Karl Larsen Posted June 16, 2011 Author Share Posted June 16, 2011 I know this is going to sound really simple but, I can find cylinder, plane, box, sphere... but no "disc"... I know how to make something self-illuminate but don’t know how to draw a disc other than draw it in SketchUp and import it into 3DS, which would work, but something tells me there's a 3DS way that I am missing, probably right in front of my face... Then, is it in front of, or behind the light emitting disc in the actual light? If in front it would seem that it would block the light? PS - it IS rendering MUCH quicker! Thank you thank you thank you thank you. Did I mention, Thank you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted June 16, 2011 Share Posted June 16, 2011 draw a circle then collaps to a editable mesh Lets say the light is flush with the ceiling, the self illuminted disk is 20mm up inside the hole. To make the disk self illuminate, create a Arch and Design, Diffuse colour white, in the Self Illumintation (glow) tab, turn it on and set the Luminance to Physical units. Leave Visible in Reflections ON and Illuminates the Scene (when using FG) ON. This will enable it to cast Final Gather samples and act just like a real light. jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 16, 2011 Author Share Posted June 16, 2011 (edited) I owe you a huge thank you Justin - this last render took 38-minutes at 640x480 even at Min 1 Max 16 AA... Amazing improvement! Now only 1 sky portal enlarged it to include the breakfast nook window, and I upped the glossy samples on the refrigerators. What a crash course! Now if only I can remember half of it! I will do the self illuminating discs tomorrow, I am definitely fried... Edited June 16, 2011 by karlar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 16, 2011 Author Share Posted June 16, 2011 (edited) Light discs added! I think I am going to try to brighten the scene by changing the EV from 8 to 7... or maybe I will dig my old photography notes out and see if I can remember a shutter speed and f-stop... Edited June 16, 2011 by karlar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 16, 2011 Author Share Posted June 16, 2011 (edited) EV 7 - certainly brighter! The second image has just a tinge of contrast added. Edited June 16, 2011 by karlar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted June 16, 2011 Share Posted June 16, 2011 Looking good, if you made the AO on the carpet stronger (darker) it will help ground the cushions and tables, at the moment they look like they are floating. Once the rest of the furniture goes in this will really come out great. Keep going JHV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 17, 2011 Author Share Posted June 17, 2011 (edited) Thanks Justin, It sure looks a great deal better than it started out . The carpet is not an Arch&Design material, it's just a Pro Material so the AO setting doesn't offer as much control (I just used a carpet material from the material library that comes with 3DS Max Design). A funny thing is that when I switched the AO in the Pro Material carpet on, my exposure value had to go back to 8 or the scene was over-exposed... I know I have much to learn. I made a rudimentary attempt at an Arch&Design carpet, chosing a matte template and adding a bump map, but wow that really threw the whole scene in the toilet, so I went back to the Pro Material version and turned the AO on. It'll do for today! 1st image is straight out of 3DS and the second has a little contrast added. In the mean time I will finish the furniture (I now know I have to go back and do some of it over to meet the demanding standards of this forum ) and I am going to start reading up on photons, photon radii, final gather, and global illumination, among many other things... PS. Now I know why really good CG renderings cost so much and aren't used as often as one would guess. My personal opinion is that a really good image can sell a project to a client way better than any amount of hot-air can - a picture is worth a thousand words! Edited June 17, 2011 by karlar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Justin Hunt Posted June 17, 2011 Share Posted June 17, 2011 Funny because the same thing happened to me, the EV went out of wack. I saved the file and restarted Max and it was OK again, very strange. 99% of the time I use A&D, I was never happy with the level of control Pro-materials gave. jhv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 17, 2011 Author Share Posted June 17, 2011 I am going to have to find a few things to read about creating a carpet with A&D - materials are a whole other world! