mikebart

Hey paulenescu, not exactly sure how it was done in the tutorial you read but I've done a quick test using a vray blend material and then composite materials to overlay the opacity maps, might even be a bit simpler, note that some of the composite layer masks have been inverted in there output. Heres the scene: http://www.mediafire.com/download/kg9h4ipd3t9irf5/facade_test.zip

Hey Shaun, Ill try and explain how I've used the composite materials for this sort of thing, and also a method I've used of rendering masks for terrain that you might find useful and is pretty easy to set up. Composite Material: Pretty much each map is like a .psd file, with layers, masks and blending modes. you can sort of make procedural textures using this method too if you use noise maps in the mask slot. I've used 3 different rock textures of the same type of rock, so they were derived from the same photo source, each with their own reflect, gloss and normal maps, all 2048's. Make sure each map and mask corresponds to each of the composite maps in the material, also its a good idea to instance your masks early on so for e.g, if you make changes to a noise map mask, you only have to change it once on the diffuse instead of going through all the other maps, reflect, gloss, normal, etc. I've just thrown together a quick section of cliff as an example, this mesh has 2 UV channels on it, so UV channel 1 will handle all your rock and grass textures and you can control how much it tiles like you normally would. UV Channel 2 covers the whole mesh like a light map, no overlap, so I'd imagine for what you want to do, this channel would cover all of your cliffs, and would probably require that you use the UVUnwrap modifier to pack all of your cliffs into one or two large maps. This channel will be used for masking for the grass or loose gravelly soil. Making the Mask: To generate the mask for the grass, place a directional light facing down, turn on overshoot so it has no bounds, and turn off shadows. On the base material turn off all map slots except the normal map slot, make sure the diffuse colour is full white. Add a vrayCompletemap to be rendered to texture, and this will be used as the mask for the grass or what ever you want to be the loose stuff falling down and sitting on the upper surfaces of the rock. So as you can see the normal maps have been rendered into the image. Once you've added the mask for the grass you can then have a play around with scaling UV channel 1 to get even more variation out of the rock. heres the final result. View Close up Also if you use multiscatter or something, you can use the mask for vegetation distribution.

Have you used composite materials before?, you can layer materials on top of one another using masks, the interface is very similar to photoshop, you can even set blending modes for layers. ill try and post an example of what I mean tomorrow, I had to do something quite similar a while back.

looks good chris, the hard part im finding with them is getting these tight, neat, clusters of foliage, im doing a bit of hand modelling as well as using the atree3d script to try to achieve this sort of look.

thanks guys, should have something pretty soon, good to know there's people interested in Aussie vegetation.

I've been working on some Australian vegetation in my spare time for quite a while, its slow going but im getting close to releasing a few models for testing on the forum, hopefully to get some feedback. these are just a few test renders

Hi Chris, I just threw together a really quick tutorial on how to model this shape using box modelling and parametric deformers in the modifier stack. If you look at the scene from left to right you should be able to get an idea of how I did it, just go through the modifier stack and switch off the modifiers from top to bottom and you should be able to reverse engineer it, hope it helps heres the max file https://www.mediafire.com/?0b099771xig97g2

Hey Adrian, the whole image does look a bit washed out, it might be that your materials are a bit flat, not enough reflection going on in the floor or the glass. Having some more reflection on the banister, hand rail and posts might reflect some darker shadows from down below. It might be that its just a matter of not enough reflections and the light level is fine, but might also need a bit more contrast added to the image.

Studio/Institution: Freelance Genre: Residential Interior Software: 3dsmax, Vray, Photoshop Description: Hi, Im just looking for some help and direction about turning this scene into a nice image, I'll probably add some lounge furniture like a coffee table and some couches, etc.. but hopefully without taking too much attention away from the cabinetry. I've modeled all the props apart from the liquor bottles and the pendant light also, is it normal for a Vray fur rug to be so dark?, im finding it very hard to get it to render in correlation with the lighting in the rest of the scene, maybe my settings. Any feedback would be great, thanks in advance.

will hopefully have something ready next year

Thanks for the new update, I've just recently been using ATree3d to make various branches which im attaching to a custom made trunk for trees used in the foreground of a scene. So im using it in a bit of a different way but its been very useful nonetheless. I've rendered the branches to texture and then applied the texture to planes, the planes represent the branches in the veiwport. I've then aligned the planes with a vrayproxy of the Atree3d generated model and grouped them individually as shown in the image below. The planes only render in the veiwport and give me a pretty good indication of the volume of foliage without affecting viewport performance. Im just wondering if it would be possible to use the branch proxies in place of leaves in the script?, pretty much in the same way as the low poly gum trees i posted earlier on in this thread. Maybe the tree could be generated just using the low poly representations of the branches and then swapped out later with their corresponding vrayproxy?. Would it be possible to allow "groups" to be used aswell as editable meshes/polys for leaves and have the script still preserve the objects inside the group?. This could be a good way of generating very large, highly detailed trees, without affecting veiwport performance too much, while also giving a decent preview of the rendered product in the veiwport.

I just tried opening an .at3d file just to remind myself so that I could explain it to you, but it didnt work, it just brought up the 'about' dialogue box. Maybe we're having the same problem, when you try to open an .at3d file does it bring up the 'about' dialogue box?. im running 3dsmax 2013 normally its pretty easy to open you just click the 'load' button and choose an .at3d file.

Im not really sure what you mean so i might be telling you something you already know, but you can copy and paste UV's from one model to another, this usually only works if both models are derived from the same source geometry and it can only be done in the faces sub-object level in the UVWunwrap editor window, select all, edit, copy, then paste into the other meshes UVs in the UVWunwrap editor window did that help? could you show some pictures of the models to get a better idea of what you mean? if the sofas are similar in shape you could try projection rendering the fabric parts diffuse from one object to another, not sure if that helps either

This is a great idea, being new to Vray myself i've had to suffer through a fair bit of trial and error to figure some pretty basic things out. http://stackideas.com/easydiscuss.html This could be a better solution for a FAQ guide than putting it all on a forum initially, and then perhaps an ebook could be compiled from it later on.

thanks again, that helps alot. A bit OT but, have you seen anyone use the displacement mod for doing things like large expances of Ivy on walls?, I think it could be ideal for that.