Peter M. Gruhn

Have a new project. Need some new trees. Sat down to make a palm tree. Crashed. Crashed again. Okay, I'll just tweak an existing one in max, all I really need is a much taller trunk. Probably just the Palm editor is buggy. Sat down to make a cyprus (conifer). Going nicely. Go to save it. Crashes. That's an actual drag. I need this tree. For years I've been disappointed in some things with Onyx, but it was expensive (to me). And the trees are good in the end. And SpeedTree is expensive if sweeeeeet. But if I can't actually use Onyx to get my work done... Am I the last person with Onyx?

Should probs post something that gives me a hint.

When this happens to me it's usually because of a mismatch between texture and uv settings on real world scale. Usually what happens is the texture is very very small so it renders as the average color - so that's a good way to check. If your texture is dirt and the render is bright magenta, it's probably a different problem.

I keep feeling that the building is not in the same perspective as the scene. But I threw in a horizon line and followed the patio edges back and the meet very close to where I put the horizon. So the problem I think I'm seeing is not "bad perspective." The deer is looking out of the image. So your viewer will look out of the image. You'd rather have your viewer look into the image. The dead tree is not working for me. It's dead, not alive. And crows are a sign of death, not life. The tree just kisses the patio. I hate when things just kiss. It makes the space between them vanish. Either overlap obviously or leave a gap. The tree just sits there alone, not really integrated into any likely landscape idea so it feels like what it is - just dropped in from out space. Maybe a much closer tree making a frame for the scene beyond, or a tree that is in conversation with the building as part of its landscaping. I guess maybe here ilke this it sticks out and becomes too much of a separate subject. And the composition is a diagonal line from tree to building to deer and then the deer sends the line off page. Before you had a heavy centered formal symmetry, like a Rothko. Now it's not stable or interestingly dynamic. I think the thing that keeps seeming unintegrated about is that the grass is clearly tall yet I can see the front edge of the patio. that should be hidden behind tall grass. .. Just cloned some grass in there and yeah, that really helped. My eye still doesn't buy the perspective and I can't figure why. Messing about a bit, I think i might be not the building but the grass in the foreground. Technically with the bright moon back there... where is the light coming from? Where are the shadows? i didn't notice that until late, but maybe there's a subconscious thing.

Try Environment: Effects: Fog: Layered Fog.

I'm even less aware of the technicals in renderers today than I used to was, so this is largely a guess, but... The old GI was a separate pre-process. A way to bounce light around the scene before rendering. The new rendering is all at one go. The bouncing is part of the rendering. As such, to prevent GI is to prevent rendering. So "turn off 'renderable' in the object properties". Like that will help ;-). But what's that prepass for in Corona then, smarty pants? Um... I don't know. BUT... What about the Corona Ray Switch Material? Seems to work just fine. I just used a flat black material for the GI slot.

I don't think it's specifically distance from camera so much as rendered size of texture. If it takes 20 pixels to get across a leaf then at the edge the color of a leaf may come from only two or three texels. If it takes half a pixel to get across a leaf then the color of the leaf comes from all texels. It would be cool then, I guess, if filtering obeyed opacity. Or we can just remember to give our images appropriate backgrounds.

The trick is to realize you modelled the wrong base geometry. You want to fillet an inside corner but you are working on an outside corner. I used chamfer but the cap is ugly. So I deleted the cap, chamfered and recapped.

Some of the kids at school are starting to (being forced to) use Lumion. I'll second Benjamin's recommendation to give it a look. I make all my own plants. Typically with Onyx. I place them on a copy of the landscape plan which I have color coded for easy. I am eternally grateful that I mostly have only one client with only one landscape designer with one set of common plants so I usually have zero to a few new species. And sometimes… I fake it; "Hey, that looks that same as this other thing but with pink flowers." Then I use instanced proxies random rotation and scale (thank you Soulburn) and everything runs pretty well. First plantings heavy job I took I was on a slower machine with far less memory so I rendered a library (again from Onyx) and did it in Photoshop. A bit of tweaking, some hand painted ao, adjustment layers… it looked okay. I much prefer the models though. Let's see if I have any pics online… http://www.hwb.com/gruhn/3d/op/final/cam03-flat.jpg - photoshopped http://www.hwb.com/gruhn/3d/patio/patio-final.jpg - in model Sorry, my most recent triumphs aren't online ;-) ASIDE: I'm not specifically recommending Onyx. It looks like it's gone orphan and I can't get the control for manicured greenery that I would like. Do your own research.

Your picture isn't working for me so I can't tell what result you are getting. Do you just need to rotate the map 90 degrees?

Just guessing - There might be a sprite script out there that you could modify.

I wonder if there's a long skinny triangle in there.

Look here https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-4CCA4890-83E8-41C6-9FFB-0A3959194CCA-htm.html See the "Note:" regarding location. I'll further add, if you don't need any of the fancy features of the Loft compound object, try a sweep. It's what I use for all my cornices etc.

I've switched back to 1.4 for the interior renders. Everything is going nicely. Far less displacement and fewer proxy plants. I wasn't running out of memory on the other one... maybe only a little more than half full. I'm sorry any issues weren't reproducible enough.

One of the viewport menus (rightmost of the three?) has an item for selected edges. It's also in the command list so you can bind a hotkey to it.