Devin Johnston Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 I haven't used RPC's for a few years and because some of the designers in the office still want to use them with Photoshop we are considering purchasing some of the Ultimate licenses. I'd like to know if anyone is using RPC's with Vray and if the have had any problems, in the past when I have used them the made my scenes unstable plus the didn't interact with the GI which made them look funny. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 (edited) I would second the use in Photoshop, but only the high resolution trees. They are quite nice. The people are still a problem, even the high res ones. Their white balance from collection to collection are off, and the low res ones can be quite nasty looking. Oh, ...and my Photoshop plugin is quite slow, though we are pulling from a network with heavy use of Revit being exchanged also. Edit.. Though I have not used them inside of Max in a couple of years either. Edited June 19, 2009 by Crazy Homeless Guy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Thomas Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 As far as I remember they can be affected by GI, you just have to turn off the self-illumination under the RPC settings. The main issue is that they don't cast shadows. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Claudio Branch Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 I'd like to know if anyone is using RPC's with Vray and if the have had any problems, in the past when I have used them the made my scenes unstable plus the didn't interact with the GI which made them look funny. I used them quite recently actually and without any issues. I had an older project that was being updated for the client and I used V-Ray for the animation. I added 4 opposing Free Direct lights assigned to just the RPC's. Just to give them a little more juice. Their clunky zombie-ish overly robotic gait worked and looked perfectly normal as with Scanline... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
erickdt Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 I still use RPCs due to dis-satisfaction from the powers that be with axyz people. Whether it be stills or animations I always render the RPCs in a seperate pass and comp. them in with Photoshop or AfterFX so I can more easily control their exposure etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 19, 2009 Author Share Posted June 19, 2009 I've been using AXYZ ever since we quit Archvision, the thought of going back to them and having to pay to use something I already own makes me sick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted June 19, 2009 Share Posted June 19, 2009 Are they simply wanting something that they can use to render in place without compositing in post? ....if so, have you considered setting up a library of people mapped to image planes, linked to a dummy object? ...not quite as sophisticated as RPC in terms of rotating around the characters and suck. But, ...you wil have more control over color balance and look, and be able to easily expand the library with 2d people you already have, 2d people that are cheaply purchased, and photos that you have yet to take. This would be more adaptable on a per project basis. You could make a crossing plane, have one linked to a dummy that is referenced to the active camera, and a second linked to a dummy tha tis referenced to a sun in the scene. This could be set up manually by yourself, or perhaps you could employee a script to manage it. http://devel.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/tree-shop http://www.mirarkitektur.com/?menu=softwares&categorie=maxscript Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 With the latest version they now have a Gamma correction setting so they now render with better contrast. The Parking Lot cars a good when you need alot of cars that arent too close the the camera. Overall they are a solution but not the best, still the same issues they have always had, light dodgy white balance, incorrect shadow casting and really bad memory consumption. jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SandmanNinja Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 Has anyone tried using a single high-poly 3D car model and making a few hundred proxies from it? Also thinking the same with Bipeds with some clothes on them and getting them to behave in a crowd scene. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted June 20, 2009 Share Posted June 20, 2009 (edited) Doing that more and more, but until I get my 3D car library as extensive as the RPC one I'll be using them both. The motion cars are quite good. The walking people are really, really bad. Shrubs good Many of the trees Bad Of cause there is always the RPC creator so you can make you own, 2D, 3D and if your really savvy motion. Helps with the other main problem with RPC's, every-one has them jhv Edited June 20, 2009 by Justin Hunt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devin Johnston Posted June 20, 2009 Author Share Posted June 20, 2009 Are they simply wanting something that they can use to render in place without compositing in post? ....if so, have you considered setting up a library of people mapped to image planes, linked to a dummy object? ...not quite as sophisticated as RPC in terms of rotating around the characters and suck. But, ...you wil have more control over color balance and look, and be able to easily expand the library with 2d people you already have, 2d people that are cheaply purchased, and photos that you have yet to take. This would be more adaptable on a per project basis. You could make a crossing plane, have one linked to a dummy that is referenced to the active camera, and a second linked to a dummy tha tis referenced to a sun in the scene. This could be set up manually by yourself, or perhaps you could employee a script to manage it. http://devel.