-MerlyN-

Depends on your material setup. Will prolly require some experimentation. You can either try to take out the spec map alltogether and replace it with a falloff map, turn down the specular maps intensity or put the spec map in the white slot of a falloff map. The middle option will probably be enough if fresnel reflections are turned on. Satinated furniture usually doesnt require overly complex maps.

I had to smile, too, when I saw the book worm. Nice idea! Some C&C that IMO will greatly improve the image: 1. the cabinet doors should have some space around them. For inset furniture doors you will need 4-6mm space on all sides to be able to open the doors (depends on thickness of door). Cabinetmakers usually build them with 5-6mm as a standard. 2. Chamfer all the edges. In the real world there is no such thing as a sharp edge. Even a scalpel is not really sharp. On furniture edges, that can be touched, always are chamfered or have a fillet of at least 2-3mm. 3. The grain on the upright cabinet parts should run up, too. Also the backwall and the vertical and horizontal parts of the wall are all seperate parts (at least if it was built it would be). That also means, that each part will be from a different part of the tree and have a unique grain pattern. To add that extra bit of realism make sure, that the grain runs logically on all cabinet parts. 4. I'm not quite sure, if this is supposed to be acorn or birch. Both however can be very tricky materials with its mirror grains (not quite sure, what this is called in english, german carpenters call them "Spiegel" which is mirror, so I'll use that). On this image it looks like you have mirrored the grain in the specular map (point 4). you need to turn those down quite a bit. Also I'd activate fresnel reflections and maybe even try a falloff. Those mirrors are barely visible when looked at directly and only become visible when turned perpendicular to the light. The normal grain will always be visible through them, too. 5. The books. Look at your own book shelfs. How many collections of identical books do you have?

I've found some workarounds. The weird geometry shadowing vanished when I turned on "Store with irradiance map" in the Vray Light settings. The VRay Complete Map was saved when I enabled "Apply Color Mapping" in the RTT settings.

Hello all! I am trying to bake some textures with 3ds Max 2012 and Vray 2.1. Unfortunately I get a few issues that so far I have been unable to resolve myself and found nothing on Google either. So I hope someone here can point me in the right direction. The first problem I face is, that Vray does only save blank files when rendering to texture. I have tried enabling and disabling the Rendered Frame Window and the VFB, but in all combinations only blank files are saved. The second problem is that on some objects, I get the underlying triangle mesh as an overlay (see screenshot 1). When I render normally everything is fine (please dont be pricky about the lighting right now ). The material I use is a standard VRay Material with only a bump map. This does only happen on some objects however, not all. In a desperate attempt to get rid of this I deleted the object and rebuilt it from scratch and first I was totally happy as the artifact was gone. Then I rendered the map again and the triangles were back. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? Any help is greatly appreciated as I am turning in circles right now and getting grey hair fast. Thanks a lot!

that link points to cga forums, tom...

Very nice. Nothing to crit.

Apple never made a 64bit quicktime, thats why you wont be able to save from max to mov in 64bit. If you cant live w/o it, you'll have to work in 32bit, where quicktime should be available. However I'd always suggest to save out imagesequences from max only and only combine them into a video file in post. That way you have full control over every frame while working on it.

+1

I've started to built a catamaran sometime last year out of boredom. Back then I went with spline caging the hull and converted it to polys for detailing. I think spline cages work best in the early stages as all you have to do is copy the cross sections from the cad plans. As far as I know thats the way ship designers built the real things, too. I dont see the necessity to switch software, though, considering that max has everything to efficiently built any ship, and that in several different approaches. More difficult for me (and the reason I never finished the cat) is IMO that there are only so many references online. Its faily easy to get refs on the outer hull, but once you need to get inside and get all the inside bulkheads, hatches, small storages areas and things right it gets tedious. Might not be a problem, if you have access to ship builders and their cad files or even can just chat to them about that, though. Anyway, I'm looking forward to see your attempts! Apropro, I havent seen many grassy pics from you lately, James... *hinthint*

Yeah. Nice example, btw. This morning I couldnt really think of any situation where you'd need this, but you hit it. And yes, thats what bugs me of most tutorials. They only explain the simple things. I've never encountered any tutorial that would explain the really complicated situations where thinking out of the box would be required. For the peeling away paper I'd go with a blend material. That would probably be the easiest way of dealing with it. Not sure as I have never used a blend map with more than a base and one coat layer, but pretty much anyway. Glad if I could help.

Thats what Material ID's and the Map Channel's are for. If I need just on UV layout with different materials just assign different material IDs in edit poly mode and use a Multi/Sub Material. A couple of years ago I also managed to assign more than one UV layout to one object by working with several UV Unwrap mods set to different Map Channels. I just tried it again quickly and it didnt work, but I am not quite sure why. I know its possible however. Would be easier to just split the object though I think. However if you want to have two materials on the same face you'll have to work with a blend material and a mask.

if all other fails key the position. have the objects out of visible area until needed and then move them in from one frame to the next

the vertices are not welded. Each side is seperate from the others. The chamfer edge function only works on closed edges. Weld the vertices. Then it will work.

select the edge, hit chamfer and increase the number of segments

+1 Havent thought of cedar as its quite uncommon in Germany.