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Topic Title: 3ds Max - Troubleshooting & General Discussion Topic Summary: Created On: Mar-19-2007 12:50 PM Status: Post and Reply |
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#1632050
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
| When you change the HSL of the water - Does the black stripe stay the same? |
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#1632100
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
When you change the HSL of the water - Does the black stripe stay the same? I reduced the L value and tried it in another (bigger) scene. This is the result:  As you can see the black stripe is now a "few transparent/mirror" stripe. And this is better than before. I'll try to modify something else in the material, but the main problem is solved! Thank you Kellydale2003 (Kelly?). |
 Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1632125
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
| No problemo - I was just guessing what the problem was haha. 3ds max tends to do wonky things when 2 object faces share the same decimal value. And yeah, my names Kelly Edwards - and I'm a guy  |
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#1632223
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
| I don't see what you mean by the black stripe.
This is also not a physically (or mathematically) correct way to produce water and glass touching. The best way is to work with edit poly so that you have very close control over the direction of the face normals. Normals are very important in correct display of physically correct transparent materials! For example, an object with a normal facing toward you with IOR = 1.33 will look like water. The same object but with normal multiplied by -1 (flipped) will exhibit an IOR of 0.75 and will look you are in the water. Imagine the scene as a fluid with IOR = 1.0, because this is exactly how mental ray calculates refraction. Also, refraction is calculated using a plane and a normal. Why is all this so important? It is important when trying to set up a physically correct representation of glass touching water or vice versa. Because mental ray treats empty space as IOR = 1.0, you must adjust the refractory index between two materials. This can be done by dividing final refraction by initial refraction with respect to the normal IOR = (If/Io) normal to "Io". So for glass (IOR = 1.52) to water (IOR = 1.33) with normal facing into the glass, the IOR must be 1.33/1.52 = 0.88. This and the shader responsible for ray depth tricks the viewer of your render into believing that the touching objects that were rendered are defined by volume and not by planes and normals. To set up a correct scene where water and glass are touching, you need three different materials with three different IOR. You need a water air material with normal out (1.33/1.0 = 1.33), glass air material with normal out (1.52/1.0 = 1.52), and a glass water material with normal out (1.33/1.52 = 0.88) or normal in (1.52/1.33 = 1.15). You can read more about this and ray depth in pp. 47-52 of the Mental Ray Architectural and Design Visualization Shader Library which should have come with 3ds max 2010. If not you can read a 2008 version which can be downloaded here: http://www.mentalimages.com/products/mental-ray/documents.html Actually, I strongly suggest that everybody (who uses mental ray) read the articles (esp the arch and design) because they offer very valuable information about mental ray and tips and tricks! This will get rid of any black stripes and give you physically correct caustics because you will have no overlapping normals. Again, I strongly suggest that you use edit poly to do this because of the control it offers over normal orientation and some of the graphite selection tools to help quickly and accurately select faces. |
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#1632262
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
| He. Also, the method that Is stated has three surfaces and there is no air gap, just in case that is not clear. Having an air gap can cause nasty artifacts, especially with caustics. The article has a diagram which makes it very clear what I mean, should be on page 51 or 52. Have fun modeling.... physically correctly! |
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#1632562
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
| Thank you Kelly and autoVino!
