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You need to use smoothing groups. If the item is an editable poly, select the faces that should be smoothed and put them all in the same smoothing group. So for example, a cylinder might have all edges in group 1, and the top and bottom caps in group 2. In the example below you can see the sphere is faceted as it's polygons have nomsmoothing group selected. If you put them all in group 1 you get a smooth sphere. http://members.cox.net/dangerdoggie/max6-sg.jpg The smoothing group dialogue is at the bottom of the modifier panel for editable polys/meshes.

Hey, Im playing around with a scene, getting to know linear workflow. Its an interior scene lit with a vray sun. The sun multiplier is 0.5, using a vray physical cam with exposure on, all good, scene is coming out looking ok. I have some downlights in the ceiling and I tried to add vray lights, vray light material, vray IESs and they were all coming out black. I discovered that if I set the multiplier much higher, as in 50,000 (!!), I would finally see some effect. I've tried changing the scene units, it was modelled in millimetres, but still the same problem. Setting the light to 50,000 doesnt result in huge render times or anything, but im just stumped on what could be causing this. Also, in my material slot for VraySky, the sky always looks completely whited out, no matter what value is in the intensity multiplier. Im not sure if this is related. [ATTACH=CONFIG]43658[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]43660[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]43661[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]43662[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]43659[/ATTACH]

Thanks for your comments, it will eventually be to hopefully get a job. Im working in architecture at the moment but not in visualisation full time, where I would like to be. I know what you mean about the TV transition. The footage on the TV is being looped so when the camera gets close to it, you can see it ends and starts again, causing an off-putting jump. I might replace the screen material with the first frame of the red bull air race scene as a still, so hopefully that 'jump' will be a little smoother. The other transition between 747 interior and the next architectural animation just kind of changes from one to the other, I may put a fade to white as the camera leaves the plane. My character animation definitely needs work though. I was quite proud to even link the body parts together

Thanks for your feedback, and yes I did all modelling/animation setup/rendering

Hey, This is a showreel i've been putting together of my recent work. Its not all architecture, but any comments are welcome! Thanks http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-A-B_ynpAc

I'm currently working as a technician in an architectural practice and also want to break into 3D full-time, but a move seems risky at the moment, especially with the way the architectural industry is in Ireland. There are unfortunately a lot of unemployed architects here. Graduated 4 years ago with a very basic knowledge of 3ds and a decent knowledge of Sketchup and Photoshop. When I started working I taught myself 3Ds Max and Vray in the job, and was luckily given the '3D guy' role in my office. Unfortunately there is just technical work for the past 6 months (tender/construction drawings and specification writing) which has made me realise how much more I enjoy 3d/presentation work, and despise the technical stuff! I have considered courses but find it difficult to gauge what level course I should take. I know 3ds pretty good, but for all I know, I'm doing things the hard way because I'm self-taught. So i've immersed myself in a few books (3dats books are excellent) and am taking it from there. Currently I'm piecing together my 3D work from the last 4 years into a show-reel which will hopefully lead to something. Best of luck to everyone breaking into the industry, and remember - "If you enjoy what you do, you will never work another day in your life" Stephen

Soundtrack is just pure audio, 1 track, so simple enough. The audio is chosen so its just a matter of aligning clips to match up to it. When researching video software, I keep coming back to premiere elements. It seems to do what I need, and within the budget. If this show reel results in more clients looking for animations (fingers crossed!) I may upgrade to pro. I'm probably not going to get into DVD menus. I want this to be simple, so that someone who may not be too technically-minded can just pop the disc in and off they go. If there was a menu, it would only say "play" anyway. I will put contact info in at the end on a slide, and on the disc box. Ill test out one of the animations burned to DVD and see how it all looks. I've already prepared myself for re-rendering anyway so if thats the case its not the end of the world, ill render during the day at home and overnight at the office. Thanks again for your advice, very helpful indeed.

Thanks, this is exactly what I needed to hear!! Obviously I want this to be high quality, but dont want to overkill it and make massive files where the quality will be lost. Ill keep them at 1024 and see how they look. To be honest I haven't thought that far ahead. I want to research it now though before I prepare the animations for render. Hopefully the 1024 wide is acceptable, meaning most of the animations are ready to go. I mainly do still images, so am learning about video at the moment. Animated showreels are far more impressive than a slideshow of stills, assuming the quality is there, that is. If anyone has an recommendations on software for stitching videos together with fades etc, and adding a soundtrack, I'd love to hear them, same goes for DVD authoring software. Thanks for replies so far.

Select all vertices and scale in the z axis (or other axis, depending on which axis you want them). Keep scaling down, down, down, until they're flat. This may not result in them being in the exact same plane, but extremely close to it. Someone else may have a better suggestion, but this is what I use mostly.

Thanks for that! So lets say I render everything in 1280x720, burn it to dvd in dvd format it should play ok on other machines? I suppose its not a resolution issue its more of a format issue. The upload to youtube isn't overly important, but wanna make sure everything is ok before rendering everything again. So, seeing as I already have 1024x576 animations, would there be an issue in only re-rendering the others to this same resolution, and having the whole thing at 1024 wide?? Once its in DVD format it should play 16:9 on any DVD player/computer, right?

I've done a lot of animations over the past couple of years in 3ds max, and am now planning on putting a showreel together, with music etc... The animations are all different resolutions and am planning on re-rendering them at the same resolution so the video flows well and has a consistent quality throughout. Has anyone got any advice on what resolution to render these at before I start to re-render? (probably a week or 2 render time overall!!) I would like 16:9 ratio, but after that, I don't know a lot about video resolutions. I would like to put the show reel on a DVD, and upload to YouTube/Vimeo. The vast majority of the animations are 1024x576 (I have no idea where this came from!! ), which is 16:9. For quality purposes should I go Full HD to 1920x1080 or is this overkill? Im bearing in mind that if I send this to clients, I want it to appear on their screens as it does on mine. The current 1024x576 animations play fine on windows media player, but play as a crushed down 720x576 on VLC player, when in avi format. Is DVD format the way to go to ensure it looks the same no matter where it is played? Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

Model it in Sketchup, its actually very straightforward. When you select the arc tool to draw the curve itself, you can see in the bottom right corner "Sides: 12". This is the default. Change this to something bigger, like 100. A 12 sided arc is all well and good in a large sketchup scene where you are trying to keep a low-poly count, but for something like this which will be exported to max, it is important when intersecting arcs, for each of them to have a lot of edges. Once both shapes are drawn and in position, select all, and hit Edit > Intersect > with model. This will draw lines along the intersection. Delete whats is not needed and this will leave you with the desired shape. Sorry I attempted to attach an example but cannot until i reach 10 posts. I will edit and attach once I've reached the post count. EDIT: the attchments seem to have worked. See the difference between 100 sides and 4 sides?

Thanks, i know nothing about scripts so no, didn't use them. I animated the ground floor glass all at once, and then selected each panel separately and moved the keys ahead 5 frames each. I then copied this group upwards to the above floors, selected all keys and moved them all ahead 10 frames per floor, so they would begin just after the floor below. It took forever!! I must look into scripts so

Hi, I did the following render as a means of learning v-ray and animation techniques. Any comments would be greatly appreciated.. Im still planning on adding people and some more objects, such as bins and more planting, to the scene... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mwiymnShKY Watch in HD for best result

Thanks for the advice. It looks like I may have to start at frame zero again if I want to include the lights for the night part of the render anyway. Seeing as I'm new to V-Ray, can people post up finished animations/renders here for critiques? I'm heading away on holiday this weekend and hope to leave it render while i'm gone, because it may take a couple of days. I'd like to get some feedback when its finished.