Material Color Pass....URGENT!!!

[jtiscareno]

I am in a bit of a pickle, running to meet a deadline for Thursday so I just have basically one more day to finish.

 

I need to separate all material and/or finishes in 10 different views of an office interior (full with workstations, books, etc). I had seen Ernest or others use a "quick material color pass" to get an image like shown below but tried to do it an can not seem to get the total flat mode.

 

So what do I need to do to get an image looking totally flat an in colors???

 

I am using max8 and vray 1.47

 

Now would it be better just to buy cebas psd-manager???

[Ernest Burden III]

I had seen Ernest or others use a "quick material color pass" to get an image like shown below

 

Nothing below.

 

Nor do I currently use either Max or vRay.

 

But I do have an idea for you. One very effective way to get a 'materials map' out of any program is to save a copy and remove color maps and bump. Set up ambient light at 100% white with no other lights on and render. If some mats are the same color, change them to anything that is unique. Best without AA. It should be the quickest render you ever did. Do one pass with ray depth as close to zero as you can (1 or 0) and anoter with the same settings as your regular render. The one at zero will be the more useful.

 

You load this map into Photoshop as a layer above the rest and turn it on, select a flat area of color, switch back to your render layer and make whatever mod needs doing.

 

 

Some program, I'm sure vray would be one of them, will do a map based on a pre-defines object buffer or various other ways. But the ambient method is your quickest solution.

 

I hope that helps...

[jtiscareno]

oops forgot the image (image is from Ernest Bruden).

[Ernest Burden III]

(image is from Ernest Bruden).

 

Yeah, that's how I did that (C4D). It even worked in Lightscape.

[AJLynn]

I've done this by using the simplest form of the materials, turning off default lighting (there's a way to do that in most Max-based renderers, like make an omni light and turn it off) and setting an ambient light value in Environment. I think I was using mental ray but you should be able to get the same thing in Vray.

[Ky Lane]

Or perhaps use something like the Swift3D max plugin?

[AJLynn]

Using a plugin would be sooooo overkill. VRay doesn't seem to cooperate with the ambient thing, but there are some other ways. It can be done by using VRayLightMtl instead of VRayMtl on all objects with the value set to 1 and the textmap or swatch set to the diffuse of the correspoding VRayMtl. Or convert all materials to standard, make a light and turn it off, turn the environment ambient to white and render in mental ray.

 

Also, if Chris sees this and wants to say something, I'm positive he knows betters ways. [Edited out some info that might not be correct.]

[Sawyer]

In 1.5 I have 2 passes that work well. 1 is render id the other is wire color. I am not sure if you have those as passes in 1.47.

[Nils Norgren]

I don't know if it's to late for this information to be useful, there are a few ways to do this, but in my opinion you should skip trying to manipulate the ambient/environment settings.

 

option#1 - make a Standard Material, set its self illumination to 100 (use value instead of color) and set the material to a fully saturated color, copy this material for as many objects as you need isolated change each to a distinct color, apply the different materials to the objects you want isolated, turn off all lights and disable all render effects in Vary (reflection, shadows, etc). This should give you the selectable render that Ernest showed at the DVC

 

Option#2, In the material editor, make each existing material have a unique material ID, (down below the materials) and select Material ID pass in the render passes, (in vray 1.47 I am unsure if you use the render passes or select from within the vray panel)

 

Option#3 Select objects (or groups of objects) and bring up their properties and assign different Object IDs and render an object ID pass,

 

Option 2 and 3 may be slightly slower renders (as you don't have to strip the file down for set up) but they are easier/faster to set up.

 

Hope this helps,

 

-Nils

[Ernest Burden III]

This should give you the selectable render that Ernest showed at the DVC

 

The one I showed there was an older one, from Lightscape. I used the ambient at 100% method for that. Currently using C4D and/or FinalRender2 and I can use either that method or the object buffer.

 

I'm glad to see detail on vRay since I'll be taking that on very soon.

 

The point in the end is that just about any engine can produce a flat material map and having one is extremely useful when you are doing final touches on your work in Photoshop. That's where the quality goes in.

 

Good luck with your deadline!

[jtiscareno]

Option#2, In the material editor, make each existing material have a unique material ID, (down below the materials) and select Material ID pass in the render passes, (in vray 1.47 I am unsure if you use the render passes or select from within the vray panel)

 

This one sounds just what I need but can not seem to find the material ID for a vraymtl???

[jtiscareno]

OK got the magic answer that I needed over at the vray chaos forum, only thing that I needed was to save a diffuse channel in the g-buffer output rollout and then for an automatic save just click the "save separate g-buffer channels" in the split g-buffer rollout under frame buffer and it will save a jpeg of the diffuse channel.

 

or you just can render the image and in the VFB select diffuse and it will get the result needed. (Attached image from screen).

 

Like some of the suggestions I did kill all lights, not using GI and only thing left is to eliminate the use of maps to get a clean-flat result and turn-off glass for better color selection inside offices.

 

And this is with vray 1.47, have seen 1.5 and might have enven something better under the new render elements tab...

 

Ernest you will love vray, and thanks for the quick pick techinque!

[SunGlare]

I've went thru similar problem month ago, sorry that I have'nt visited this forum 17 hrs ago.

 

This is the "crystal method", I say.

The only problem I have with Mtl Id maps from vray is that the aren't antialiased. It is understanable, but if You take a closer look to edges of those MtlIds' they are noisy. Later in the PSP it is hard way to change color/material of thin windowdividers forexample, because the mtlid map bearly covers the object.

I've rendered them in 4x scale then converted to 16 colors (there are only 16 MtlId in max - thats a Pain) then rescaled to 1/4 and.. result was bit better but still not great for me.

 

 

Again,

It was "The Method"

to produce 12 bldgs x two shots x 4 color options,

per person per day.

 

Actions In PSP are very helpful then.

 

Example of noisy edge: