mrstardust

Hi, haven´t done any archviz for quite a while and having some trouble putting my problem in the post title... So, this is the task I´m confronted with at the moment: I have to build a relatively simple scene for a client, showing only one view for a building with a glass fassade like this: long link from google search The output will be a 500cmx300cm print, so the resolution will be at least a couple of thousands pixel in length and width, depending on the dpi... So far I haven´t found any hdris with a sufficiently high enough resolution for free on the net and the ones I found were still way too blurry. Actually all of them were quite blurry even with the lo-res testrenders I did with them, so I´m not sure I did it right: The second problem I got: I was also told to put some sun reflections on the building like in this image: Another link I used a glossy glass material on the windows, and tried to get those reflections from a vray sun, but I only got a similar effect, if I lowered the glossiness values below 1.0, but then of course I got blurry reflections of the sky, wich I didn´t want... Since my HDRIs all came out blurry in the reflections, I also tried overriding the reflections with a texture in the environment slot (since I couldn´t find any panoramas or 360° textures of skys I just used screen as mapping method), but that just looked fake. My current approach would be a combination of the two: 1. Render a pass with mirror like reflections, without any additional lights. 2. Render a pass where I lower the glossiness values and use a directional light to place some specular light on the glass. 3. Comp in photoshop. Last but not least: The client wants a tree in the reflections, but I don´t want to increase my render times unnecessary, so how should Iput the tree in the reflections: Use a billboard at rendertime? Or just comp one in afterwards in photoshop? I´m also not very good at compositing in photoshop, but I guess it would be easier to handle that kind of resolution in photoshop anyway, so I´d love to hear some input or links to tutorials how to tackle this project...

Since google knows only the answer to the opposite way... I´m trying to import a simple animation from 3DS Max into Sketchup. The reason for this is, that i like the sketchup styles and thought it might be easier to just render those out, than trying to achieve a similar look in after effects. Is there a direct way to import an animation from 3DS max into sketchup? or do i have to import the model and animate it in Sketchup? The problem is, that i want to fade from the sketchup-look to a photorealistic render with mental ray, so it has to be exactly the same... Any ideas? So far i couldn´t even import as .3DS because all objects were in the wrong place after importing...

yeah, i already read about that plugin. but since i just wanna get my portfolio done now, i kind of lost appetite for sketchup and just remodeled everything in Max. Theres a fantastic plugin called EdgeChEx, wich automaticall chamfers all edges you define by a threshold, so it doesn´t chamfer anything you don´t want...Just select te whole object, define the amount and enjoy all the free time you saved... Once i´m finished with my actual project i wanna give sketchup another try, my biggest problem is still not to use components and groups wisely.

since this thread already existed, i thought i might just jump in aswell... I´m currently still working on workflow optimization. Since alot of the archviz-gurus like ronen bekerman swear on the sketchup-modeling, max-rendering workflow, i tried this out myself. I´m now on my 4th startover and starting to get frustrated. I know in an everyday workflow most of the times you got deadlines preventing you from producing something even vaguely as professional as those nice renders. But i´m not there yet and so i´m still trying to accomplish the best results for a portfolio while still learning to be fast and efficient. my first experiences with sketchup went from this: "Wow this is fast and intuitive" to this: "Wow this looks total crap in 3DS-max, cant use it at all!" My second step was to start over in sketchup, trying to produce a better organised base model for further refinement in 3DS-Max. Asked by another forum member, what i wanted to refine, i replied: "Mostly chamfering edges to get rid of that CG-Look" that still proved to be an almost impossible task, even with a slightly better organised SU-Model. I then played around with the Round Edges Feature in MR, but wasn´t quite satisfied. Below i posted a comparison between Base Model, Model with Rounded Corners (set to 1.3 cm) and Model with some chamfered edges (also 1.3cm). I hope you can see what i´m getting at. Weirdly the further away edges look worse with Rounded Corners (wich is supposed to work better with further away objects), the chamfered version just looks more defined. So now i completely remodeled the house in 3DS Max, only to find the chamfering to be even more tedious, since i can´t just select all edges and chamfer without getting weird results (holes, tris and such). Finally i found EdgeChEx and tried the demo version. This seemed to be perfect. I´d still like to get the SU-Max-Workflow to work, so i tried EdgeChEx on my SU-model. But once i try to render or collapse the stack, 3DSMax just crashes and i couldn´t find any help on EdgeChEx online. Any ideas on how to get this to work? Or any ideas on the general workflow? Here are the comparison pics: No round Corners/No Chamfer [ATTACH=CONFIG]45950[/ATTACH] Round Corners [ATTACH=CONFIG]45949[/ATTACH] Round Corners with Blend [ATTACH=CONFIG]45952[/ATTACH] Chamfered [ATTACH=CONFIG]45951[/ATTACH]

Hi, and thanks for the feedback! Well, there actually is a window upstairs. Somehow only the Skylight seems to come through though, gotta fiddle around with the daylight system i guess... I think i got the flooring close to the reference, you can see that better from an other angle: [ATTACH=CONFIG]44957[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]44958[/ATTACH] I think you´re right about the wood from the built-in cabinets though. Thanks! Right now i got some other projects to work on, i´ll come back to it later, once i can start compiling things for my portfolio.