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CJI Posted June 17, 2011 Share Posted June 17, 2011 Its been great following your thread Karl, you certainly are getting a good crash course on Mental ray here. Really nice seeing the improvement in your work. We all know what its like fumbling trying to get things right when you don't really know what things mean. Stick with it and really do learn the A&D shaders, it will really free you up and let you create any Material you want. Keep going, looking forward to seeing more. I will chip in and help if i can, but your already in good hands as it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattclinch Posted June 17, 2011 Share Posted June 17, 2011 (edited) got your message Karl - had a quick stab at it. - roughly revised GI and FG settings. - revised balance of exterior/interior lighting (exterior should be doing most of the work) - optmised scene BSP (not sure why the whole house is one object?!) - specified sun photon numbers to stop scene auto-priority of sun in scene. - added 3 exterior light panels (NOT portals) - removed most 'pro-materials' (a&d have much more control). - reduced AO radius on all materials to around 6" and used 'accurate ao' on all. (no horrible black corners!) - adjusted material reflectance values to correspond to real-world values in order to stop overbright photons/samples - some post glow/sharpening/cc [ATTACH=CONFIG]43355[/ATTACH] the GI is not perfectly clean yet, but it's nearly there. happy with soft furniture contact shadows etc and where i remade some materials from the 'pro' versions, i have lost some of the realism (notably the floor reflectivity..) M Edited June 17, 2011 by mattclinch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 17, 2011 Author Share Posted June 17, 2011 Nice job Matt! Any chance of posting your GI & FG settings? Also, I'm curious about the details of the 3 exterior light panels? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 18, 2011 Author Share Posted June 18, 2011 I sure wish I knew what an exterior light panel is... a light fixture or a self illuminating plane? I'd like to try it and see the results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mattclinch Posted June 18, 2011 Share Posted June 18, 2011 it's just a light with a large rectangular shape to it. similar premise to using a light portal but I find they have more control. i'll post my GI setting in a sec. not particularly optimised or fast to render as I mentioned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 18, 2011 Author Share Posted June 18, 2011 Interesting - I wondered if perhaps you were using the light panels in place of sky portals to reduce render time. I played around with rectangular lights a little but couldn't replicate anything close to your results -- I know I have much to learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 19, 2011 Author Share Posted June 19, 2011 I've been a little busy with paying work so I've had to give this a little rest but here is my Arch & Design carpet - first image is straight out of 3DS and the second was tweaked in Corel Photo. The exposure changed with the Arch & Design carpet so now the millwork at the wet bar looks overexposed and the under cabinet lights in the kitchen no loner look like they did before - weird... Also don't know how to increase the AO on the carpet to get it to read better at the pillows and furniture - is it just darken the AO color or in there a way to increase the effect that I am missing? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 20, 2011 Author Share Posted June 20, 2011 I think I know why my images look so bad... I believe that my monitor adjustments are not what they ought to be in terms of arriving at the correct gamma. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted June 22, 2011 Author Share Posted June 22, 2011 Think I have my monitor calibrated - maybe not perfect but better than it was. Also recieved some advise from Ramy which I applied to this render, and, finally got the ceiling beams to look like they do in the real house, in a rendering sense... It's looking better but still missing something that i just can't figure out - GI, FG, and Photons are a real pain in the... I'm thinking the lights in the forground are just wrong -- I dont think recessed can lights would be distributing so much light sideways but would be more of a down-light kinda thing... The wet bar and kitchen lights are fine, and still, the fricken kitchen Island is the best looking part of the image First image is straight out of 3DS, second has a slight contrast tweak. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted September 28, 2011 Author Share Posted September 28, 2011 I had to resurrect this thread just to let you guys know... I just got an i7-980 with 24G of memory and an ATI 100-505604 FirePro V7800 2GB... What was taking 38-minutes to render is now taking less than 4 :-D Now onto to some more learnin'! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter M. Gruhn Posted October 7, 2011 Share Posted October 7, 2011 Ah, I dream of the day when I can enter that fast feedback learning loop. Happy for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karl Larsen Posted October 9, 2011 Author Share Posted October 9, 2011 Thanks Peter! It makes a huge difference now I can try things and see the results lots quicker. But my old computer served me well for over 7-yrs - she's going into storage tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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