James Vella

Best of luck

I personally prefer to render each element as its own exr image, they are still the size of the total exr as a single (combined) but more work to manage within your composite. For example you need to shuffle the channels to get the output before you use it. Heres a video explaining the method if thats the route you want to take: In my experience Node/Nuke compositing is good if you intend on setting up pipelines. What I mean by this is that you create a 'recipe' which will be used throughout many projects/animations that will be setup in the same way, always consistent IDs, depths, naming, etc. Once you do this you can pipe everything through and get consistent results, LUTs, whatever. But if you work on the fly, and things change a lot between each animation/project then its not worth the hassle, render the elements you want separately as EXR files and comp the ones you need in, leave the ones you don't need for that project out etc. Nodes have their purpose, they are basically visual ways of programming so as long as things are consistent then its highly beneficial, if you work as a TD (Technical Director) then yes its worth it. If you work as an artist then traditional methods can be faster in that case, timeline editing or layer style (after effects workflow). I've worked as a TD for a film productions and when I work in archviz studios or on my own projects, there's no way I would use nodes unless I absolutely have to. If you are doing it because you think its necessary, its not. If you are doing it because you need to, then set aside some time to setup a proper pipeline and make sure its rock solid.

If you are using Brute force then don't pre calculate the light cache, that's for Irradiance. Its also the old way of doing it, yes it speeds up the render time but its quite a complex setup, brute force/light cache - render and you will get good animation output as long as the samples are high enough. 16 bit half-float is more than enough for animation, much smaller files and a very large range of depth. No need for 32bit unless you are doing some heavy depth work, even then you can just use other techniques such as deep-compositing. Setup your Render Elements as per usual then in the vfb save options select add render elements, then add the ones you want for the exr file.

ha yeah I read that, I would expect most people that invest in shares would hold onto them for the long term, but im not most people I suppose =D (or the other way around)

lol $35, a lot has changed. Am I reading this right, she got $4m in shares? If she kept that diamond ring it would probably be worth more than its weight too. I would probably disappear if I had $4m too =D Thanks for sharing Scott.

Phase 3 - Commission for what? You are doing marketing material. Like I said its not based on commission its based on pro-rata (images/renders). When people make a billboard image for Nike they don't get paid per billboard, or per sale, they get paid for the image which is a small part of their campaign. Sure it may seem like its the most important (from the studio/artists perspective) but there's more to the message than that. Like I said sure you can try but if you are doing 3D work for real-estate you are already at the bottom of the market. If you want to make better income selling 3D content then sell to developers, they are the ones with the money & vision. You can bundle up an entire package for Branding, Website, Floorplans, Photography, Filmed content, and mash that together with your bottom end market (3D Visuals) and then you can bring your bottom dollar up (substantially!). You are fishing in the wrong pond in my opinion. I've worked in all parts of the hierarchy and the 3D visuals is always the lowest common denominator, so you need to push your business in a way that entices clients to trust you so you can push their brand to the top of the market place. This is why a logo can cost $500,000, and you are struggling for average wages on a 3D render. You need to offer something of value to the right client who needs more than 1 service. If you can't do that then you are going to be stuck with real-estate, and that's not a good place to be in the long term (especially for a studio). Lets roll back to the Nike example for a moment, their brand was publicly released in 1971. Do you think artists who make their advertisements have any type of license to their work? No it belongs to Nike, same with any commission work you do, the IP belongs to the Company. Nike spent a lot of time building their brand (which is the most important aspect of the business). The artists don't build the brand they do what they are told to do: make an image. If you want to build value with a client you help them build their brand, otherwise you are just another commissioned artist/studio that helped that Company deliver their message. If a company delivers your message, then you are entitled to a % of the value you bring that Company (and no, that does not happen with a 3D render, it occurs from building a brand - which is a message, values, a voice, a strategy and interaction at every touch point in the business which is key to the success of the business as a whole).

That's an average of $5,333 USD per render correct? If so then that's about the same as what high-end 3D viz studios are charging per still image renders. So what's the problem? You can always try for commission if you think its worth while, but sales is completely different to marketing material, in my opinion. How many sales people does a 3D studio have compared to the artists who make marketing material in that studio? Probably about 2 sales people per 10-15 artists right? Most of the time those 2 sales people bring in all the work that the artists do, which means those 2 people are suppling 15 artists (lets say average $70k per year). Which means they are bringing in more than $1m per year of work, PLUS business expenses/taxes/licenses/admin/owner income/managers etc. Which means those sales people who work at your studio if working on a commission of say 35% should be getting paid $350k per year, minimum. So why do you think you should be paid on a commission basis if you are not doing the sales work?

When you copy it into the new scene, is that new scene also in meters?

This is actually to do with system units. When working with large scenes meters is your best option otherwise you get z-fighting in perspective view. If changing units is not an option (since it will break lots of things such as real-world units and modifiers) then use the orthographic view.

Are you using denoiser in the render settings? If so turn it off and see if it still appears the same. If it doesnt then your render time is too short and not enough samples in the darker areas of the images are creating a smudged appearence - render longer and do a test region on that spot.

