Jonathan Fantucchio

I apologize since I think I worded my question incorrectly. I rarely do nature type stuff and so my wording may be off. I'm just trying to apply multiple materials to a small terrain mesh thats a small yard with a stream. Wet soil, muddy soil, dry grassy soil,ect. I was using Vray blend material but its not working. I wanted to do something like vertex painting the material on to the mesh if its possible. And yes there will be closeups which is why I mentioned displacements. So what techniques are people using to apply multiple materials to a small terrain mesh?

Hi Everyone, I am working on an exterior which I rarely do in my line of work and I am wondering what is the best method of applying multiple(about four) Vray materials with displacements onto a terrain mesh. I tried VRay Blend material but I was trying to use it in conjunction with vertex painting but it doesn't seem to work properly. In the scene I Have a riverbed,grassy terrain,sand,with corresponding displaced materials which look good on there own. How are others applying materials to terrains. Is there a tutorial I can follow or any advice to go by. Thanks!

I wanted to see if anyone would be interested buying in an extra workstation that I have. I built it recently for a project and ended up not using it. I still have all the original boxes and warranties ect. Everything was bought at Microcenter, and after the build was checked out by them as well within a few months. It was set up. Run through benchmarks and not used. Feel free to ask any questions. Here is the setup I7 5820K Unclocked GTX Titan Black 6 Gig card CX750 Power Supply WD Cavier Black 1TB Samsung 850 SSD 250GB X-99 UD3P Motherboard Windows 10 Professional with the Motherboard. 16Gigs DDR4Ram 8 gigs each NZXT Case Black H100i GTX water cooler. I also have a brand new Pok3er 3 RGB Mechanical Keyboard that I could throw in. i was thinking around half the price of a what a new build of this would cost as everything is fairly new.

Something that I did that may be somewhat similar to what your thinking is I would be the image guy for competitions. Young architects always enter lots of competitions and many would welcome the help of an aspiring professional renderer. I was, and am friends with a lot of Architects and I would always offer do their renderings for them for whatever they needed. This lead to connections, which lead to projects, which lead to job offers. Build your portfolio, get drunk, and be friends with lots of Architects. If you're friends with Architects and they see your passion for images you will get work eventually. Corey's comment is pretty crucial regarding skill in Architecture which though I went to arch school it was my weakness in the profession and caused me much grief. Also Like Corey said there is lots of work out there, just be prepared for the crunchtime cause it's no joke.

I feel ya. I was the same way till I got used to mine. But also consider that these products are not quite specialised anymore driver and support wise. It works with pretty much any CAD and 3D program as of now. Some better than others. 3d connexions software is a simple quick easy install and works awesome. I use it in between work and home no problems. It's just a notch below plug and play. So this shouldn't stop anyone from using one. Anyways I'm not saying any more nice things about them unless 3Dconnexion sponsors me. I do wish that they would start expanding the use of them beyond traditional CAD. It freezes Autocad for me so I don't use it for CAD. I can also see these being useful with premier or Nuke/Aftereffects for timeline navigation and keying frames. The photoshop implementation is half baked as of now and it could be awesome, but not a wacom replacement by any stretch but a possible compliment.

Man, whenever I see these threads I bug out cause mine was one of the best purchases I've ever made. I cannot go back to Max viewport controls/hotkeys anymore. It took some time to get used to but I cannot work without it now. I can see how it would be more immediately useful for someone doing product/industrial design, but the controls actually make the work fun for me. I can fly through one side of the a building to another in a second. For me it's great for placing cameras/furniture modeling and really any high precision modeling task. My only gripe is that it does not have better integration with the other apps I use(photoshop/aftereffects/premiere/).

Munly, I read your thread. I'm a Biz Dev Professional and I am very curious. Are you located in the States and if so what state, and did you conduct in person meetings or phone calls? I'm curious as I often wondered if my sales experience and success can be applied to rendering. Also I don't comment much but I hope I can add to the discussion as it is somewhat of a common topic here. All anecdotal. I'm in NYC and my last recent job was working in house at a small visualisation firm. I remember when I was hired my boss said to me "Rendering is still a good business". This is coming from a dude who has been doing this since the 70's by hand and has seen a lot of ups and downs. When he said that, I thought he was crazy, especially after reading these boards. After working for him I quickly saw the light. We would get calls everyday for new jobs and had tons of jobs well under way. Once every two weeks we would get some shady developer or enigmatic middle eastern dude who would come to the office and would need a crazy animation project that my boss would have to turn down. I would always ask him why and he would just dismiss it. My last job was for a model apt in Harlem. I went to the site, took photos, modeled and rendered previews and after a week or so the developer bailed on us without paying. My boss didn't even care as he had too many other projects going on. It was just a throwaway job for him and the client was a sketchy cheapo that he had no time for. When I got a hold of the pricing for jobs I was floored at what he was charging. It was way higher than what is being discussed here. And that's in one of the most competitive markets out there. The work we did was competent, some of it borderlining on great, albeit a bit old fashion. The key was the excellent service they would receive. If you're not elite like Juraj, rendering is basically a who you know reputation business. All of my old bosses clients were referrals who knew he could deliver quality work on time! He just kept building off it. Also revisions are king, so if a company is charging sub $300 a render they're shooting themselves in the foot, as many revisions are usually needed on a single image if they ever hope to get repeat business. And usually you will have redlines right up to the end, but we all know this. For Interiors I get hand delivered a huge amount of samples that I have to scan manually as they are almost always very unique and not sourceable on the web. Most of those textures on the web are useless for me. I get these delivered sometimes the day before final renders. Sometimes, one single material and how it looks will hold up an entire image and require many revisions. Let's not even talk about the furniture that some of these interior folks pick out that you cannot find on the web and have to model from scratch. If there is someone who can deal with that for $200 an image I say let em do it, cause I surely won't. So if someone from another country is charging $200 per render and a Developer or Architect decides to use them, I say good luck to both parties and hope they enjoy the S**t Show that will surely follow. And if they are "destroying the industry" then the "industry" was dead to begin with Nothing will save it and it will be dead for everyone except the Architects who will eventually be taking control of renderings back in house. The actual industry of rendering I think should be very small as it is within the realm of the Architect or designer to do renderings, and once the technology catches up rendering will be back in the hands of the architect or designer as it should be. I'm saying this with the knowledge that Architects and developers are not the only people who need renderings. The industry needs to correct itself as it is just too saturated. I sometimes think the first step in this correction is to make this not an industry if that makes any sense at all. Anyways I forgot the point I was trying to make so I'll drink another beer and hope it comes back to me.

