FreakyDroid

Sorry for the late reply. Seems the latest update fixed the issue I was having and Im not seeing any artifacts now. To answer some of the questions: render settings were default, I used the brute force method without any precalc of LC. Geometry was fine, it was a simple line and a edit poly on top, no smoothing. Thanks for the help!

Hey guys, I've been testing Vray's GPU rendering for animations and I'm encountering a weird artifacting problem that I cant solve. It appears at some frames and only on one object, the floor to be exact. At first I thought I could be having overlapping geometry, but that's not the case. I tried making changes to the shader, thinking that could be the problem, but that's not the problem either. Tried changing render settings, added thickness to the floor, but the problem persists. Here's a small animation and a a still image where you can see the white artifacts on the floor. I was wondering if anyone has had a similar issue and what could be causing it. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

My 2950W system can sometimes pull over 650W from the wall. I'm no expert on this, but more experienced PC builders always tell me to get a more powerful PSU, at least 30-40% more powerful than what I will need. Now whether this is true or not, I cant say for sure and perhaps the 750W one you picked might be just fine. For my system I got a 1200W one just to be safe ... I figured, spending an extra 60-70 euros on a 3k euros system wouldn't break the bank.

I own the x399 Taichi and its fantastic, runs the CPU very stable at 4.1Ghz thanks to the great VRM/heatsinks it has. Doesnt have some of the bells and whistles of the MSI and Gigabyte boards which were suggested to you (and those are great too), but if you dont care about that stuff and you are only interested in having a great board that can handle a good OC, get the Taichi and put the extra money in a GTX 1070. Go with a 360mm AIO cooler only if you do long rendering sessions (10+ hours), otherwise you really dont need such a large AIO. I had a 240mm one and it couldn't handle long rendering sessions without throttling the CPU, but ever since I got a 360mm AIO I have no problem. If you dont care about aesthetics, a good beefy aircooler like Noctua/Wraithreaper can also do the job well for much less money. Another benefit to these big air coolers is that they cool the VRMs too.

The trees in the second image look a lot like iTrees Summer collection. Maybe my eyes are deceiving me, I don't know .. You can also try these two collections: www.evermotion.org/comm/am58/archmodels_vol_58.pdf www.evermotion.org/comm/am52/archmodels_vol_52.pdf

I'm not 100% certain sure, but by the looks of it, I'd say those are from the iTrees collection from R&D Group. http://rendering.ru/ru_en/models/itrees.html

Thanks guys, especially Brodie. I finally imported an easily manageable scene in 3Ds Max via the .skp importer. I exploded everything down to single objects and started grouping things in way that makes sense to me.: one building - one group. 90% of the imported models were spot on, but some had their polygon ID's and UV's all mixed up. Not sure why that happened, but I don't have the time to trace the problem that caused it. I also got rid of the double sided materials by unchecking the option at the bottom of the import dialog box: Import Front/Back Materials as Double Sided materials. This time around I had much less flipped polygons then with the previous import attemts, but I did notice the flipping is most likely to occur around places in the model that has a couple of different polygon ID's around it. For instance, I had a building as one object with 4-5 polygon ID's, half of the polygons making up the window frames were flipped and also some glass panels. There was no identifiable pattern though, so I'm still wondering what could have caused it. There were no flipped polygons on objects that had only 1 polygon ID. Based on this result, I'm starting to think that I should have grouped things like I originally thought: according to their material. I guess I was just lazy because it seemed much easier to select all the objects making up one building ... Now I'm not sure if the polygon ID's have anything to do with flipped polygons or its just a matter of how it was modeled in SU. If someone has any idea, I'd love to hear because I want to get to the bottom of this and understand how to make SU->Max importing as smooth as possible. Thanks again to everyone who shared their knowledge. Dimitar

That clears up a lot Brodie, thanks! I'm using 3Ds Max 2011 full license and SketchUp Pro 8. Yes, when I open the skp file things are grouped like that: pretty much everything in the scene is one group, when I explode I get several other groups, and then I can even go further exploding to get down to the single objects. But based on what you said about how SU handles these kind of things, I can see how that way of grouping things would make sense to a SU user who never had to work with 3Ds Max. I just dont understand why the first floor of a building would be grouped with foliage far away from the building ... I've attached a practical example. I'd like to import it in Max so that I get all the red cladding as one object, the glass from all the windows as one object, all the window frames as one object, all walls as one object. So basically I'd like to get a single object for each material on the building. But I don't want to get a single object that will contain parts of other buildings that have the same material. On second thought, perhaps getting one object for each material wouldn't be so bad after all. I guess I could try and detach the polygons/elements per building, but I'm not sure if that would be a wise thing to do, because in the previous project I did for the same client, when I was attaching/detaching parts, sometimes I was getting flipped faces, so I ended up remodeling parts of the scene. Another thing that I need to think of are the double sided materials. Since I'm not going to show anything from the interior, I don't want to get any double sided materials in my scene, nor I want to get two overlapping faces that have the same size and position (like an exact clone). How would I go about doing this? Another idea I though of, was the break up the SketchUp scene, either by building or by cluster of buildings, and then import in Max stage by stage. Also not so sure if this would be a wise thing to do. Based on your previous answers, I think I have a general idea of how to do this on my own, but I'd feel more comfortable if you can guide me through it. For lack of better words: thanks a lot, it really means a lot! Dimitar [ATTACH=CONFIG]44860[/ATTACH]