The fbx has the textures stripped from the materials, which means it wasnt exported correctly. Ask the artist who provided you the fbx to re-export with textures embedded or linked. Most likely they exported it from a non supported engine, the materials should be either Standard(Legacy) or Physical. Also this file you attached is just the fbx (without the textures). I assume these textures above you have posted should be included in a zipped package or something similar. When you import into 3dsmax and press shift+T you should see the textures that are either in the scene or missing, if there is nothing in the asset tracker then the materials/textures didnt export correctly. Also the uvs looked stripped for some reason.

There is no form of history like Fusion has. Modelling in 3dsmax is mostly freeform, so no mathematical stuff, its 'good practise' to collapse everything when selling 3D content so everything is basically a mesh at this point, you lose all extrusions, lofts, sweeps etc for most situations. 1. Toggle F3 for wireframe/solid view. Or in the top left corner of the viewport You have something like [Orthographic][Standard][Default Shading] - select default shading and you can select different view types. 2. To select editing mode your object must be an Editable Polygon/Mesh. You will see this in the Modifier tab on the right side of the screen. Buttons 1,2,3,4,5 Are Vertex, Edge, Border, Polygon, Element mode. If you have trouble a quick way to make something Editable, you can right click on the object > Convert to > Editable Polygon. Edit: Element mode might be your best option since its a useful way in 3dsmax to grab large chunks of objects that are meant to be one piece, so you can select an Element like a wheel and then 'detach' it. Hold control when selecting multiple elements, so for example the wheel may not be the same element as the rubber on the tyre, but you can grab both together holding control and clicking. This way you can take that wheel and import it into Fusion and trace over it. Rinse repeat for the other elements and each object should be small enough to export/import without much issues. 3. Highlight geometry to merge > What does this mean? This is an entirely different concept in 3dsmax and I'm not familiar enough with Fusion. Edit: I think from a quick youtube this means boolean modifier in 3dsmax, try it see if thats the one you are looking for, same with your next question. 4. Merge into a separate body/object in the scene > What does this mean? Do you mean copy/paste between different scenes? You can File > Save Selected or use a copy/paste script if that is what you mean. 5. You can use Pro-Optimize in the modifier tab to reduce subdivisions. There is also Retopology modifier. There is a few others but they are probably the most fastest ways of reducing geometry count with less artifacts. 6. Good luck with manifold. If the geometry has holes and was not designed like this its going to take a long time, I would do that in Fusion by tracing over it. You can try cap holes in Edititable Polygon mode but generally its more miss than hit. Dont worry about learning 3dsmax, ive been using it every day for the past 15 years, Ive barely scratched the surface lol. Theres many many ways to do things in 3dsmax, all have a combining effect so you will truly never learn everything, but theres plenty of ways not to do things thats for sure.

I would say if the original model was not designed for 3D printing then yeah, its going to be an absolute mess for that kind of workflow. So you are probably right and need to rebuild it. However I would be inclined to just trace over it if you are happy with the current shape. I would just break it up into the logical parts, bring those parts into Fusion then trace the shape and discard the original after. Rince, repeat. Considering you have to build all that extra stuff for the RC Rig then its probably worth doing it that way anyway since you will need space for motors, bearings etc. What is the original file format? Do you have anything other than OBJ, for example did the original model come as 3dsmax? If so does it have subdivision levels? If that's the case you should be able to switch the subdivision off giving you a low poly mesh to work with so it should be more optimized to export to Fusion.

My question is why do you need it as a solid mesh in Fusion? I understand that's your native software. I understand the hurdles you are facing. But what I don't understand is the end result, Are you just trying to show your client the model in different perspectives, or are you trying to show the client orthographic views (front/side/top) like a CAD drawing? Please be specific of the end goal, what your client is actually expecting, something they can 3D print and hold, 2D drawings... what is the end goal? The DXF export in 3dsmax is not really designed for this, its basically for clean ArchiCAD (sp)lines. Its not really what you are looking for in terms of taking a 3D object and turning it into a 2D representation. While you certainly can render orthographic views in 3dsmax using different techniques (like toon shader or similar) I'm not sure if that's actually what you need. If you need to clean up in 3dsmax use the boolean or proboolean Modifier tool(s). This will take any intersections through the center of the mesh and remove it. Essentially once you have combined all parts using boolean you should end up with a 'solid mesh' basically. It will reduce all the geometry you don't see and keep what is external... if that's what you require. I'm just punting here since most of what have mentioned don't really pin point anything in particular. Can you just show some images of what your final intention is; for example this is something I have done before for a client, this is what they want A -> B -> C. This will make it far easier for people here to suggest something that might suit your outcome. The question you have is far too vague since 1) There is hundreds of ways to do things in 3dsmax 2) half of them might be a waste of your time if you are not very specific.

Andrew, what is the end goal here? Do you need it for 3D printing? Otherwise why not just use the model as it is if its just for rendering purposes? I would say you are right about the obj export, do you have the native 3dsmax files? Are they different in any way? I could go into more details but for now if you can clarify these things we can discuss some more options since it all depends on the intent.