elliottsmith

Hi Adam, Nice images. Perhaps you could look at adding an AO layer in post or a Vray Dirt shader to your materials, stop's them looking flat and uniform.

Thanks guys. Piro, woudl you say it is the front dof that looks odd or the back, as I was thinking of removing the front dof altogether. I'll have a think on what and where I could put some more detail into the scene, maybe loads of dead leaves on the grass and water would help. Thanks

[ATTACH=CONFIG]42276[/ATTACH]

Studio/Institution: Personal Project Genre: Residential Exterior Software: 3ds Max 2011, VRay 2.0, After Effects CS5 Description: Hi all, This is the first time i've posted work any kind, anywhere, in years, after taking a break from viz work. Looking to get back to what I love to do. All comments welcome. Thanks

Not sure if this should go here or over in the Cinema section but I just found this, http://www.m4d.info/ Have to say, I wasn't expecting that. Bit pricey though.

Hi Phil, If you interested I will be testing the 460 and 480 next week and once i've got the results i'll add them to the benchmark results I posted about last week. My gut feeling is that unless you have huge scenes that require 4GB + you'll be fine with the GTX range. Vray 2.0 isnt out until December anyway, so there's plenty of time to see what provides the best solution.

It's an interesting point. I've been testing both V-Ray RT GPU beta and iray since they have been available and there do seem to be differences between the two that make an impact on what hardware is required. Vray gives you the option to globally throttle the size of your textures so that your scene will fit onto the graphics card. With iray, if it doesn't fit onto the card it will only utilise the CPU, which i've found to be painfully slow (admittedly I haven't done as much testing with iray). On the flip side, you can use proxies with iray and I would hope you can do the same with vray, although they aren't currently supported in the GPU beta. The cost of hardware will depend on your typical scene, and like Andrew said, ATI will be rolling out much more affordable 4GB cards next month or so (which wont work with iray) and then hopefully Nvidia will follow. Andrew, do you know how many processor cores they will have, whether they will have a gamer amount or a pro card amount? With regards to the cost of the software, iray, whilst only available to subs holders, will mostly likely be included with Max 2012. So, if your not on subs it'll cost you £400 odd to get it now, which will be the cheapest way to get it and also means you will get Max 2012. There are upgrade paths for vray, if you have it already, it'll be about £350. So, all in all it looks like you could get either a vray or iray GPU solution for about £800 ($1250), split evenly between the software upgrade and a next gen ATI or Nvidia 4GB gamer card. For a one off purchase I guess it will probably be worth it, but it's a tricky one.

For those who care, Craft Animation is available to all Maya subscription holders, as of this week.

I'll also be testing iray and will do an article comparing the relative speeds and quality of both renderers.

Hi guys, I've been testing the V-Ray RT GPU beta at work and thought I would share with you the results. I'm definately looking to test more mid range cards as well as some ATI cards but for now this will do. http://www.jigsaw3d.com/articles/v-ray-rt-gpu-benchmark-test Enjoy!

Hi Chortik, It looks like you have resolved your problem but if you need any more info on gamma, I have just written a few articels for my work. There are a few parts to it, all relating to different workflows. http://www.jigsaw3d.com/articles/linear-workflow-and-gamma-correction Hope they help.

Yes I will be addressing those issues when I next have some spare time. I'll be adding some animated noise to the leaves to give the timelapse effect and will also sort out the shadows cast by the leaves I couldnt animate. To get wind involved in the reactor bit, would you play with the X and Y params in the Havok rollout or put a wind space warp in? I did try to get the leaves to float rather than drop, but I found that when I reduced the mass of the reactor leaves or reduced the Z axis gravity effect the animation got really large and would have taken a lot longer to render. Does anyone have any suggestions to overcome this?

Here are the fruits of my weekend. It took about 16 hours to render and i've almost got what i'm after, so thankyou for all your helpful comments.

Thanks for all your comments. I will give reactor a go and get back to you with the results.

This is my first post so I hope someone can help. I am using 3ds Max 2010 and am trying to animate the falling of dead leaves from a tree. I am using a tree brought in from Onyx, converted to an editable poly. I havent used particle flow that much but have been able to get my leaves to emit from a source and tumble to the ground. What I am trying to do is get the leaves that are already in place to fall to the ground and rest there, i.e, no emiting from a source. I have thought that this may be made easier if the leaves werent one element, so I detached all leaves to individaul elements, but still can get it to work. I've also tried removing the birth operand as I dont want to generate leaves, rather animate existng leaves, but still cant get the effect I need. I have looked through these forums and elsewhere on the internet but cannot find an answer and have just spent two hours on hold with Autodesk only to be cut off, twice! I have attached an image of how my pflow has been created. Thanks in advance.