wannabeartist

Thanks for the tips, guys! It turned out to be the transparency color, which I had set to black and also the portal light was visible to renderer. There was no glass there to get rid of, this was purely misuse of portal light. I did need to adjust the portal light's position a little. I had it just outside a window frame and once I got rid of the black area, I started getting the frame visible in the render, even though it's outside the clipping plane. Pushing the portal light to the inner edge of the frame solved that and I finally got a clean render. Thanks again!

Hi, I need to render an interior scene where the camera is outside the building - this is so that I can use a more suitable focal length. I use clipping planes to cut out the wall closest to the camera. This works great for regular walls, but I've got one wall with a window that has MR portal light on it: It seems that having the portal light between the interior and the camera causes part of the scene not to render at all (shows as a black rectangle) - funny enough, during FG the image looks fine, but once it starts to render it, part of the image turns completely black. So the problem setup is: camera >---- portal light --> (clipping plane) ---- geometry If I remove the portal light, the image renders correctly, but of course with totally different lighting - is there anyway to keep the portal light and still get it to render correctly?

Go ahead, I'd love to see what you did.

Hi, Are you working with Max 2010 or 2011? If you are, you could try the Graphite modeling tools (Freeform) to get some more wrinkles - it's kind of like ZBrush, but of course much simpler. I haven't really done much anything cloth related after the sofa, so I have no new information on this. Still consider ZBrush myself, but it's too much money to invest right now.

Great, thanks! I've just been trying to be extra careful in my portfolio work to avoid any legal issues. Even though it's not for sale, it's still a marketing device, so I've made sure that all things like texture graphics and hdr-images are ok for commercial work.

Thanks for the links, Bjørn! Brian, I have 2 of the books - they are great, by the way But is it ok to use the example drawings as a basis for commercial portfolio work? Of course the images in my portfolio are not for sale, but it is a commercial portfolio for my business.

I can believe that, but of course it takes a little practice to get used to handling those files. Speaking about them, is there some place in the net where I could get some free-to-use DWGs? I mean free in the sense that 3D work based on those can be published in a commercial portfolio.

Thanks again, I need to get my hands on some DWGs and do a couple of portfolio projects first - it seems obvious now, that I need more hands on experience with "integration to AutoCAD" before I start calling architects. Same goes for SketchUp. Things are a bit simpler, when dealing with hand drawn interior designs or background blueprints

Thanks for the input, That matches with my (uneducated) ideas on the subject - the idea of rebuilding a 3d model already designed in AutoCAD, for example, doesn't sound like a very reasonable idea. That said, I should probably get familiar with AutoCAD drawings. I use 3ds Max, but I have no real experience of using AutoCAD drawings as a starting point for modeling anything.

Thanks for linking that! I'd better watch that a couple of times to get some good arguments, once I start calling around. Too bad, I don't have enough material yet to even consider such a marketing video - but at least I have a web site with some still images for now.

Good point, There might also be some differences in culture in different countries, comparing architects and their willingness to subcontract something they could, at least in theory, do by them selves. From what I learned working in the software industry before, sometimes it was just about dividing work - We could done it ourselves, but subcontracting some parts of the software entirely made sense by faster time-to-market and better concentration on the parts we knew best.

Yes, this is true - there's of course a huge amount of possibilities for 3d apps and artists in general, but I was mainly trying to find the selling points when dealing with architects. I'm afraid, I'm going to get a lot of "Why? We can do it our selves!" -answers, when I start calling the local architects here. Of course, one should not be that pessimistic either - but I'll see what happens when I pick up the phone and start making those calls

Thanks for the reply! That makes sense - Existence of tools is only part of the equation and of course the actual design work is more "core skill" for the architect, than making a nice render. I really hope that button you mention is not quite in the next release of AutoCAD yet - it would be a shame

Hi all, I've done mainly interior visualizations so far, for clients that don't use any CAD software, but I'm interested in going for the actual architectural visualization as well. Being terribly ignorant on what can be done with today's CAD software, I'm a little confused on the rationale of doing a separate visualization. What are the benefits for the client in handing over the designs for someone else? Especially if they are completely fluent with AutoCAD? For instance, it has mental ray - is it somehow more limited edition to the one that ships with 3ds Max? Thanks!

Hi, I've been rendering images for the web and other digital medias, but recently I was asked to render some for print (brochures) - I never done this before. Is there something special to consider, when rendering for print? Colors? Image format? Assuming that the client is not able or willing to do much post-work. I know it needs to be pretty big in pixels, but that's about all what I know about print.