Thanks for the answers Brodie, much appreciated. Yup, the SU models I received had many object grouped(?) together, like parts of the building grouped with trees and other types of foliage, ... many different objects scattered around the scene in one group. That doesn't make any sense to me, as I would never ever group things like that, but then I thought that not everyone thinks like I do, or that perhaps that's how it should be in SU... Anyways, when I tried to select them in SU to delete the foliage, the people and other stuff that I don't need to import in 3Ds Max, I ended up selecting the whole group. Right-clicking on it gave me the option to explode them and select those objects individually. What I'm trying to say is that I can explode everything in the scene down to single objects, delete the ones I don't need and then group things according to my sense of logic. However, I'm not sure what to use to group them together. In the righ-click options I see Make Components and Make Groups and I have no clue which one to use, what each one does or what it is used for. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is the concept of Components and Groups in SU and how they relate to 3Ds Max. For instance, If I group all the parts of a building in SU, will the SU importer in 3D Max import it as a single object? What will happen to the different materials that were applied to the different parts of the building, will I get a single multi-sub object material for the whole group? I'm a newbie when it comes to SketchUp, so I might have used wrong terminology in my reply, sorry for that. I also hope the questions I asked aren't too silly. In any case, I think I'll try experimenting with groups and components, import in Max and see what I get. Thanks again. Dimitar

This seems like the right place to discuss my problem. I've been given a few SketchUp files from my clients to do visualizations for them in the past. Since I can't do it in SketchUp due to poly limitations, I had to import the skp file in 3ds max 2011. But each time I did it, I was getting flipped faces, tons and tons of multi-sub materials, and whats even more annoying, many sub materials were exactly the same except they had different names. I tried a few different importing options but always arrived at the same result. I got the 3rd project from the same client yesterday, and this scene is huge, the other 3 were a walk in the park compared to this monster: a whole city block with shopping malls, buildings, parks and whatnot. I still havent tried to import in Max, I plan to do that tomorrow, but the vastness of the scene really makes me think that I'll have to spend at least 30 hours or more, just applying materials and flipping faces. I will try some some of the proposed workflows for fixing the flipped faces, so hopefully I can get at least that part working. I made sure I read all the posts here, sorry if I accidentally missed it, but I didn't see an answer about fixing the materials issue. So I was wondering if there's anyone who ever faced this problem and what's the most efficient way of solving it. I think that I can cut down my problems in half if someone can tell me how to import the model in 3ds Max without those pesky multi-sub materials. Mind you, I'm a newbie in SketchUp, so if there's some extra preparation that I will have to do before importing in 3Ds Max, I'd prefer a more detailed explanation. I have a week of allnighters ahead of me, so please any help or advice would be so much appreciated. Thanks! Dimitar

Modeling in Max is very similar to Maya, quite a lot of tools are exactly the same. The only thing you'll need to get used to is the workflow part, which imo is very different. I've successfully exported a few scenes from 3ds Max and imported them in Maya via the FBX plugin. I haven't tried the other way around though, but I think it will work. There is V-Ray for Maya, wouldn't it be better to stick with Maya and just learn V-Ray? Regards, Dimitar

Try this free plugin by AvizStidios: http://www.avizstudio.com/tools/atree3d/ There are also a few tutorials. Easy to use and gives great results. http://www.cgtextures.com/ - look for the Skies 360 category for high res skies. I usually take 2 or 3 images and make something unique in Photoshop.

I work similar to Tom's method. My project folder consists of several sub folders like Max, Reference, Markup, Assets (proxies, modified textures from the library, ies files, models and so on), Renders, Final Output, After Effects/Fusion etc. My library is also categorized in this way (models, textures, HDRI .. etc) each having its own folder containing other subfolders to further specify what type of textures/models/etc is in it. I don't have a naming convention for my assets in the library though, I've tried a couple of times to do it, but I failed to see the benefit from it. I also organize my scenes in layers for which I always use the same names like dwg, facade, windows, doors, furniture, foliage, etc. Its nothing special or anything but it helps me manage my projects better. I don't name each individual object in the scene, I mostly group them and put a name on the group. The way I see it, what you're trying to do is a good thing, but you'll have to think of your own way to organize your stuff in a way it suits you and the people you work with. Happy organizing

Using sharpening filters like mitchel or catmul make the nose more apparent with brute force. Its a method I'd never use though, as it takes so much time. But if you really want to stick with it, increase the max subdivision in the image sampler. Don't go too high though, it will take forever to render.

I started with a cylinder, removed the top and bottom caps, and just manually moved the verticies from top and side view to try and match the reference image. I added a shell modifier to give it thickness and another edit poly to make the supporting edges for the turbosmooth modifier. Its a rough version and needs refinement though. Its a Max 2011 file http://www.sendspace.com/file/kwr3x7