Trees Too Dark!

[MarcellusW]

Studio/Institution: Personal Work
Genre: Residential Exterior
Software: 3ds Max 2010, Mental Ray
Description:

This is not a final render, this is only an in-process test shot.

I've purchased some Xfrog plants and have gone through an extremely tedious job of changing all the materials on the trees to mental ray Arch and Design. I used Zap's arch and design material converter to start the process.

 

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/02/max-9-converting-other-materials-to.html

 

The problem is that all these trees turn out almost black, especially the pine trees. Zaps plugin changes some default settings in the A&D material. For example the reflection color turns to black instead of the normally default white. When I changed this I started seeing more color in the trees, however they are still unnaturally dark. My hope is that someone on the forum has had experience with this same plugin and knows what setting has been changed.

 

Regards,

Edited December 1, 2014 by MarcellusW

[Corey Beaulieu]

Are you using two-sided materials? If not, you can test the issue by ticking the Force Two-Sided in the Common Tab of the Render Menu. Definitely adding Reflection will help.

 

On a side note, as this is a test, you should straighten your verticals as well as brighten your exposure overall. Your foreground shadow seems right with a brighter exposure, but the shadow on the side of the house by the back walls seems near black.

[MarcellusW]

Corey,

Thanks for the advice. By "straighten verticals" do you mean that I should force 2-point perspective?

 

About the exposure, part of it is the geometry. There is a series of terraced retaining walls which turn around the corner of the building on the left, not letting a lot of light get in there. But you are right it is still a little too dark exposure/contrast.

 

Also, did check the 2-sided issue. Looks like all the maps have "show map on back" checked, which I'm assuming is the 2-sided setting for Arch&Design materials. Could using ambient occlusion on the leaves, or gamma settings between the textures and the scene cause this?

Edited December 1, 2014 by MarcellusW

[MarcellusW]

So there is definitely something going on with the exposure between the tree materials and the building materials. Looks like I will have to do a couple renders with different exposure settings and then splice them in photoshop to get the trees and the building to look correctly lighted.

[MarcellusW]

If anyone is curious: I discovered that Forest Pack has solved most of my problems, the material optimizer translates to Arch and Design just fine and my exposure is much better. Never again will I waste time on making my own tree proxies and manually translating materials into Arch and Design. Forest pack is a good investment.