Haven´t really been working on this for a while now, but i did a couple of nightshots after this post, so here they are. Still no postproduction and the curtain still got those messed up UVs... [ATTACH=CONFIG]44925[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]44926[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]44927[/ATTACH]

You´re welcome! And here are some more! They´re actuallo not tutorials, but they helped me grasping SUs potential in a professional workflow: http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2011/05/modeling-in-sketchup.html http://www.peterguthrie.net/blog/2010/11/sketchup/ Lots of people in 3D seem to be. That´s probably why they´re all so nice and htelpful... ge Yeah. Tell me about it. Thats the main reason for some of my problems: Lack of time and concentration. I´m actually thinking about co-working. Dunno if its just a local trend in germany, probably not, but recently a couple of co-working places started around here. They´re offering the chance for an affordable office place along with great networking opportunities. Great thing for a starter like me! I was down with the flu, so not good...

Hi Ernesto, I´ve been down with the flu, and i couldn´t really concentrate on what i was doing, so i´m still a little stuck between remodeling and reorganizing. I did read up on some other blogs though and i´m starting to realize how to use sketchup and why its differences to Max don´t really matter in the Archviz Area...

So how do you do that? Simply by grouping everything by material as i wanna try in my future workflow? I was down with the flu, so i still couldn´t decide if i´m gonna stick with my actual, badly grouped SU model and try to find workarounds for importing and texturing in Max, or if i should just remodel again and train myself in proper grouping... Good thing my only deadline so far is my own impatience.

Yeah, i just tend to collect tons of things that "might be useful once" and then completely lose track of them...happened to me with max, so i´m trying to reduce the additional stuff i get for any package... I can see though that there are some i´ll have to get to have more "fun" in SU. Yes i will...especially because my skills in max are still far from "expert", so definitely need more training there before i become a pro in another package. Once more, your input has been very helpful! You might have mentioned it somewhere else, but do you yourself actually use max in your workflow? If so, what do you say about my export/import considerations?

Hi Brodie, nice to see you here aswell, since you´ve been really helpful already... Well. I don�t really have a workflow yet, hence the interesting questions. That about sums up the feeling i got the last couple of days... Yeah, meanwhile i really can only see 2 possible reasons for that: 1) Doing some more complex shapes. For example: Its really easy in Max to create some splines and just give them thickness to get things like wires and such. Generally speaking, organic forms seem to be easier to model in Max than in SU. But then again: None of that applies to the project i´m working on right now, so i kind of jumped ahead with the assumption i´d need further editing in Max. 2) Round corners...The plugin you mentioned seems perfect for that though. Since i only tried to achieve round corners with the follow me tool in SU so far, and since that is limited to rectangular shapes, the plugin really could spare me the troubles in Max. I´ll definitely stick to Max for modeling difficult props though, theres just too many great modifiers to speed up the process of modelling those. That might also be the reason for my concerns: I actually wanna do both exterior and interior of the project i´m currently working on. Wich might be a bit over the top, but since i don´t just wanna use it as an exercise, but maybe also for my future portfolio, i thought it might be a good idea. Well, on my first attempts i didn´t group anything, nor did i use components and it got near impossible to edit anything later on... And like i said: Because i wanna model the interior stuff in max, i got to be able to quickly hide and unhide the exterior geometry. Another reason is, that i might want to improve the overall look of the building by breaking up the parts, that are made of the same material and then uvmap/unwrap those to break up the tiling of the textures or add some dirt to them (for example: most of the exterior on my prohect is concrete, it would look rather gruesome if i just used one tileable texture for that...) And i guess it would be quite a nightmare if i would have to do that with one big hunk of geometry...I haven´t really done alot of that in previous projects, so i´m also not quite sure how to tackle that problem best from a Max-perspective in the first place... I´d still love to look at one of your files, i´ll send you my adress by PM... Thanx again for shedding some more light on the workflow!

