Stephen Hughes

This is probably more of a cladding system than a free-standing wall, but similar-ish to the style?? https://3dsky.org/3dmodels/show/stone_diamond_1

Hi Guys, Bit of a specific query here. I'm rendering an animation using 3dsmax's 'populate' people. But by default the people look really bright & vibrant. Anyway, what I do to counter this is to give all the people objects a black diffuse colour, and change the diffuse multiplier down from 100 to 20. This makes the objects darker, more saturated, and look less eye-catching in the scenes....... However...... I'm sending the scene to a renderfarm and because max generates the textures every time the scene is opened on a new computer, the texture edits are lost when the renderfarm opens it, and so when the renderfarm renders the scene everything comes out perfect except for the bright people which look out of place and draw unwanted attention away from the subject matter of the animation...the architecture.. Long shot here, but any ideas on how to fix this problem??

under 'interpolation' uncheck both the 'optimize' and 'adaptive' boxes, and give the 'steps' a positive value ie, 1,2,3+. As long as the auto smooth option is selected it should look clean and straight.

Yeah stylus input for marking up amendments to work-in-progress images, tablet use for just browsing when chilling in front of tv... strangely the multipurpose aspect of the surfacebook seems to be exactly what i need - to do some light modelling in the evenings when required, but probably largely to take care of the business and job organisation end of things - emails, spreadsheets, accounting etc etc. Currently I don't actually have a PC in the house - just an iPad and iPhone, but the above tasks are beyond the scope of these apple devices i find. I know the surfacebook is probably not the most efficient performance per dollar, and i obviously wish it was less expensive but a regular laptop isn't really what I'm after...

Hi there, Was wondering if anyone has tried 3dsMax on the SurfaceBook? Thinking of getting one to do some less intensive modelling & photoshopping whilst away from my main workstation in the office, in the evening time. I ask mainly because i had actually bought a Surface Pro 3 about a year ago but found there was a strange display problem when using max that made it not worth the hassle for me - can't remember exactly the details but something to do with the aspect of the viewport not corresponding to the model... anyway i returned it shortly after purchase and got a full refund. So just be interested to know if this issue has been resolved on the SurfaceBook and if anybody is using it successfully? Any feedback would be great, cheers!

Hi There, Hopefully this is allowed in the forums (if not, apologies and i'll remove) but as the title suggests i need help with an animation which requires cyclists riding their bikes, as a main part of the visual. I've bought two models from AXYZ of businessmen on bicycles (non-rigged), and have previously purchased rigged businessmen & women from AXYZ too. But i need these models to be animated so that they are riding their bikes continuously. I know there are tutorials online which probably breakdown the process to animating the pedals > linking them to the rigged foot > as it turns the wheels etc etc etc, and I would love to have the time to learn and develop this area but I'm not from a character animation background, and simply do not have the time to attempt it right now. So if it's alright, I'd like to ask anyone with that skillset to PM me if it's something they'd be interested in carrying out the work on as a side job. Ultimately i just want a few animated cylclists already rigged and textured so that when i drop them into my scene they will cycle their bike in a realistic manner. Thanks, Stephen.

Hi guys, As the title suggests i'm considering whether to go for the 8-cores of the i7 5960X which can be overclocked to 4.4GHz, or buy the Intel Xeon 14-core E5-2697v3 which cannot be overclocked (i think) and has a speed of 2.6Ghz per core. The price difference when allowing for the mb etc is about £1000. Is there some way of calculating the performance difference for rendering? If i thought the xeon machine would render the same scene (max + vray) in half the time of the i7, purchasing the xeon would be a no brainer, but if it was down to maybe just 25% better I wouldn't be so sure. Can anyone estimate the performance difference between the two? Stephen

Just a note from my previous post where the update didn't go smoothly. I had to remove all Visual C++ Packages (programs and features > uninstall all Microsoft visual C++ related software, i had about 16 versions of it) and reinstall it all via VC_RedistInstaller.exe (downloaded here: http://forum.botoflegends.com/topic/74578-msvcp100dll-is-missing-windows-10/) Anyway, after doing so everything is Perfect again! Only tweak was to reinstall iToo Software licenses, as Mazen said, but apart from that it's all exactly as it was on Win 8.1. And i'm loving the Win10 features. Full OS seems quicker, cleaner and better in almost every aspect. Very pleased with the upgrade.

