300 homes project

[Visual Pieces]

hello

 

i have to do animations of a project with 300 identical homes in one 3ds max 6 file.

 

the question is:

1. i make 300 blocks in Autocad, copy 300 times in autocad... and then textures all 300 diferent layers in 3ds max.

 

or

 

2. i make a single file and then copy 300 times in max.

 

the dwg file is around 500 kb.

 

can i manipulate this 300 blocks file? could i animate in reasonable time?

 

wich is the best way to do this projesct?

 

thanks

[abicalho]

Create 1 house, texture it in MAX, insert it 300 times as Xrefs. If you need to change it, you'll change it once and it'll update on the other ones.

 

Alexander

[Scott Schroeder]

I think your best bet is to have several max files for this project. If this is a sub division I would break it up by streets. Becuase if you have 300 homes in one file, that file will be almost unmanagable for you to animate. Or render in layers with the homes on all different layers, such as homes that are close and homes that are in the background.

 

Also if all 300 homes are the same, whats the point of showing them all? That is a waste of time. I realize this is a project but if you can tell what the other 299 are going to look like by just showing 1 then you could save yourself alot of time.

 

Once this is done I would like to know how it went and how it looks. I wish you the best of luck.

[mbr]

I agree, it seems odd that someone would want to advertise that they are making 300 cookie cutter boxes. A shame, really, but that's another discussion.

 

Plan the animation - are you going to show all of them in one animation? Or composite a bunch. I'd say the XRef is the way to go, it's quick and works well. I'd think about having maybe 3 levels of detail for the homes and three XRefs. That way you could show the ones closest to the camera with detail and those farther away with less.

[Visual Pieces]

the project is a new urbanization:

300 homes

1 school

1 comercial center

green areas, etc

 

the first stage of my work will be a picture of 20 m2, to put in the place.

then i have to do some animations showing all project.

 

abicalho: u mean make the model of the house, texturize perfectly and then xref in max or autocad? i never do xrefs at max, but i will try

 

thanks

[Visual Pieces]

plan view of urbanization

[Visual Pieces]

so... when u xref in max and copy 300 times, it upload your file exactly as the original file? with textures aplied perfectly?

 

thx

[STRAT]

of course. thats what an xref is

[Visual Pieces]

u think i could manage this type of file with a athlon xp 2200/512/fx5200? and make animations in a reasonable time?

[Visual Pieces]

the prototype file is around 400 kb,

if I erase the faces that are hidden using delete in editable mesh, it CAN REALLY HELP to make the file less heavy?

[Visual Pieces]

I xref the scene, it appears in the new scene (wich will contaiin the 300 copys) , but i cant select it! i need to copy and move/rotate the copies.

i make a box as bind object, but it is the bind object of 1 xref.

how i make to copy the xrefs 300 times without to have to insert it 300 times and make 300 boxes ??????

 

please i need help

[Sawyer]

This is how I would set up this scene

 

 

1 Create a file that has a full size site plan & use this as an xref "scene" into all of your files.

 

2 model the buildings seperatly 1 in each file.

 

3 create a new file for each street or block or whatever division you need to seperate your file into chunks.

 

4. layout the buildings onto the site using xref "objects". seperating the site into divisions allows for easier file sizes.

 

 

5. xfref "scene" all of the streets that you layed out into one file. Render that.

 

 

xref object places individual objects from another file into your scene.

xref scene places the file into your scene and makes it untouchable

[tranvietanhtuan]

it's very harmfull for your PC.

i have done a projects like that last year.

If you need some normal views or normal camerawalk thru' just use the RPC creator. Make the house come to RPC object. very fast rendering.

But if you need bird views try as Sawyer said.

 

Kind regards,

Tuan

[visualasylum]

I have done something similar. These are the keypoints for you to consider.

 

If you're going to have an animation showing the whole thing in general, no details will be visible at a far camera position. So consider modeling a few houses using map/texture techniques, that way it will save you lots of time when rendering. If you need to zoom in closely from far away, consider animating the highres model in at proper time.

 

If you're going to use lots of trees, use Forest Pro plugin(itoosoft) to help you with this.

 

Now if you have to plan this animation, plan it before hand, and make sure for close-up shots you don't have all those models on, otherwise your rendering time will suffer.

 

I believe there's a scipt that doesn't consider the polygons that are not in camera view. you might have to search scriptspot.

 

cheers,

 

G

[omar]

hi visualasylum

I just rendered this last night I had no problem at all

one file no exref no instnces

I even used vray GI