please help with composting techq.

[chadsmith]

i wanted to know about your favorite tricks for composting elements or post pro.

 

I am pretty seasoned but just have not gotten around to rendering elements. the only one i have down is z-depth; however, my shadow element keeps coming out black... and ps only makes it black and white... where are the greys in my shadows? anyways, feel free to share any composting that might help me out with time. even a good composting tutorial would be nice. thanks

[abicalho]

The shadow intensity is stored in the Alpha channel of the bitmap. YOu need to use a format that stores alpha in this case (TGA, TIFF, PNG, etc).

 

Alexander

[chadsmith]

THANKS ALEXANDER, THAT HELPED A LOT!

I AM STILL LOOKING FOR A COMPREHENSIVE WAY TO USE COMPOSTING IN MY WORK FLOW. CAN SOMEONE EITHER SHARE THEIR FAV'S OR POINT ME TO A GOOD TUTORIAL?

[STRAT]

this of any use?

 

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/sjleworthy/wp-02/front.html

[nisus]

Hi chadsmith,

 

Some tips:

- Render a shadowpass (all elements have a shadow matte material) and multiply *BM in ps over a diffuse pass (normal render without shadows)

- Render a refmask: windows pure white, rest of the building black, background white and save as a 32bit tga. This way you have a nice alpha AND a mask for the glass

- Paint the reflection in ps (diagonal gradient) and mask it. Overlay or Soft light *BM

- Change opacity for fine-tuning

 

Some references: all glass done in ps

 

 

 

 

rgds

 

nisus

[Daniel]

By far the easiest way to do get thos passes and masks for objects out of max ist to use psd-manager from cebas. You just add the render elemnts you need to the scene, add psd-manager and tell it which objects you later want to edit individually in Photoshop (those it creates masks for as channels or layers).

 

After rendering you have a nifty PSD file with all the render elements as PSD layers in correct order and proper blending modes. And of course the masks for the objects.

 

psd-manager Website (max and VIZ)

http://www.cebas.com/products/products.asp?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=38

 

Daniel

[kid]

daniel, do you get paid every time you plug the psd-manager?

[Daniel]

Sorry kid, I just like it. Download one of the PSD files from the website and you will understand me. Other 3D-Software applications have such stuff already a while e.g. Lightwave and Cinema 4D. But not 3ds max, unfortunately there is no demo version of psd-manager.

 

Another nice use of zDepth is to use it for a depth cue effect. Just create a slide blueish desaturated copy of your render and then use the z-depth as layer mask.