if ya' can

This post has been edited by Sir-Kill: Jun 10 2009, 01:19 PM

[Creepin]

I just stared to learn 3dmax and decided to model something simply from BG to make learning more interesting. So I picked an object from BG and tried to re-create it while familiarizing with 3dmax. At one point I discovered that there's an option to make some picture as background for a viewport, so I made a quick screenshot of my object and attached it as background to perspective (or, actually, ortographic) viewport to use as a guide for tuning my model's proportions.

So far it all looked as a great idea but I found out that I can't set up perspective viewport's point of view exactly as it is in area screenshot, i.e. x45 y0 z45, which is necessary to align my model with it's original picture. I could set up camera with these parameters, but I couldn't model in camera view mode, just watch. I could come up with something close to these parameters by wildly twisting this ViewCube thingy for a minute, but this process is long and unreliable. So, is there any way to set up exact numeric parameters for perspective viewport's point of view like it could be done for camera and then either save this point of view or assign it as "home" for Viewcube?

This post has been edited by Creepin: Jun 18 2009, 02:59 PM