runelore

Hi, thanks for the replies guys, hopefully still gonna get this resolved. The refractive part of the mirror is the same object, basically I have attached an image in the original post showing the mirror, it is a bevelled box with all sides as glass except the back face which is the reflective surface (No glossiness to it, just 100% reflective). As per the rendering settings, many thanks for taking the time to look through my settings. I will take those changes on board and give them a try! To be honest, even with the settings I had, the render times are still great at only an hour or 2 for the final images which is VERY acceptable, but no matter what I set them to, that damn mirror still takes 10 x longer to do the irrad map than the rest of the scene, it just seems to multily the samples like mad for some reason, I have always had this issue when rendering mirrors, not sure why! maybe it is because I do it as 1 object, I will take a look at separating the reflective face from the glass... again, guys, many thanks for your responses!! Cheers - Mo

No worries Matthew, thanks for trying anyway! I was really hoping someone on here would have an answer to this, it is driving me mad! lol

Hi, Many thanks for your response. I havent got any caustics enabled at all and I am just using Refractive GI for the Global Illumination. I tried ticking Reflective GI also and that made no difference at all Thanks

Hi guys, I have a very strange problem which I simply cannot get rid of. Basically when ever I render anything with mirrors (100% reflections) in the scene, the irradiance map samples just go crazey and the reflected surface has like 100x more samples than any of the rest of the scene. This causes the mirrors to take massively more time than the rest of the frame to calculate. I am not talking just a little longer, I mean it makes the frame take 10 or 20 times longer than normal to calculate. The final results are fine but it is just an issue I need to get around as I have a big residential project coming up and will have a lot of mirrors to deal with!! I have attached a couple of images showing how many more samples there are in the mirror compared to the wall next to it. The rest of the scene renders perfectly and I am happy with the look but the time the mirrors take to render are crazey..! Any help would be greatly apprectiated! Cheers - Mo

Hi guys, I am not completely sure where to post this but I have narrowed it down to this section so I do apologise if I am mistaken. I am looking to get hold of some plans / blueprints of a car engine. Preferably a V8 engine, but I am not really too fussed. I have to build an engine for a current project and it can be any engine as it is more about the ability to build it and the animation of it that is the focus. I just wonder if anyone has any ideas where I can find any. I have searched the net and googled everything I can think of but cant find a conclusive set of images / plans to use as reference unfortunately. Many, many thanks for any help at all with this.. - Mo

Hi, my apologies for this post as it is very little help with regards to your issue. I was just wondering what your method is for creating the grasss that you have used in your scene. I have many methods of my own but I do like the effect you have got. Obviously I apologise for not actually helping with your plight. Many thanks... - Mo'Town

Many thanks for your responses. the above suggestion works like a treat. Shows how much attention I pay, I hadnt even realised that they had added the new animation (prepass and render) modes to the IR map calculation.. lol anyway, many thanks again for the help and you have made my day !

Hi, I have an animation that I am creating in which the animation goes through various times of day with the sun rising and setting (linked to Max Daylight system). So the sun is animated though the scene, following the time of day. Unfortunately I am having a lot of trouble trying to set up the rendering system for these sequences. I am using irrad map (primary) and Light cache (secondary) as my GI bounces. The problem I have is that light cache is only computing the light cache based on the lighting of a single frame, but the lighting changes in intensity, colour and ambience though the whole sequence. So I need to be able to pre-cache the animated lighting so I dont get flickering when rendering the final stills. An example... If I calculate my light cache using a frame that has the sun at its highest point, the whole sequence comes out with the lighting as if the sun is always there, even though it sets. the same is vice versa.. I need a way if storing the lighting through out the whole animation. I thought of using irrad map as primary and secondary bounces, but that isnt working very well. I have no problems with anything else, just getting the lighting to chance through out the sequence properly. It does render fine if I dont pre-cache the light cache, but of course I get artifacting and flickering when rendering the animation.. How do I pre-calculate an animated light? apologies if this is a difficult post to understand, I have explained it as well as possible..

One thing that you could try is to angle your sun a little more to pick out some of the detail of the buildings. this will also help with the roof seemingly overbright. try giving the sun like a 70 degree angle (or about 3pm ish angle) instead of coming almost directly down. This will help to bring a little more contrast of the shadows/hightlights in the scene... very nice work tho, looking good and very good progress from the 1st to teh 2nd render...

Hello, thanks for the response. The answer is no, no materials other than the standard Vray are being used and no maps at all. I even tried enabling the global material override in the vray settings tab and used a standard Vray material and the same thing happens, it is strange. The scene setup is the same as every other scene but this 1 part of the scene just isnt rendering properly. I could delete the rail and re-model it but that isnt really an answer or solution around this problem.. again many thanks for your reponse.. PS - I have just deleted the rail and remodelled it and the problem is now resolved. I have no idea why it happened and hope it doesnt happen again. I didnt mind remodelling the rail, but something really complex wouldnt be any fun..

Hi, I have a small issue with distributed rendering which I cannot find the solution to. When I am rendering I have a problem with distributed rendering rendering the wrong image or rendering artifacts on the image. I have attached an image as an example. The incorrect area is always in the same spot and is always the same. When I disable distributed rendering it renders fine with no issues what so ever. There are no textures or external files in the Max file what so ever as I have not got to the texturing/lighting stage yet. I am just confused as to why this is happening. My Vray settings are fine as when I disable distributed rendering there are no issues at all when I render. Also there are no errors or problems in any of the logs for the Distributed rendering server system. This is a problem that happens from time to time which I just cannot track down.. Many thanks for any help.. PS . I have no problems with Dist Rendering at all, it is set up and is working fine with no errors at all.

thank you very much for the response but that hasnt sorted outmy problem.. thanks tho.. I still have the problem of the child slats moving as a group around the parent.. many thanks..

Hello Everyone, I am currently trying to animate a set of blinds in Studio Max. I am inherently a Lightwave user and know how to do it in Lightwave but cannot figure it out in Max. I am trying to animate the rotation of a set of Window Blinds. I want each slat to rotate on its local Axis (simulating opening and closing of the blind). I have hundreds of windows so cannot do this by hand and want to be able to parent to a single null or blind in order to do the rotation on 1 item and the rest follow. the issue I have is that when I parent the slats to 1 null/slat and I rotate, they all use that slats rotation as the centre and rotate around it in a large block. I need each slat to rotate on its own local axis. Is this possible in Max? It must be.. Many many thanks for any help here..