Just a slight word of warning - i have two pc's (one as main workstation and one as renderslave) both decent spec. Updated both to windows 10 last night - the renderslave (i7 2600k + GTX580) worked flawlessly - everything working exactly as it was before, all software + plugins etc came across great. But, on the main workstation (i7 4930k + quadro k4000) there were some serious issues - max wouldn't load up properly, autocad didn't even open (missing .dll), google chome crashed on startup, and all photoshop plugins were missing!!!! Completely unworkable! Luckily there was an option to roll back to win8.1 which only took about 15mins and everything was back to normal before the upgrade. After a bit of googling, i think it could be to do with the nvidia drivers, but not 100% clear on the problem or if there's a solution on the way. Bit concerned as the rollback feature is only available for the first month after win10 release which would mean if i attempt it in 6 weeks and all those software issues are still present then i'm pretty screwed. Anyway, if anyone else has had similar problems or a solution to it, please share as i'd really like to upgrade asap. Stevie.

Cheers Michal & Scott for those answers, very informative, and i'm starting to get an idea of the workflow involved in going from traditional max + vray to UE4 for walkthroughs. Bit more work than i had anticipated but at least you've opened my eyes to it. While it doesn't seem a vital time saver at the minute for what i was after, i still think i'd like to use the workflow on one of my own projects soon - i have a feeling the UE method for archviz is going to become more prominent in years to come...

Quick question for Michal (and please excuse my ignorance on the UE4 part), Say, for example, i had an interior scene modelled and textured in max + vray, and i wanted to produce an animation of the scene (4 or 5 camera segments)... My existing option would be to to render out the frames from max @ 20mins per frame but it would cost quite a bit for 1000 frames through a renderfarm (approx £500-600), or weeks on my own machines... So... If this scene was converted into UE4 what sort of timeframe would be required to 'bake' the scene (is baking the scene the equivilant to rendering)?? Do the camera paths render in real-time once the scene is baked? And in your opinion is this a viable alternative going forward for someone who wouldn't really benefit from the interactive features, or do you see the UE4 use in archviz as being mostly to benefit clients who wish to explore a space in realtime?? I know this is pretty long-winded but hopefully it makes sense. Stephen.

That Looks like Lumion to me. All the effects are available in the software. Maybe a bit of AE on top of the final comp.

Hi Philip, On the animation setup: Do the buildings just have to rise up through the ground, or do you have to animate the building being 'built' (ie structure, then walls forming, then windows flying into place etc?) Either way it can all be done with keyframe animation, but if you're attempting the second option then the Animators toolkit plugin is really helpful. For the rendering: If you're not overly used to animations, the solidrocks plugin is really useful here. It has a 'moving objects animation wizard' (MOAW) which tailors your vray settings so that there are minimum splotches & light leaks etc. As i'm sure you know rendering an animation (esp with moving objects) is not as simple as rendering each still frame one by one. 2250 frames is a fair bit to process - even if you keep each frame down to around 10 mins you would be looking at 375 hrs, or 15/16 days if it's just on a single computer. Do you have a small renderfarm? Anyway, thats my 2 cents. Best of luck with it. I've found there can be a lot of teething problems with animation so allow yourself some extra time if it's not part of your bread & butter. Stephen

Thanks everyone (especially Dimitris) for your replies, I do like the analysis of why the higher clock speeds are not really worth paying for. Helps me understand the reasoning in choosing something i know little about. And it just saved me £200...so Forest pack Pro can be seen as a wee bonus!

Hi Guys, Quick question for some of you experts: Would 64GB RAM @ 2133Mhz be a lot better than 32GB RAM @ 3000Mhz for max and vray?