Jon Berntsen

Hi! We used to rely on the SnowFlow plugin for making snow. Now that it's no longer being developed, we need to start looking for other options. Any tips? Could use the good old SnowFlow-script, but it's not as good and stable as the plugins was.

Hey! I'm looking for animated bushes and trees, like animated cutout for use in animated still-images. Anybody know any great resources for it? Seems like motionarray is not my friend today.

Chaos needed to do something, at least. Vantage needs animations and easy to use stuff like Twinmotion do, not to speak of constantly new objects. Twinmotion with its huge improvements in each released version seems like everything we would need from Vantage. Twinmotion is just a few versions away from, if not already, great render quality and post effects. Its huge drawback is that it doesn't have vray stuff support. With more and more use of OSL and physical materials, I really don't see chaos' place in the future if they don't jazz up the realtime animated object/shaders and dynamic weather system. As for initial model work, enscape wouldn't cut it, not in a lifetime, but why would we need vray in eg 3ds max when all rendering is done in Enscape/Vantage and vray materials are replaced by physical material anyway? No need to pay for that. Heck, even phoenixFD will eventually be outgunned (in the archviz field) by very simple to use flames, water, smoke etc. 1 minute to set up, direct visual feedback. So I think Chaos needs a kickstart on this kind ů of product, which I believe will merge with Vantage before 2024, and become the flagship of their product line. I simply cannot see it in any different way.

Thanks. I recall that keeping track of the different blend materials got a bit tideous earlier, with setting up corresponding modifiers. I'll have to give it another go, maybe it wasn't as bad as I remember ?

Still not convinced, but of course open to learn more about it than what I already know. No tutorials I've seen have shown me something new though. Used it in a few projects some years ago. I want to paint whole materials and not only different textures. This is very important, and that comes first. Secondary is the oldschool feeling it has to it. And last time I did it, it heavily depended on the surface. Not enough or not correctly subdivided polygons meant inaccuracy in the paint mask. So how do you paint materials on huge landscape models then? Like a very neat ground with no harsh edges that works great as a natural looking underlay for forest pack elements on top. Today my approach would be eighter spending a lot of time creating a huge texture with unwrapping and photoshop, or using distancetex, or, the most used solution which is splitting geometry and just have sharp material edges for transitions from eg. gravel to mud to grass. Sorry if you feel that I'm not getting your point, but I really don't see how canvas paint solves this in a good way, and neighter does distance tex, imo, since it is not easy to see live what you're working with before you're rendering it.

Thanks piotrus. I believe this just proves the unnecessarily heavy approach. I don't want to use real-world mapping, because then every new asset will have to be adopted to that workflow. We share assets and use assets on interchangeable basis here. Vertex paint is not a solution, as you'd have to setup blend materials for that. Too manual for 2020. I also don't want another stand-alone software, to apply any tedious routine. What about selecting a material, which you then can paint directly onto any surface, and then you can select another material, which you can also paint directly onto any surface, (with some options for types of overlap blending). I am honestly overwhelmed that such native approach doesn't seem to exist, actually. And more so why I am the only one seeing that? Have I missed out on something?

Feel free to prove me wrong, but setting up this chain of blend materials is not something I'd like to. Way too oldschool.

I believe it just feels too backwards. Just having to depend on the resolution of your geometry feels wrong and has nothing to do with painting materials imo. It also means I need to setup separate uwv channels for different sizing. It is just way too much effort. Feels like 2000, sorry.

Painting different materials onto a surface with all the material properties like reflection and refraction. Instead of just the texture properties. Can apply to any situation, really.

The need is more on a material level rather than textures...

Thanks for your input. Sounds like a decent way of doing it. Too bad layer management in max is so under-developed, but might give that take a shot!

Bumping thread. Anyone?

Hi More than often, we have started to see loads of loads of interior elements fully populated in exterior scenes. I get that one take would be first doing the interior and then do the exterior, in the same scene file. If it was that easy. Really messy and chuggy. Let us add some more parameters as well. 1) We have specialists in each of those fields doing each their stuff 2) Project management and human resource planning: Interiors and exteriors will never be finished at the same time, so chances are that the exterior dude will have to wait for the interior to be done. In and out on a project means time which means money. We don't want that. 3) Re-use of models. All our max-vray-detailed house models are being saved on the server for later re-use. Which means they suddenly can be used in very huge exterior projects, which does not allow for fully populated interior scenes due to hardware limitations. One fully populated and one stripped will have to be made. That takes time, and time ... is money. So what about xreffing somehow? For avoiding doing double work, the interior scene has to be finished before the exteriors can be finished. That means no matter what, the interior has to be made before or at least simultaneously as the exterior. Xrefing opens up for the possibility for double faces if the interior dude just detatches a wall and applies plaster or colored or whatever material on the walls, and the exterior dude will then have to counter this by deleting the same walls from the exterior. That means time, and time means money, and nah. No go. A few ideas exploited right here, without even closing in to a better solution than just the interior dude grouping all interior elements, and the exterior dude importing in his file. This is our current solution. A part of me wants this to be more streamlined. So what do your studio do in these situations? Thanks.

Thanks for response Nicolai. I have tried the last two, whereas the vrayblend is being used a lot in our studio for the exact cause you're specifying, as well as dirt along the sides of the road (with higher distance parameter and together with a noisemap for a more unevenly result). The vertexpaint method feels way too oldschool to use, as it doesn't feel 2020 intuitive at all. And it does only cover maps, not materials. What I'm after, is really a method for selecting which material you want to paint, and then just paint in the viewport, wherever you want. All other methods doesn't cut it budget wise, as it takes too long to do for each scene. ? But I realize it might never happen with 3ds max.

Hi! I am looking for a good way to paint different materials on surfaces in 3ds max. How are you doing that? I've been using viewport canvas, but it only allows for textures and does not cut it all the way for me. I have also tried to use unwrap to export texture area, and using photoshop, leaving me with really huge textures. I want to easily paint and mix different grass surfaces, dirt paths, gravel, road. That is for just surface material use but also for quickly customized surface colors for forest objects. I would appreciate any hints