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Architectual 3D Newbie.


Ky Lane
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Can see me spending alot of time in these forums, as Ive just started in the architectual 3D stuff since doing my Masters of Digital Design here in Australia, so I thought Id introduce myself and say hi.

 

Ive fallen in love with 3D visualisations (especially property) and am in awe of alot of the work shown on this site by members - Im hoping to teach myself to get to a similar standard.

 

At the moment, Im just running an Edu version of 3D Studio Max 8, with the default scanline renderer and basically building everything myself from scratch.

 

This has been my first effort. This was modelled from a hand drawn floorplan sketch, and a few hand drawn notes. It took about 3 frikken days to render on my old 1.4Ghz Athlon, and still needs alot of photoshop work, but Im pretty happy with the result!

 

Kitchen-Final.jpg

 

I have just gone and bought myself a new Dell dualcore desktop in the hopes it will help me learn these amazing skills, within the boundaries of my own sanity.

 

Anyway, hope to converse with you all regularly and drain you all of as much knowledge, tips and tricks as I can...

 

Cheers,

 

Ky.

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I am a bit surprised.. even with that old Athlon, it should not take 3 days.. Maybe, there is something else that is wrong.. Well, I am not sure.. because if you had all the settings pretty high, set to a production-grade render.. then those artefacts that you see in the image would not prolly be there..

 

Also, texturing and lighting need a bit of work.. The environment you have chosen is not exactly best suited for this sort of work.. dont ask me how or why :D... there are many senior members here who know better..

But I guess you will get better sooner than the rest of us..

 

Anyways, good stuff.. and good luck with your new machine..

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Thanks for the comments.

 

Im very limited in terms of texturing. As a beginner, I probably dont have the fantastic libraries you guys have on tap. Simialar with lighting. Whats there was purely experimental....but seems to work OK. Not particularly realistic, but they do the job.

 

I have done a quick search for local colleges and schools to offer me more of a course in 3D, but I havent found anything as yet. Quite frustrating!

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Oh, and FYI, I have alot of raytrace reflections/refractions going on in there, which is why I think its taking so long. MR can do a test render in about 10mins, but the quality is fairly dodgey (see attached).

 

Also some bizzare raytrace anomolies going on there too. Im at a bit of a loss. :confused:

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There's some funky stuff going on in there, but it's a good start for sure, keep at it. You can find a lot of learning materials on the web - search this forum, and cgtalk.com, and look at sites like evermotion.org. There are also DVDs availabe, like what's on thegnomonworkshop.com.

 

Textures don't have to be bought, a lot can be found free on the net, taken from digital camera photos or scans of material samples that an architecture office has (doesn't help much if you don't work in an architecture office) or made in Photoshop or through the Max materials system, which is pretty powerful.

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There's some funky stuff going on in there, but it's a good start for sure, keep at it. You can find a lot of learning materials on the web - search this forum, and cgtalk.com, and look at sites like evermotion.org. There are also DVDs availabe, like what's on thegnomonworkshop.com.

 

Textures don't have to be bought, a lot can be found free on the net, taken from digital camera photos or scans of material samples that an architecture office has (doesn't help much if you don't work in an architecture office) or made in Photoshop or through the Max materials system, which is pretty powerful.

Thanks for that. I was given a small fittings and fixtured board which I photographed and used, but my material experience is obviously as limited as my modelling and lighting experience. Im sure the more I do it, the better Ill get... Be nice to have something as a point of reference tho.

 

Ill look into some DVD's, but Im sure Id get so much more out of some 1on1 tutoring (impossible to find here), and skip all the guff.

 

I think the new system will help with experimenting as well. Its a bit hard to experiment when it takes days to render something!

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your modelling skills etc seem pretty solid. My first thought when looking at your image and hearing about your render time (which I suspect is some error in raytracing) is that you need to get very involved with lighting and texturing. "Digital lighting and rendering second edition" is awesome and very generic.....as in they give you techniques to use in terms of Global illumination and fakeosity (which is probably where your at right now). Also as mentioned before the Gnomon stuff is excellent.

 

I remember my first system....p4 1.6 that used to render images like this in about 5-8 minutes. So I don't think hardware is the problem. Maybe you can hide some things or change some textures and find out whats going wrong.

 

other than that welcome and we look forward to your progression....your already one step ahead of me when I first started....I thought that there was no need to join forums and that I could work it all out myself.....how wrong I was.

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I remember starting (not too long ago, with max 7) and i had similar probloms with scanline. I can remember, but i was doing something with the radiosity that was killing my render time. Something about subdivisions etc... I converted to MR because so many people were using it here and eventually got the hang of.... i love it and recommend you spend more time learning MR than fussing with default scanline.

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Bob and Marek, thanks for your encouragement and comments. Im starting to think MR is the way. Learning scanline since Ver5, Im just more comfy with it, especially in terms of global illum/sky lights. I think the main time killer is the light bounces as part of the advanced lighting rollout. Ive set it to 1 (to get those cool color bounces off the wall).

 

For my next project, Ill start with MR, and stick with it.

 

Bob, if youre interested in looking at my .max file, you're more than welcome (Im sure you have nothing better to do! ;) )

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Thanks for the encouragement again.

 

The re-modelling and re-texturising is coming along ok.

 

Excuse the crudeness of the render, but Ive decided to model in parts, then bring it together at the end this time (rather than render huge amounts). :)

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You know.. somehow you have got me worried.. You are on low quality on this one and it still took 7 minutes.. what is your configuration?

 

You will have to prolly ramp up the samples to get a cleaner look.. one suggestion though.. For test renders dont use Irradiance and QMC for your GI solution .. use light cache instead (both primary and secondary bounces).. faster.. though an approximation..

 

And oh yes, you can also turn off reflections for your test renders to speed things up even more..

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ATM running an old 1.3Ghz Athlon and 1Gig SDram....Cant wait for my new dell dual core to arrive.

That scene has alot of chrome reflections, the doors are a translucent map etc...so Im not suprised.

Been working tonight (its now 3am) on the scene and some more on the kitchen...

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