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/tree-shop http://www.mirarkitektur.com/?menu=softwares&categorie=maxscript You've got some good ideas here but right now I'm so busy I don't have enough free time to set up another thing I have to manage or create content for. I will keep this in the back of my mind though. One additional thing I don't like about RPC's is you can't make them into proxies, that seriously reduces their usefulness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmccoy Posted June 21, 2009 Share Posted June 21, 2009 Has anyone tried using a single high-poly 3D car model and making a few hundred proxies from it? I've done this and it works amazing using vray. It can take a long time to set everything up properly to get good results, but it is well worth the effort. You will need the following: -Collection of 3D vehicles (I used a few of the dosch collections) -Neil Blevins Soulburn Scripts - free -A Very low-poly dummy car -Glue plugin by Itoo Software - free This is how I went about creating large parking lots full of proxies (3000+ proxies: 1 - First you need to make a proxy out of each car with the materials saved to a network location. *this is the most time consuming process. *you need to make sure the scale of the car is correct along all of your models. *make sure you have all of the cars facing in the same direction. Sometimes you will need to reset the xform so you can make sure that everything will work properly later on. *The gizmo/pivot/axis point of the car needs to be placed at the front of the car, in the center and on the bottom. *I did both day and night versions of the cars. Night versions had self-illuminated head and taillights and some had actual lights put in for headlights. *I had a Max file with multiple paint color versions of the same car using the same proxy. (You can have different materials applied to multiple instances of the same proxy) 2 - In your scene, create a dummy car. *I created a low poly (40 polys or less) car that allowed me to see which direction the car would face. *place the pivot of the car at the front of the car, in the center and at the bottom of the car. 3 - Fill your parking spaces with the dummy car. *using the array feature fill the parking lot with your dummy car making sure the cars are facing the correct way. 4 - Merge in all of your proxied cars. *This is where all of the prep work comes in handy *place of you proxy cars in a line, out of the way of what you are working on. 5 - Replace the dummy car with your proxy cars *Using the objectReplacer script from the soulburn scripts suite you can replace of the dummy cars in your lot with your selection of proxies. *This is where you will see if you messed up with the placement of the axis/gizmo/pivot of your cars and proxies. *if everything goes smoothly you will have all of your dummy cars replaced with a random selection of your proxy cars in the correct scale and orientation. They will all be instanced allowing you to save huge amounts of ram. 6 - Delete out some proxies giving the parking lot some empty spots *Using the selectionRandomizer script from the soulburn scripts you can select a group of the proxies and randomly select a percentage of your cars to delete. * I tried to select very few cars close to where the entrances are and start selecting higher percentages the farther away you get. 7 - "Glue" the cars to the parking lot. * If you have an uneven terrrain that you are working with you can use the glue plugin to place all of the cars on the surface of the parking lot. You just need to make sure all of the cars are above the surface in order for the script to work. 8 - move/rotate the cars to break up the uniformity of the positions * use the transformRandomizer script in the soulburn scripts to give very slight random tranforms to the cars. *Rotating -1 to 1 degrees, moving a few inches in the x,y directions, etc... I'm sure I have missed something here. But this is the general procedure I went about creating parking lots with massive amounts of cars. I have not used mental ray proxies before so I do not know if it will work the same with them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Trick Posted June 21, 2009 Share Posted June 21, 2009 Ross, Thanks for the Objectreplacer tip. Was just looking for something like that !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rmccoy Posted June 21, 2009 Share Posted June 21, 2009 Ross, Thanks for the Objectreplacer tip. Was just looking for something like that !! No Problem. I'm glad I could help. I had a few people help me out to be able to give these tips. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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