Camera vs Rendering (and maybe the environment) -3ds Max Design 2013

[nathanpeucker]

Evening all!

 

I'm pretty novice at 3ds max and I'm practicing with old projects. At the moment I'm trying to include a model in a photo using the environment. The environment map is set to 'screen' which is meant to prevent the issue with an offset.

 

Anywho, I can't seem to get the renderer to match what appears in the Target Camera Viewport, and I have for the life of me, no idea why. Any tips and tricks would be super handy.

 

 

 

As you can see, in the camera viewport a road line can be seen at the bottom, and in the render it cannot be seen.

 

If there's any more info I can provide let me know, and I'll do so asap. Thanks!

[jasonstewart]

You need to turn your safe frames on so that the viewport shows the extents of the camera frame rather than just the size of your monitor. Shift+F is the shortcut.

[nathanpeucker]

Hi there! I already have safe frame turned on, and this still occurs. It seems I can get it to work as expected using viewport background as opposed to environment. However the few tutorials I've seen on the topic use the environment option.

 

Is there a distinct advantage of the environment option?

[CliveG]

Though it may not specifically address this question, Evermotion have just put up a tutorial that may help you with this image. Worth a look

 

http://www.evermotion.org/tutorials/show/8431/composing-3d-object-into-a-photo-tip-of-the-week

Edited February 2, 2014 by CliveG

[RyderSK]

If you look more carefully it is not a shifting but rather stretching. In the render, the proportions of environment are adjusted to proportions of render, but the viewport previews it across different ration and crops it to safe frames instead.

 

The proper way to adjust photomontage is in fact the background function but this doesn't manifest inside render, it serves only the purpose of adjusting your camera, otherwise it doesn't matter which way you go about it, you still need to put it in environment if you want to render it directly, or have any other interaction between 3D scene and photography.

[Josef Wienerroither]

This is ( or was - not sure wether it was fixed ) a bug in Max 2013:

 

The following is all out from my memory, so may not be entirely valid:

 

As far i remember the viewport stretches the Env map when safe frame is ON.

So the wrong one is the viewport display with saferames enabled.

To judge the env map in the camera viewport you should turn saferames OFF

 

I thought they have fixed it in the latest service pack, but i'm not quite sure

I use Max 2014 now, which is the far most stable and matured version of Max since ages

 

I tested with my Max 2013 installations, which is at PU6 ( product update 6), and i cannot reproduce the issue

so maybe it's indeed fixed

 

Which Max version and PU are you using ?

Edited February 3, 2014 by spacefrog

[Nicolai Bongard]

Short photomontage tutorial: Check the sizes of your background picture. If that picture is 640x400 (or whatever) you need to enter the same sizes in your render settings, or at least the same proportions (as in if the picture is 100x200 pixels, you can render in 50x100 or 200x400, it does not matter as long as the ratio is the same). This way, when you press the shift + f, the safe frames will not compress/distort your background picture. It should then render out nicely.

[nathanpeucker]

Wow, thanks for all the responses! This forum is amazing!

 

Turns out it was the aspect ratio differences that was causing the issues. I was kind of hoping that I could use the safe frame to maintain environment map ratio (which it seemed to do admirably) and then use render output dimensions to render a portion of the scene. After typing that out and reading it, it's abundantly clear that's a touch silly - my bad!

 

I do have another query though, if anyone is interested. With the render output, is there anyway to automatically change the render output size/aspect ratio based on what ever view is being rendered? Or do I just need to suck it up, not be lazy, and change the settings myself for each render. This is for projects with multiple scenes of various aspect ratios. Oh I'm using MentalRay too if that makes a difference.

 

Thanks again!

[Nicolai Bongard]

I think you just have to suck it up. Alltough you could perhaps edit the background photos to have the same sizes, as in adding empty areas over/under and/or to the sides, and then adjust your cameras apropriately. Then you would not have to worry about changing render output sizes, but then you would have to crop all the pictures afterwards. I think you should just write down a note with the names of the cameras and the render sizes next to them so you can quickly type it in.

[nathanpeucker]

Oh. Well I think I'm just going to have to give up on 3ds Max... it's not for me!

 

Just kidding haha. Thanks for your help!

[RyderSK]

There are some script plugins that enable changing scene states based on cameras but yes, easiest is just to write it down and not forget to change it before render :- )