How to..masterplan

[jtiscareno]

OK guys me and a team here at work are doing a huge masterplan that consists of several office buildings, a "lifestyle center" retail, restaurants, several parking garages a hotel and of course all the ameneties, paths, walks, plazas, water features, grass, etc.

And to top it all off we are modeling in 4 diffrent formats, revit, cad, max and sketchup. I have been very surprised first of all how fast they model in SU and the models in the end are so easy to handle with only one multi-sub material per building and they are lite.

But to the question, first the site is huge and like I said it has a lot of stuff, I tried first to tackle it in cad, it was taking me forever just to create good clean plines for solids (even using boundary or region) so I jumped to max imported the plan and I wanted to trace over to create plans etc, but as soon as I trun the snap and try to do a line bam! it takes forever, now I can cut it up in section but...

So first question, what is a fast (no going for precision) way to develop a huge site?

After having everything done, we plan to xref all individual bldgs into one mastefile in max but I have started to see that except for the SU files all other drag the file way way done.

So second question, what is a good way for working on huge files with many buildings and stuff, like I said, trees, cars, people and entourage will be done in photoshop to cut down on time and size.

And third item is, any ideas, tips, past experience horror stories in regards to developing images for a big masterplan complex...

Fina render will be done in Vray and I do have acces to a decent render farm using backburner 2 but we dont have distributed rendering on vray on.

Thanks a bunch, I am starting to bring in the kleanex for when I start to cry later, LOL.

[tecton3d]

Final render will be done in Vray and I do have acces to a decent render farm using backburner 2 but we dont have distributed rendering on vray on.

Thanks a bunch, I am starting to bring in the kleanex for when I start to cry later, LOL.

I can't contribute much but I'll just say that as easy as it was to set up DR in Final Render, it is definitely in your best interest to do the same with VRay... and your machines are already online... read up a bit and you'll have DR in minutes! ... that is unless you're animating then let backburner do its thing : )

good luck : )

[Simon Moir]

Ground Plane- I find boundaries and regions are horrible in max. Closed plines file link quickly. Apply an Extrude or Face Extrude in max, one set for roads, paving types, grass etc. I trace these over the plans in AutoCAD on separate layers, only linking these in to Max. I don't envy the Architects in our office who spend all day gazing at AutoCAD, but it is super quick for this kind of work, and much more precise than Max.

 

Entourage- I love Vray proxies for trees and cars actually, even people when I eventually pull my finger out... In AutoCAD draw a short line with it's centre over each tree. Clone this as needed over the plan on different layers for different types of trees, bushes etc, lines where you want cars...Then in Max behold the wonder of the spacing tool as it plants thousands of Vray proxy trees exactly where you want them. We use a Maxscript to scale and rotate them as well to introduce variety. It will also space Proxies along longer plines offset from your roads for evenly planted trees, lamposts etc. I find this quicker than PS and animation ready as well, but you do need good trees. We worked on an entire city masterplan last year, we were able to plant literally thousands of trees this way, with very little rendering overhead. Anything that doesn't involve RPCs is a good thing IMHO.

 

Anyway, my two cents. I love larger projects, they can be a headache, but are much more satisfying than small scale interiors when finished. Lunchtime over... Good Luck, be religiously anal about organizing your files and you'll do fine.

[wda]

Overall

Get a plan worked out before you get too deep. Check the pipleline make sure you know all of the little quirks that importing and X ref from different apps have into your final rendering app. LOL Yes be very very anal about everything, file naming all the way to making sure your passes for compositing work. If it's as large as you say....start checking now for how some of the AEC created objects export out. Some situations you get much geometry that is coplaner and can't be seen. Get rid of it, processing, viewport rendering can be greatly effectly-everything works faster if you have very 'clean' files. A day or two of cleaning can save a week of waiting for the viewports to catch ups and imrpove the turn around render times while the scene is being developed.

