hyperfocaldesign

I'm not 100% sure as I use Blender. You can see the manual here though for max files: http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/HOWTO-ImportObjectMax.html I imagine the max import process for Unity would be much the same as Blender's though (and you can try it just using the free version of unity). For example with Blender I'll just go in and move vertices or add objects etc, save, alt tab to Unity, it loads it the changes automatically, all done. Your workflow might be slow regardless of game engine if you have to cleanup/UV map after bringing into Max each time, couldn't really comment much further.

Not sure where the nightmare comes from doing revisions? Do you mean changes to the 3D model? I'm not so clear on how Unreal handles model importing, but in Unity for example if you make a change to the model (in 3dsmax or whatever) and save it, then alt tab over to Unity, it'll auto load in those changes without you having to think about it.

I think ndo2 might be free at this point as the 3rd version is about to come out? Pretty sure that company has a special camera rig setup to capture "accurate" normal maps rather than the kinda guessed auto/photoshop ones but don't quote me on that Other than that I know normal mapping is really popular/heavily used in games dev too, so might be worth searching that field if you're having no luck.

Try not to get frustrated - realise that when you're making these images, you're taking on multiple roles, all of which need to line up well to form the perfect image. You need composition/photography skills, lighting, interior design, architecture, its pretty crazy! First thing that stuck out to me with your image was the camera angle - are you using a really wide angle lens? Or is the room just huge? I imagine sometimes its worth fighting the urge to show everything in a scene in one shot, hence making it super-wide.

I'd ask if something was blocking your light, but those are some tall towers so its unlikely. I found this interesting as I've encountered similar strange issues rotating HDRIs in Blender Octane, ie I'll rotate to 90 degrees, the lighting pretty much breaks, but then if I rotate to 90.01 degrees, it fixes itself. Perhaps something to do with the transformation that occurs from lat/long to the environment sphere?

I'm not a Vray user but here's some things I'd think about: - Direction of the light coming from outside. Right now is it coming straight in (you mention those plane lights)? Consider how it might look if the sun came from 45 degrees rather than straight in, or how it might look with an overhead sun vs setting sun, etc. - Remove all lights/HDRIs and try starting with just the HDRI or just the light planes. You might have too many light sources washing everything out. - Are the reflective surfaces bouncing the light around too much and again washing things out? - Try angle those light planes as if they're coming from the sky rather than the windows themselves as lights. Keen to see any updates!

Hi Sima, We do a couple of free HDRI skies as well: http://www.hyperfocaldesign.com/free-hdri-sky And you can also download our new time-lapse HDRI sky domes here. There's 863 sample size frames and a full resolution 9500px one as well. Regards, Jay

Another +1 for Marmoset Sky Shop, I've had a play around with that in Unity (free version). The real time shadows in Pro would be pretty awesome when combined with it. I imagine it will be the first of a number of HDR solutions. Its not the most accurate (it IS real time), but it sure does look nice, and you can tweak away endlessly with different values for exposure, diffuse, specular levels etc. They use a similar idea to sIBL where you have separate low res diffuse lighting maps, specular and a skybox/cube map. I'll have to load in an architectural model and light it some time, have so far only messed with their default moped model with their sweet, sweet shaders attached.

Forgot the irrandiance settings. To be honest I have little idea so far what these actually do, but I generally set everything extremely low as you can see.

I just did a new render with far lower settings for IP/importons, and made it 1024x768, high anti aliasing. It looks basically the same as the last one I posted, and took 26 minutes on an amd dual 4200, 3 gigs ram. The lighting "pass" (?) itself only took a second before it was actually rendering.

I'm quite happy with the results I've gotten, especially since I'm no 3ds max expert by any stretch of the imagination. Its late so I won't go into detail on settings or anything but here's a pic using one of our soon to be released VHDRIs and a clients house model. I dragged out the teapot myself Still not sure if razor edged shadows are really possible, but I'll keep looking into it. Would be good to hear what you think. Cheers.

Ok I've got it running now, and when creating a scene from scratch I can get some nice lighting and sharp shadows. I might have to write up a proper tutorial, its definitely a superior method to standard mental ray and final gathering. When working on a clients scene I'm having an odd problem where he isn't getting any real shadows showing up at all, just really light/fuzzy ones with no definition or length. Even when using a sunset HDRI... I'm pretty baffled by that... I'm also getting a number of errors: db 0.3 error 041012: attempt to unpin null tag No idea what that is or if its related?

Hey Travis, no worries. I'm using the 2010 trial, and yes I downloaded the ctrl.ghost shader. I can use it within the material editor, and its there in the create tab under mental ray, so it appears to be loading fine. I've been testing it in other people's scenes so far but might try one from scratch now. It definitely works with HDRIs right? Or maybe? Will keep you updated. Cheers.

Hi guys, I'm looking closely into Irradiance particles and importons for 3ds max and HDRI. Hopefully the ctrl.ghost plugin will be a good alternative (or equal?) for non VRay users to get nice shadows and lighting out of the box. I've downloaded a couple of scenes to test out but unfortunately the one you provided us with Crazy didn't render properly for me. It just comes out black. I get a load of errors about lights too, which is probably whats messing it up. The other scene I managed to get working but then the lighting/shadow information doesn't seem to be updating... Unfortunately I don't have a lot of experience with max these days but thankfully I did use it a lot years ago. I'm going to have a look at it again with fresh eyes tomorrow, and Crazy if you'd like to test some of our HDRIs with IP/importons then I'd be happy to share some with you. Cheers.

Try using a seperate, invisible, smaller, possibly blurred HDRI for your lighting, this seems to be a universal fix in software that has this problem. Hope that helps.