Need some pointers

[AJLynn]

I'm helping a friends with his thesis - there's a basic Sketchup model and he wants an exterior evening shot that should be fully pimped out (it's a nightclub) and that's something I've never done. What I have to work with is Sketchup, Max9, some content (a couple CDs of HDRs and miscellaneous entourage) and Creative Suite 2 and a few good CPUs. It has to be quick, not much time for experimenting, so I'd really appreciate any pointers on:

 

-Evening environments in mental ray - I'm thinking the kind of dim, blue cast shots that can stand in for night shots. Do I want to use mental ray sky? Evening HDR on a sphere? Fake it completely?

 

-Volume lights in mental ray - I could fake it in Photoshop but I'd rather not. Do I need to use volume caustics and a few dozen shaders, or, since real caustics probably aren't necessary, is there an easy way?

 

-Glass that glows - e.g., backlit translucent glass etc.

[pixelperfectg]

-Volume lights in mental ray - I could fake it in Photoshop but I'd rather not. Do I need to use volume caustics and a few dozen shaders, or, since real caustics probably aren't necessary, is there an easy way?

Is this for lights or objects? If lighting, then I'd just use the default volumetric effect (the same one that scanline uses). If it's not for lighting, can you elaborate on what it's for?

 

-Glass that glows - e.g., backlit translucent glass etc.

Hopefully you can just enable the translucent effect on the A&D shader and not have too many adjustments to make.

[AJLynn]

You're right about the translucent glass - that works well enough with the translucency cranked up a bit and the transparency cranked down. The Max volumetric effect fails completely - it's adding a lot of render time and the part that's being affected is actually darker than the surroundings... maybe that's because of the exposure control (I've got a mr sky system and daylight exposure control, and it's working well). I think I'll just Photoshop the volumetrics after all.

[pixelperfectg]

You should be able to render a volumetric lighting pass rather quickly by using the global override material to globally assign a flat black material to all the geometry...be sure to turn off GI/caustics/FG for quick rendering...then comp it into your final.

 

Or switch over to scanline and spitout a render elemet atmospheric pass. You can try the render pass with mental ray...but depending on what material you used & lights it may or may not work properly.

 

(oops, sorry if comping it is what you meant by photoshopping the volume lights)

[AJLynn]

I was going to fake it in Photoshop but your way sounds better. Thanks.

[AJLynn]

Here's a small version of the final. No laughing. (I did it on an Apple in Apple color space, which might be brighter than some PCs, so it might display too dark.)

[Koper]

Dude, brilliant sof ar, i like where it is going, especially the red girl, that is a very good attraction point. what if you make the girl on the bottom also another color and put another girl in color on the stairs so you creat a triangle compsition, just an idea.

 

very cool

[AJLynn]

Thanks. Actually, that one's the final, he was happy with it and there was model building to be done. The red girl is a graphic element that's being carried through a lot of drawings. (At an earlier stage he had one of her in each section, and a standin for the rest that looked like a monk from a Monty Python animation, so I gave the format a name that's not appropriate for repeating here.)