 

Complex site work....it's just a lot of busy work creating topology. Tedious and time consuming. You have to determine how much accuracy you 'really' need so you don't spend stupidly large amounts of time or too little. I'd recomend a photoshop approach with displacement mapping on a highly subdividied mesh-unfortunately that only works if you understand how to do it and has it's issues too.

 

All horror stories happen because something in the pipeline was not known...be anal very anal LOL

 

WDA

[jtiscareno]

Guys thanks for the help and the tips.

 

Simon could you elaborate more on the vray proxies for trees and cars, I got that you do a line (i imagine like a straight up line) for each tree in its onw layer and the same for cars and then you vray proxies trees and cars. are this cars and trees max files? any suggestions on a good company to buy this from?

 

I have never used the spacing tool in max can you point me in the right location and more on the vray proxy? thanks

 

On the site, I made the mistake to try to fix the existing siteplan...big big mistake you know hoe half ass this stuff is done so i gave up and another guy here jump on the site in SU, he has made very good rpogress but for next time I will trace over in autocad of an existing file just like you said. My mistake was that before I was the designer so my cad drawings are clean so they are fairly easy to pline but I will not trust anybody elses work in cad againg only if I know the source and it is good.

 

Thanks to all and yes i am spending more time organizing the files then actually doing any "real" work... long leave the two day weekend I love those 48 hours before an monday dealine!!!

[Brian Smith]

In any scene I work on, a good percentage of the overall project is spent in preparing AutoCAD linework for importing into Max - I would guess around 20%. If your linework is well structured, you can create a site plan in a very short amount of time. With the vast majority of the sites I create, I extrude closed splines and use the Boolean>Cut>Split feature to separate elements, such as mulch beds from a surface that represents grass. For other elements, such as lakes, you can do the same thing and simply move the highlighted faces as needed. This works even if the terrain is non-flat. In any case, the AutoCAD line work must be clean and care should be taken to make it so. I only trace existing linework at last resort and because AutoCAD drawings are often poorly created, I always recommend inspecting the drawings before quoting a job as poor linework can seriously impact the time it takes to get them into Max.

The attached image 'sample_site' shows a drawing of a small development at the point that it was imported into Max. With the exception of parking lines (which are 6" wide plines) and a line representing the fence, everything is a closed spline, on a separate layer (as shown in the 'layers' image). In the case of creating more complex curbs, such as gutter curbs, lofting along a clean spline, whether closed or not, works fine. Bottom line is, the AutoCAD file, also attached, took about 6 hours to prepare, but once I imported into Max, I created the site in less than an hour with the following elements: streets, grass, mulch, curbs, sidewalks, retention ponds, lakes, parking lines, and a perimeter fence. Other elements like trees, cars, people, etc were added later. As a side note, I also create shrubs for the whole development in minutes using the Scatter command. I simply scattered a single face (with an image of a leaf) over the volume of an extruded spline - the same spline that represented the mulch beds. Hope that helps.

 

Brian

[Simon Moir]

Jorge, I believe Olitech described the Vray Proxy stuff really well... His team's Bahrain Bay animation was fantastic, don't you think? We use Onyx for trees etc, sugar3D for cars, AXYZ for people. These images should explain how we distribute the Proxies.

[jtiscareno]

Thanks Brian and Simon, those are great exemples and guidelines and yes Olitech did explain the vray proxy really well over at the vray forum.

 

Thanks, we had some changes to the siteplan...noooooo but we did get more time to produce images, yeeeees!

 

Thanks!

[game72]

Hola señores expertos en Max, mi post es en referencia a la necesidad que tengo de modelar un terreno con sus calles interiores (las cuales sigan el la conformación del terreno) detalladas con banquetas y machuelos cruceros entre calles y la división de los lotes interiores, para la generación de renders de este modelo. Alguien me pudiera orientar al respecto, de como podría ser la manera correcta de generar el modelado con una calidad adecuada para generar estas presentaciones. Manejo el 3dMax de manera básica y la idea es generarlo en este programa.

 

Gracias de antemano.