Since this thread already exists, i thought i could just jump in with my problems aswell... I started using sketchup roughly a week ago and i´m still in the process of wrapping my head around the whole concept, since i come from max. Like many others i was a bit scared when i imported the sketchup model into max and had all those badly triangulated faces (at least thats´what i learned). I´ve also had problems of getting the idea of grouping and making components, so i basically had to remodel my basemodel twice already, because it was impossible to change anything after my inital modeling mess. As it now seems like i have to remodel again, i thought i might get some things clear before i start again... 1. Grouping of Objects. I did some grouping and layering on my second attempt, its just not enough to separate the model efficiently in max for things like UVmapping/unwrapping. for example i have all the floors, walls and windows grouped together in groups like "level 1", "level 2" etc., instead of groups for the floors, walls and windows... So now i´m thinking, if it would be faster to remodel the whole thing or if i should try to separate the objects further in sketchup (nesting groups and such), wich seems to me like a tedious and problematic way of doing it. One thing i thought of is to put different materials on the objects i want to seperate and then just export by material, i haven´t tried it yet though. 2. Exporting vs importing. Since Max now has the ability to directly import sketchup files, i was really happy. Then i realized that all the "Export to 3ds" Options were missing on import: Basically i could only chose to split objects by layer or not. So i imported splitting by layer, but i didn´t get the right layers at all. It kind of seemed reversed, because when i unticked that, i did get the right layers imported from sketchup. So my question is: As neat as it might be to directly import in Max - I guess i should stick to exporting via sketchup, right? 3. Future workflow. In case i will have to remodel again, i wanna make sure i get things right this time, so i can do the texturing and rendering in Max without all the problems i´m going through right now. So this is what i would do: A) Make a group or component for every object that will get a different texture later on, or that will need to be unwrapped/mapped seperately later on. B) Make Layers for the different levels of the building for convinient hiding/unhiding in Max. C) Either put a rough texture on every object on creation or use a color with a description of the texture to use later on. D) Once i´m done, export to .3ds. I´m not sure about the settings i should use there. I found this blog post pretty useful: SKetchup to 3ds Max does work He recommends to export as a single object, but that would give me a hard time refining the model in 3DS Max, since i would have no way of efficiently hiding parts of the geometry. Splitting by material again would mean i´d get different objects for every material, wich also would be unconvinient for refining the model in 3DS Max,s o wich method would you recommend? E) Round corners. I´m pretty sure this has also already been covered, but i´m still gonna ask it...: How do you handle round corners? Do you do them in Sketchup aswell? And if so, whats the most efficient way to do them? Or do you chamfer in Max? Or do you just use fake rounded corners like the option in mental ray? Sorry for the long post, but i´d like to be thorough this time...

Hi Ernesto, thanks for the link, i already reposted it, even though i didn´t have time to watch it all... Right now i´m a bit tired of sketchup, i already remodeled my actual exercise project twice and now it seems like i´ll have to do it again, because i still didn´t organize my model well enough. Since i wanna use sketchup only for the rough modeling part and do the more advanced modeling (Interiors, props etc.), texturing and rendering in Max, theres a couple of issues i´m still running into... I put too many things in one layer instead of grouping and making components fro everything, and now i´m having a hard time seperating objects for UV-Mapping and such. Your video also kind of shows my main concerns: That it takes so much more time in sketchup to get a clean model, that its not that much faster than other packages in the end. I´m still not giving up though, since all the pros (bekerman, guthrie etc.) seem to get the results they need from it... I´m a bit stubborn, so i also won´t give up and remodel again, but rather try to think of ways to still get good results with what i already have...

I like starting useful threads... This is a link i got from another thread: Google SketchUP Pro – Best Practices And i agree about breaking it up...since i´m homeschooling, i´m trying to include that in my weekly schedule: One day of focusing on something different.

Thats what i´m famous for. Seriously though: Maybe this problem only occurs to me since i´m working with reference pictures and i don´t have any other information on the materials than what i see. I guess it´s not ok to just upload the fotos i downloaded from archdaily.com, but i guess i may link there: http://www.archdaily.com/156059/house-20-jolson-architecture/ Most of the materials i can eyball (lots of cement...) without further knowledge, but some materials i´d like to know where to look textures/reference images if i wanna recreate them as close as possible: The metal fence on the outside for example, or the patterned cement in the column-like structure that connects all floors. Another example: Wood floorings. Of course i also could just google for it until i find the right looking textures and memorize the names ("ok, so these are washed concrete wall slabs!") for future reference...I´d just hope for some sort of online compendium with pictures so i could start from there. I actually found a site thats almost spot on: http://www.raumprobe.de Unfortunately its in german only, so i guess it´s not gonna help all readers here...It also requires a membership for some stuff, i didn´t have the time yet to check out if its useful without. Another useful link would be the arroway site: you can browse a library of all their products online, you can even freely download lo-res examples of the textures. Ok, i guess you could say i already got some good starting points...but i´d still appreciate more links for useful online librarys like that... Or a way to just to those in my head without having to browse through all of them...