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braddewald

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  1. It seems like the slave doesn't have access to the texture maps - do a test on a flat texture and turn local host off in the DR settings to narrow down the problem.
  2. My question is: Is Corona better than Vray at producing a good looking image? If you take price and speed of the engines out of the equation, can Corona create a better image?
  3. Make sure your other machines have MultiTexture installed and that it's the same version.
  4. braddewald

    Arroway Gravel

    Yes, the Arroway Gravel collection comes with two types of gravel so it's a little confusing. There are the standard type of maps that can be mapped and applied to a surface as a material, and there is actual geometry. This geometry is pre-mapped (as well as randomized) and for each type of granite there are several colors. When applying the corresponding maps to what they call the "base mesh" it should work correctly out of the box.
  5. I saw this the other day on scriptspot, haven't had to try it out yet though: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/give-me-back-my-dialogs
  6. Ah, the duck technique Parkinson's Law of Triviality This started as a piece of corporate lore at Interplay Entertainment. It was well known that producers (a game industry position roughly equivalent to project manager) had to make a change to everything that was done. The assumption was that subconsciously they felt that if they didn't, they weren't adding value. The artist working on the queen animations for Battle Chess was aware of this tendency, and came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He animated this duck through all of the queen's animations, had it flapping around the corners. He also took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation. Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. The producer sat down and watched all of the animations. When they were done, he turned to the artist and said, "That looks great. Just one thing: get rid of the duck."
  7. What render engine are you using and have you paid for the software?
  8. For the life of me I cannot track down two stock images taken from the same vantage point of daytime and nighttime. The client wants a day and night view of the same interior so obviously I need a day and night skyline that are identical. Any ideas?
  9. I don't even see a Vray 3.x build for Max 2016 available on Chaos Group's website - am I missing something?
  10. It looks like you have some objects' refraction affecting the alpha channel and some aren't. You can also go to each object's vray properties and explicitly change their alpha contributions. From the V-Ray Help File: Alpha contribution - this allows you to control how the object will appear in the alpha channel. Note that this parameter does not require the object to be a matte object - this parameter has an effect on all objects. A value of 1.0 means that the object will appear normally in the alpha channel. A value of 0.0 means that the object will not be present in the alpha channel at all. A value of -1.0 will invert the alpha of the object. Note that turning an object into a matte object does not change its appearance in the alpha channel. You need to explicitly change its alpha contribution.
  11. How is it going? Have you noticed any hiccups? I'm astounded that there is already support for 3rd party plugins - it usually takes about 3 months. Any noticeable performance improvements? Huge changes? Improvements or steps backward?
  12. I've never seen that before. It's strange that you can't tell any difference with the other passes as I would have assumed it was a missing map causing the problem (a single server not having a map used for reflection glossiness for example). Could you be running different versions of v-ray? I was also thinking it could be Embree being used on the Intel nodes and not AMD nodes, but I have a mixed farm myself and I've never had this happen...
  13. Excellent reply, lot's to think about. Might I ask how you handle your four-person studio? Do you all work on the same project at once or do you work on separate projects? Do you each have your own set of clients like the "co-op / profit sharing" scheme you described? What's keeping them from splitting off and starting up their own studio? Another thing I'm wondering is if anybody has had any luck outsourcing a certain aspect of a project - modelling is the obvious thing that comes to mind.
  14. Those are definitely all valid points. I guess what I'm looking for is a solution that somebody has come up with. How do you scale a business that is intrinsically more profitable when done freelance-style? No matter what size your business is, what your margins are, and how much work you have it seems like in this industry there is no way to find skilled employees, pay them enough money to keep them around, while also increasing your margins.
  15. I've always heard that NDA and non-compete's are fairly unenforceable and are used as more of a deterrent. Is that true? It seems hard enough to find people out there with a decent portfolio let alone people who live near me. Is hiring an employee to work remotely worth the hassle? Is it improper to pay an employee a portion of the profit from a project or do you need to offer an hourly rate? Is there a good place to look for employees? Is it best to just post a help wanted ad on the CGA job board, Craigslist etc.?
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