sardesign

I was wondering if anyone had a suggestion on the best way to create a material that was translucent and scattered light. I would like to achieve some direct transparency (which I have achieved with the material I have already made), but light isn't scattering enough to make objects 'glow' as much as I would like. When I modify it to allow less transparency, light scatters less, and I get less illumination. Any help would be appreciated! fabric.zip

Maxwell gives me that error message in the console. Would paging really be that slow with an SSD?

Thanks... I started trying to use the maxwell grass modifier. Any idea about the option to disable option for virtual memory?

When I set the subdivision of displacement for a grass texture too high, Maxwell won't render because of RAM limits. It gives me an error saying I can disable an option to allow virtual memory, but I can't find this option anywhere. On another note, is there a better way to do grass (other than post production in Photoshop)? I've tried a bunch of textures, but they just don't look really all that compelling. The landscape scenes scream for displacement.

numerobis, You hit the nail on the head... I figured it out last night because I forgot I had that option selected. So how big of a graphics card do I need to have. I ask because right now I'm working off this laptop (it's actually doing quite a good job pumping out high quality images), but I know the graphics card is nothing special.

So I have been able to render an exterior scene in full with the Maxwell 3ds Max plugin at several different resolutions. The problem is when I try to output to a higher resolution (i.e. 1620 x 2880) and attempt to apply the Simulens filter after it's complete, Maxwell just force closes. Does anyone have any workarounds? Should I attempt a full render in Maxwell Studio to see if the result will be different?

not sure in this situation, but a lot of bad design is caused by the client and not the architect

looks a bit flat... are you using any skylight to add some more indirect lighting? add some modulation to the asphalt material to break up the tiling... nice paint job on the cars

TJ, nice modelling... try a gradient sky and maybe turn it to a weird color or muted to bring out the model better. i'm assuming once the white goes away and materials are added, the highlight burn should die a bit.

boards attached for final submittal

Under the rendering setup menu, there is an option to calculate FG and save to a file. If you set your FG at the level you want and keep the resolution low, it will save the information to the file and hopefully not crash as it's not trying to calculate and draw a higher resolution image. You can freeze the FG file [an option with a lock icon] so that mental ray does not attempt to do any more FG calculations. The help menu in 3ds max has an explanation of this

the funny thing is i actually added a noise filter in PS to get the grain. this is still WIP but i'm fixing things like adding detail and adjusting depth of field or anything else people point out.

preliminary rendering of the first floor [in plan]

well... the colors i have picked are not necessarily what i would use if this was built [there is that possibility]. the colors were selected for presentation purposes on the boards that will be submitted so a variety of colors was not used so the eye would be drawn to certain things on the boards. realistically, each box would have to be re-finished because holes would need to be plugged up, welding would occur on structural joints, and the boxes would have other damage on them that would make using them as shelters impossible without correction. they could be painted to match the colors they were before, but that would depend on the context.

exterior image from courtyard