robbybobson

Right I have sorted it out now so no need for any advice. If anyone has a similar problem then all i did was break it down into sections and render each light cache and irrad map separately. I had the lights fading up before but I did not have time to do the brute force calcs for this so I just had them turn on instantly and rendered the before and after sections then pieced them together later.

Thanks for the responses guys. I have compromised. I added a few 2d people to one view panning around the auditorium from the stage so they are all facing the camera naturally. Then avoided people all together in the other shots. Its a 4000 seat auditorium so I could not show a full house anyway. Personally I would rather show nobody than a few people dotted around. I think it should be a crowd or none. But client requested so... Anyway cheers for the help. Paul

Hi all, I am currently putting together a walkthrough for an auditorium using Vray and 3ds max 2010. I normally render out my light cache with flythrough then irrad map for every 5th frame and then load them up and render out the final frames. I usually do not have any animated objects apart from the camera movement itself. However on this occasion I have animated the lights (vray light plane, vrayies and a couple of standard spots) to be off when you enter the room and to turn up over the first 100 frames or so. So I have keyed the lights and the vraylight materials to do this and that works fine. The light cache does not work correctly when I render it out though. It leaves dark patches here and there. I don't have any moving objects, just textures and lights that change intensity. What is the correct method of calculating the light cache and irrad map. Any help would be appreciated. Paul

Thanks for that Marius, That site epictor seems pretty good. At least you can search by ethnicity. I got a few free samples from Got3d as well so I am getting there. Cheers for the help. Nice images by the way. I like the style of your visuals. What software/renderer do you use? Paul

Hi all, I currently putting together a 3d animation for an auditorium in Nigeria. The client has asked if I could populate the animation with some people and has also asked that I show black people. Now I don't normally add people to my animations as I think they generally spoil it. I used archvision RPCs where I used to work and they where ok I guess. I am a startup business so I cannot afford to spend a lot on getting these resources. I am finding that a lot of the 2d people packs you can buy have predominantly white folks in them. Does anyone know of a company that sells people packs based on ethnic groups. What is the current thoughts on using random people in picture from the web. I don't want to use people without permission as I have no control of where the images will be seen. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers, Paul

Thanks AJ, I will go for an amd 1055t or 1090t then I think. Would like an i7 but they are a bit expensive in comparison. I know nothing about the current situation with gfx cards. What sort of card should I be looking for with a 1090t and how much ram is the minimum these days. I just work by myself and my 3d work is generally small scale so I just need a budget card that is adequate. Thanks, Paul

Hi all, After a bit of advice. I have seen a used HP XW6400 dual xeon workstation for sale for £599. It has two xeon quad core processors, 4gb ram and dual quadro 285 graphics cards. I guess this is about 3-4 years old maybe. It seems they cost quite a lot new. Would this be a good buy or are there faster machines out there for similar prices now. I was considering a system using an AMD 1055ST with 6 cores. These can be found quite cheaply. I will be using it mostly for rendering using 3ds max/vray but might also use it for 2d and 3d cad. I can only afford about £600 for a system and I currently use a dell dual core 2ghz laptop with 2gb ram. Its starting to struggle a bit as I try and improve my 3D work. any advice welcome. Cheers, Paul

Has anyone any advice on improving the above? I am pretty happy with it but need to know what the experts think.

In the end I tried re-rendering the scene in vray instead of mental ray. First time using vray so took a while to figure out some of the settings. See attached image for how it currently stands. Looks a little overexposed in the right hand side of the image and the sofa material needs some work as does the glass on the coffee table. Overall I am much happier with the vray results though. Pleased I finally had a try at using it. Comments welcome.

Thanks for the replies guys, I agree about the flooring, I have altered the glossiness and bump settings. I have also set the walls to ambient occlusion and added a slight bump to them. Not sure what settings to use with the AO so will have mess around with it for a while. There was no post done on the images either so I could look at that. Will put up the results when I get a chance, Cheers, Paul

I am basically wondering what I need to do to make the image more photo-realistic. The modelling is ok I think but the lighting/texturing needs a lot of work. Should I add some surface displacement to the walls to try and alleviate the flatness of the image? Thanks in advance.

My first post! An old project that I recently came back to. My old living room in a Victorian house where I used to live. I did the modelling mostly in autocad with a little in 3ds max. Rendered with Max/mental ray. One shot is day and one is night with photometric lights. I am still pretty much a beginner at max and have been self taught at 3D Viz generally whilst working as an architectural technician over the years. Recently became unemployed so started trying to improve my max skills. Any tips on improving the images from you season pro's? I am working on a dual core 2ghz laptop so don't have lots of processing power to throw at it. The night shot took about 5 hours to render.