So I'm as usual having modeling trouble. The client wants the geometry in detail so I have to make it precise. The window is pretty easy to understand. My trouble is what technique should I use to model this window. Normally these things are at a distance so I can get away with fudging it. I have the the sections of the sides but what technique do i use to transition the two side sections into the top part. Would I just extrude the window frame and boolean the details out. I thought or using the sweep modifier. If anyone has a tutorial they can steer me from or can point me to a modifier which will work on this window.

I think your right Velvet Elvis. At my job the first thing that my boss asks for are views once the modeling is done. He wants them fast and once the client approves the views after I do my renders then the photoshop wizards jump in and thats when you see true artistry. The amount of layers is insane. I'm having to unlearn everything I've learned on the web as it barely applies. The basic view renderings are of vital importance and is the first step and the client works from those views. Since everyone at my company is highly experienced(20 years plus) with the exception of me, I think this stems from a strong architectural and hand drafting background rather than a CG Background. They've been doing this before there were computers. Some of my coworkers actually did hand renderings and if you've ever done them whether for a client or gnarly professor it seems the best thing is to establish intent early on and work from there. It's not a better or worse way of working just different and imo closer to tradition.

The fun part is were I laughed. I spit out 10 or so renders today. My boss is going to expect 10 or so tommorow and i'm sweating looking at mistakes and am fearful of client revisions and deadlines. How the hell is someone having fun doing this. And risk free... I'm missing something with that one.

My boss gave me a chair to model and I cant seem to crack it. Its a very simple chair but is driving me crazy. I can get about 70% of the way there. I know I'm going about it the wrong way. I'm starting out with a profile of an arm and lofting it. Then I FFD to death then apply a mesh smooth. Whats the best way to start this and go about it? Any help is greatly appreciated. I just need a good starting point.

I was having some sort of RAM bottleneck issues with an exterior test project I am currently working on but version 1.0 seems to have solved that and the speed has increased as well. If my project goes well within the 45 days I'm in for the boxed licences. So far for interiors it's pretty damn good. I would like to see some more exteriors as well.

I'm a New Yorker. Why do you have to register your business? I'm pretty familiar and never heard of that. I just get sent invoices and and file my own taxes. I definitely think you should get a Tax ID#, and register with the city as a DBA, which is not much money if your in NYC. If your clients are mostly architects who tend to be very... let's just say frugal, then having a registered business may scare them and make them think your expensive. Just W2 to 1099 it until your in the majors.

Thank's everyone. Ben, I've seen these links but forgot about them. On one of my last jobs(film-making not rendering, I do more way film than vis), I attempted to use a sort of 2.5D technique as outlined here: Due to the low res scans and age of my photos it did not turn out too well but it is a useful technique to have, but I did not use it ultimately due to the low quality. https://vimeo.com/89067911 Nicolai, the vis people tutorial was what I was searching for but could not find, thanks. Juraj, I did not check those links, but the tree footage packs are brilliant. They are a bit pricey but as soon as I can justify a purchase of them I will. Ultimately this talk is redundant since components are getting cheaper every day, its just that rendering is such a tiny part of what I do I am always looking for ways to save as well as deliver a good image with my very limited cpu power.

Juraj, I might have jumped the gun a bit and I apologize. I don't think I meant time-lapse and I again apologize. I think I was thinking more about ways of just adding animated elements to a still image, like a moving sky and some masked moving reflections on a still. A lot of times I do not have the time or budget to do an animation so I am looking for ways to add something to a still image, like a moving sky or something more. I saw this video https://vimeo.com/90311728, and I think that some of these are stills(I may be wrong). I liked what was done and if these are stills(the moving sky and reflections were very cool), I would like to learn more after effects techniques that can help with post beyond just color grading/correcting. I'm guessing the reflective pass overlay is what would work. Thanks!