schmoron13

that sounds like a great idea! i'm game for it.

the only other thing, is that you've got repeating tiles on each building. nice overall though, and really digging the reflections and overall lighting.

depending on what software you run for your day-to-day stuff (itunes, etc), you might consider one of the Vista 64 flavors. I have xp64 and though it runs great, itunes does NOT have drivers for it so I have to use a chop-shopped older version, and I had similar issues with my pro-sound card, my printer, my DAW, etc. Some folks don't make xp64 drivers (though they make vista64 drivers) so if you look it up ahead of time, you'll save yourself a headache. I'm still debating if I want to grind it out till windows 7 comes out or just bite the bullet, grimace, and purchase vista 64. if you buy vista 64, you DO NOT get a copy of xp64 btw. I paid about 150 US for mine.

I've used it a ton and as far as v5, it's great. I heard v6 is buggy and takes tons of resources to run, but again, it depends on what you're going for. I had to render out and then print 6' x 3' images for thesis presentations (for myself and for classmates) done on a core2 duo so I couldn't render out at 11000 pixels (@150dpi) so we upped it to almost 600% if I remember correctly and for overall images, it worked great. For some of my renders that were heavy on lattices, it wasn't as sharp, but printing on mylar softened the overall images to where it wasn't noticable. Overall, it works, if you can't/don't want to render out HUGE. But it depends what you want to do with the image. If it's for print, you have to take into account that seeing a detail on screen is misleading as you won't see huge images that close (billboards, etc). hope this helps

my guess is that your normals are flipped. Isolate the faces that aren't rendering (hide everything else) and go to: Analyze > Directions, and make sure that your normals (arrows) are facing towards the camera (outward). What I usually do is make sure that all my objects are double sided (have a thickness). So you could easily extrude the surfaces that aren't showing inward, and thus your perimeter geometry is still "as is." Even a 32nd of a inch will do the trick. hope this helps.

shalom! or for a procedural way to go, you can follow this tutorial. Super easy, and super quick: http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2008/03/tiles-and-bricks_05.html

Ryan, I am a little shocked by your tone. You asked for comments. Tommy gave you constructive criticism. A general rule for online forums is NEVER complain about your feedback. you just open your self to criticism. If you didn't like his response, ignore it. you asked for a critique, but turning it into a diatribe about "dumb comments" isn't necessary. What I think Tommy was getting at, which i feel the same about, is a common problem in renderings which involves too much freedom when finding that perfect view. If you consider this shot as a traditional photograph, you'd most likely look at using a wider angle lense, or at least, a vertical alignment if you'd like to focus on the architecture. Look at a series of publications and see how similar architectural spaces are photographed. right now, the horizontal shot alignment makes things hard to ascertain, especially vis-a-vis its verticality. The double height space tends to lose its punch because the viewer is not only close to the ground, but the camera appears to remain parallel to the ground questioning why it's that low to begin with. Furthermore, the beam running through the center draws the eye to the right (where it recedes) so i'm drawn to the light fixtures, and in turn (in the foreground) the blurred chairs. The lit lights in the kitchen reinforce that area's dominance. Lastly, the light seems too balanced considering one area is naturally lit (on the left) and the other is artificial. great render for the most part; keep it up, and take all criticism with a grain of salt (good or bad).

also: the blown-out reflection in the flooring. in a daytime shot, even when turned on, those light shades wouldn't appear so self-illuminated the lighting in general is too even considering how blown up the exterior is. the glasses have great highlights though!

very nice. Can you explain your workflow. Renderer, lighting rig, whether those are your textures or purchased ones, etc... fantastic though

though the fine folks at maxon would tell you it's just that your system isn't up to snuff

working for THEM for 3+ years, I can tell you that there are divisions of autodesk that are in almost every continent. I sometimes would deal with folks in India and Shanghai, and even within the division, personal changes meant that some of these employees would come here or we'd go there.... So it wouldn't surprise me if the latter caller was legit....

love it. On the pipes, I'd turn down the DOF. It makes them look like they're toothpick thin. I'm not digging the oranges shot. It feels plasticy. And the super blown out lighting isn't helping. The pencils....WOW

you could do a procedural with mental ray. Just create a mix material and use a mix map to designate where the rust occurs. The rust itself is pretty straight forward to create in max, i would imagine. hope that helps

assuming that you're using Max, but these work with any package assuming you're using Mental Ray. personally, you can't go wrong with RealFlow. I used it for my thesis and it's super quick to pick up (especially the fluid simulator), and exporting it to Max is a breeze. if not, i'd recommend one of two modes: HEAVY DETAIL: model and texture the riverbed, then boolean the water so it's a solid sitting on the water. if you look on jeff patton's site (http://jeffpatton.cgsociety.org/blog/archive/2007/1/), he has a great caustics water tutorial which when using max2008/2009, is super quick to get fantastic results. You can have caustics, refraction, the whole shabang. LIGHT DETAIL: model the river bed, and then put in a plane for the water surface. You can then just use the arch&design water material, and set it so it's more river-like (default is ocean).it's fully animate-able and with a little tweaking you can go from silt still water to a gushing rapid. and if you really want to get nutty with it, you can add noise modifiers to tweak the plane before hand. hope this helps

eww