annasaloura

yes, I see what you mean, Devin, lots of purple in dusk skies - will try that, see how it turns out... loving this, feels like creating a painting! I'll post soon.. cheers!

that's a day shot I've done with the pool so far.. open to suggestions... I know, the waterfall is funny...

Fransisco great data! I 'll test everything and post a new img. Though it seems difficult to use those linear lights on an overflowing pool, but I will try it. Great pictures! You mean, a dome light instead of my vray sun, right? somehow I thought that a vray sun renders faster that max's lights. I agree with you on the camera angle, don't want to nagg about speed of composition.... They specifically asked for yellow-ochre on the walls, which now turned beige everywhere, so color experimentation is out the window. A single plane for the horizontal surface of the pool, I will, you are right, but the waterfall part should be a particle flow source, right? Thank you very much for all the help, Francsisco, Casey, I will post the result!

thanks for the input Maxer. Yes, I see it, that happens because I have placed a vray sun at the level of my ground line, to mimic sunset, and it totally reflects on my water, making it look like mercury surface... Never done a night scene before, and the first one that came along had a waterfall in...Love challenges, though, I will see what I can do with my trasparency! Thanks again!

Thank you, Casey! Yes, it worked fine, thank you for your time. I kept the multiplier, though, since it kind of "burns" my colors, if larger. I will try it again with a larger multiplier and maybe some different sun settings (maybe that is where I am off). What do you think of the lighted waterfall? it is not quite what I had in mind. I just made a box and gave it a vray water material, but it does not feel right. I think I should try particle flow source, never done that before. Is there any other way to make a waterfall lighted at night? from what I have seen on the internet, particle flow does not generate a better image, than what I have, or maybe I have just seen beginners' stuff. I mean, my client will grantly pay for it, so, to say the least, my image should convey the right message, right? Thanks again, Casey.

Hello. You are giving great help to 3d artists everywhere. I am building a night exterior 3ds max vray scene and lighting my garden with vray spheres (radius of 80cm). My vray light spheres are placed over the exterior lights in the garden. They render with a very strong shape of a sphere, though their illumination is quite right, so I am guessing it does not have anything to do with intensity (which I have used a 150 multiplier for). My lights are casting shadows, they are double-sided, invisible, they ignore light normals, and they affect diffuse, specular and reflections. Any suggestions as to make them have less of a trace around the bollard, without darkening my scene? I also tried ies vray lights instead, but they come out somehow too pointy. I prefer the spheres. Thank you in advance for any time you give to this, Anna.

For some reason my first answer to you was "sensorshipped" (no offence, please, by the forum administrator, thanks to your forum and to ELEVATION, I solved my problem!). Thank you for the time, just by turning off displacement and frame buffer of all other stuff you suggested, the problem was solved. Great sharing.

I honestly can't tell who put my machine together, someone else was using it before me in the company I work for, doing this kind of work. But hopefully with your input I will remedy this with an upgrade. Thank you very much for taking the time to answer my post.

I am not very familiar with specs on computers when it comes to visualisation. It puzzles me how memory works. S What does"light on memory" mean? Supposedly I have the heaviest machine in the company I work for (which is not specifically about visualisation, I should say, so no one else does what I do. We don't specialise on visualisation. We design and construct buildings, however, visualisation is a very important part of it). Supposedly, as my employers say, they had spent 6000euros on my machine 5 years ago (someone else was using it then) and therefore it should be enough. I will ask for an upgrade, but I should know what to ask for. I will also reassign my materials to try out what you say about Autodesk materials. And maybe I should give it a go with Vray (I am using Vray for interiors). I have tried to integrate fruits to the trees, but when I selected the group (which was grouping 3d max treelib foliage and a bunch of fruit on it), it comes out "fruitless" as a proxy - it does not show any fruit, and that is why I placed them directly on the mr proxy object. Maybe I should try to "mesh" it all as you say. I visited the link about Thorsten Hartmann's render otpimizer. Ok....we say: "now that you are in the river you have to swim"....I am very intrigued to see how it works (beginner's curiosity!). It is all very pressuring (as always, though usually my pc delivers), because I am expecting the client from day to day, so there is very limited time for experiments (which I otherwise love), and I have no render. People with no knowledge about these programs mostly believe you hit two buttons and the pc does the work for you. About displacement, I had ticked "view" and "smoothing", edge length:200cm, Max.Displace:2000cm, Max.Subdiv.:16K. I turned them off and the frame buffer off, as well. Just these two of all you proposed delivered!! My render is shwiftly building up, fruits and everything! I am very grateful for all input. Thank you for sharing in this forum. You can't beat experience!!

I have been a bit frustrated with Vray since I can't open most of my old files when its license is running, though I would never doubt what it does. My first interior scene was with Vray and I could not believe the result in terms of how close it was to real. So, shamefully enough, I did not start this file in Vray. I will though just to try what you say, and maybe I should have in the first place to save me from all trouble now. Thank you very much for the promptness.

I have been asked to produce a 40-acre-fruit-tree cultivation aerial, with specific detail to show fruits on the trees. I am having memory trouble and cannot produce render images on my 110-tree scene, which I had also scaled down by 0.1, just in case sizing it down, helped. I should also say that my trees have fruit groups on them (max objects placed on to mr proxy trees). I use WIN7 ULT 64bit, Max 2012 for 64 bit, 700GB capacity, 8 processors i7 CPU 2,67Hz each, 4GB (RAM) memory, GeForce 9800GT 2815MB. Mr proxies sized down my file to half (from 40.000kb to 20.000kb). However, 3ds max keeps messaging that renders are cancelled due to insufficient memory. There are no lights on the scene except for two suns, all materials are from autodesk library (no more than 8 in total, grass being the most elaborate of all). Render info: output size 1753*1240, enable proxy system, downscale map to eighth its original size, use proxy only if the original map's largest dimension is greater than 256 pixels, render with proxies (high performance, low memory), page large images to disk, compute advance lighting when required, samples per pixel min:1/4, max:4, scanline: off, ray tracing: enable (no autovolume), BSP2. What more can I do? Thank you for your time.