This Forum has Awesome Work!

[Gene]

Hello All,

 

This is my first post to this Forum and I must honestly say that I am really impressed by the work here and the level of professionalism. I have been around 3D for a little while and most other forums don't compare.

 

A bit about me...I have been doing Forensic Animations for accident reconstructionists/lawyers for a few years now and I think the quality of my work for is pretty good considering the field I am in.

 

However, the quality of work I see here is what I want to bring to the Forensic Animation industry. There is actually a lot in common with the architectural field since models need to be accurate and you often have to model roads, buildings and cars.

 

I really want to push myself to be better and the work here is inspiring. I recently switched to Max and am trying to go through the tutorials and just try my hand at modeling, texturing (eeehhhw) and lighting.

 

I have a lot of questions about your techniques at modeling but I'll limit it to 3 right now:

 

1. I noticed that most people start with a floor plan and then simply extrude the walls and such. Is this the best way? The only way?

 

2. Does polygon density matter? Should you always use the least amount possible?

 

3. How do you choose to bevel on the corners of walls or any edges?

 

I like to understand how people think or how you approach the modeling of such projects.

 

Any insight or advice would be appreciated.

 

Oh...if there are any people that do Forensic Animations, I would really be interested in chatting it up!

 

Great work all!

 

Eugene

[Koper]

Wow Gene, welcome to CGarchitect!

 

You work with Forensics, that is awesome, but as you say (eeehhhw) with texturing, i can imagine some of the stuff that you must visualize.

 

I know that you'll just love it here.

 

Lets see if i can help in answering you Q's.

 

1. Modeling from the floor plan is really easy and accurate but it is not the only way, there are many different methods for modeling a house, It all depends on you, what you find comfortable doing. I always refer to one tutorial - 'making of THE YELLOW HOUSE' by Huseyin-karaaslan. you can find it at http://www.3dtotal.com/ under 'free stuff'-'tutorials' complete projects

 

 

2. Poly count. you will notice that when you start figuring out your own workflow that your polycount will drop allot. Ideally, everyone want's the least amount of poly's in their scene. Polycount matters depending on what you are trying to do, with stills you can get away with high polycounts, but as soon as you start to work with animations, such as yourself, then it does matter allot. The polycount, i think, come into play in two areas, Rendering & Machine functioning. The more poly's the slower.

 

 

3. To bevel I just select the edges that creates the corner and then 'chamfer' them 2 or more times. this is with an editable poly object within the edge sub-object level.

 

 

Hope it helped a bit

Koper

[Gene]

Thanks Koper,

 

I think one of the main battles I fight everytime is the balance between something looking realistic and the render times. I can't justify an amazing 20 second looking piece of animation that is going to take me a week to render. (And then the client wants to change something).

 

Here are some clips:

 

http://www.ai2-3d.com/Flash/Industrial.html

http://www.ai2-3d.com/Flash/Mechanical.html

http://www.ai2-3d.com/Flash/Medical.html

 

I'll be trying my hand at some simple modeling and renders to start and I'll put up what I have for critique.

 

Thanks!

[batteryoperatedlettuce]

I'm getting 404ed

[SandmanNinja]

http://www.ai2-3d.com/FlashMovs/Crimescene/CrimeScene.html

 

Just add the letters

Movs

after Flash in the posted Urls.

 

Or, just go to the main website in the links.

 

Some cool looking stuff.

 

Question: Can you (somehow) be held libel for any of your animations?

I mean, with lawyers and all....

[Gene]

I think you mean liable...yes, if it is proven that you are incompetent or with mal-intent, then you can be liable in just about any business.

 

However, most of the time, my work goes through a lawyer or an accident reconstructionist who takes the responsibility in presenting the animations. Making sure that they are accurate is key to being in this business.

 

If the animation is just really ridiculous or just too prejudice in nature, it usually doesn't even end up in court...at least here in Canada.

 

Cheers,

 

Eugene

[ChooChoo]

My foot hurts watching the deformation one. Good work. I haven't yet to even start in the animation part.

[louis.cho]

Hi Gene

 

You have a great portfolio, I noticed that you made an amazing interior rendering, very good.

 

1- extrude from plans is a basic technic and still most of the time the most efficient and easy. It's also allow you to build your scene with a certain hierarchy and logic.

 

2- Polycount is always to watch. Keep it low give you a lighter scene and renders is faster. You don't have the same restriction that in games industries who are obsess with it. Just build your object with the level of precision you need, for the rest, keep the geometry simple. I don't mind to do a 20 000K sofa if there a need in it and it looks awsome.

 

3- depend what you want to do: if you are far, sometimes you don't need it. sometimes i made a chamfer on a edge and a second chamfer on the 2 chamfered edge, it's give me a nice round corner. If your're gonna apply meshsmoot, try MeshTool and CSPolyTools, they are free maxscripts and it's give you the 'Chamfer and keep the original edge' who is an amazing tools before apply a smoothing. Finaly, Mental Ray's new architectural material allow you to fake a radius corner and it's work very well.

 

hope this help

[3dmaniac666]

modeling from the floorplan up has been ver easy for me...but I have a question...How do you guys usually cut out windows in 3ds max?? I always have problems with boleans so I usually model the wall with the window cut out as a shape and then extrude it that way...this method works great but seems to be time consuming...any suggestions??

[SandmanNinja]

modeling from the floorplan up has been ver easy for me...but I have a question...How do you guys usually cut out windows in 3ds max?? I always have problems with boleans so I usually model the wall with the window cut out as a shape and then extrude it that way...this method works great but seems to be time consuming...any suggestions??

 

 

I make a 2nd box sized to the dimensions of the window. I move it into place, do a boolean subtraction and ta da.... instant window that's the exact sze that you need.

 

I know some people that use edge connect and then the measure tool to get the right size, but I feel it's a lot of mucking around just to get a simple window.

 

I usually spend 30 seconds after the cut, cleaning the extra edges the boolean tool puts in there. No biggie and very straight forward.