It's very difficult to find the articles under "additional help", that's way I've never seen them before now; but they looks very similar to the chapter dedicated to Mr in the Help. Normals should be correctly oriented. I'm going to try to make the same scene that is explained in the article. I'll post some results later. |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1633083
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
 This is the result. As you can see the result is quite perfect. I changed materials and IORs and I changed also something in the model. Caustics work weel, no black stripe, no strange reflections / refractions. But where is the blue colour?? The mr coloured glass toturial talks only about the computing errors due to the refraction -> max colour at distance. It suggests to change it to white. I did it. If I change that colour to dark blue, the water become unrealistic, with a bad blue colour. Other materials don't have IOR settings so it's impossible to change materials, so what's the right setting? |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1633094
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
I'd say your latest attempt is much better and don't know why you would want blue-tinted water, unless you are indeed trying to represent blue-tinted water. For an aquarium that size, the water would essentially have little to no color at all--unless you hadn't cleaned the tank in a while 
The only things I see that are "off" is that the water has too much rippling--it's not a swimming pool after all--and the waterline on the left face is too prominent and too blue. |
#1633119
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
I'd say your latest attempt is much better and don't know why you would want blue-tinted water, unless you are indeed trying to represent blue-tinted water. For an aquarium that size, the water would essentially have little to no color at all--unless you hadn't cleaned the tank in a while The only things I see that are "off" is that the water has too much rippling--it's not a swimming pool after all--and the waterline on the left face is too prominent and too blue. I want to make a "plant acquarium". So I need sea water and a quite dirt water. The last picture seems to be a glass with water inside (perfect to drink).  (Part of the acquarium of Valencia - from www.bestlanguagecourses.com) As you can see the water is blue, not white transparent. And I want to make something like that... |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1633292
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
It just might be your lighting - Or even how many times you can bounce light (i forget where that is); but I believe it's under the render options. You can choose how many times light is bounced; very useful if you want to light little places - or let alone water. It might effect the caustics though. But it's just another guess  (i'm not a pro with 3ds max myself - but no one is really answering; im doing my best to help). |
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#1633663
Oct-23-2009 02:38 PM
| Simply the first picture was nice because it was an error.
I've already tried to modify colours of refraction, reflection and distance max (both), but I can't see a good blue water. The plane with noise become blue-water when I change the refraction colour. Changing IORs doesn't make results. Also, while I was trying to do something, caustics disappeared from the render (but everything was correct in the scene); so I decided to use a normal ProWater material. If you can solve the error, thanks; if not I think I'll use the Promaterial... |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1634889
Oct-24-2009 09:12 PM
| MIA Promaterial is pretty good at simulating realistic water. If you want a little bit more control over your water, try the following basic tutorial: http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html Also, look around the blog, there are a lot of very good mental ray tips and tricks... as well as just plain cool mental ray stuff in general. edit: looking back at the most recent picture you posted, what effect are you trying to achieve with your glass? It seems to be thin geometry (making your glass walls look like a thin sheet and nothing like the type of glass required for an aquarium), where what would be best: physical glass that would be much thinner. This does, of course, depend on what you are trying to achieve with your render. |
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#1635194
Oct-25-2009 02:30 PM
| Some things to keep in mind is that renders depend a lot on impressions and context, and not as much as you might think on actual realism. If you finish creating your scene, what you have (or what you will soon have) may be enough to create the impression you want.
Another thing about the tank is that it is not natural, there is extra lighting inside of the tank, and it's possible that there's even blue dye in the water (this would help create the illusion of depth if the tank isn't actually very wide, and would make everything blue and colorful, which looks better than natural water). The aquarium was designed by some kind of artist who specializes in those kinds of things, and uses tricks to create something that's aesthetically pleasing. |
#1635529
Oct-26-2009 06:42 AM
MIA Promaterial is pretty good at simulating realistic water. If you want a little bit more control over your water, try the following basic tutorial: http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html Also, look around the blog, there are a lot of very good mental ray tips and tricks... as well as just plain cool mental ray stuff in general. edit: looking back at the most recent picture you posted, what effect are you trying to achieve with your glass? It seems to be thin geometry (making your glass walls look like a thin sheet and nothing like the type of glass required for an aquarium), where what would be best: physical glass that would be much thinner. This does, of course, depend on what you are trying to achieve with your render. Some things to keep in mind is that renders depend a lot on impressions and context, and not as much as you might think on actual realism. If you finish creating your scene, what you have (or what you will soon have) may be enough to create the impression you want. Another thing about the tank is that it is not natural, there is extra lighting inside of the tank, and it's possible that there's even blue dye in the water (this would help create the illusion of depth if the tank isn't actually very wide, and would make everything blue and colorful, which looks better than natural water). The aquarium was designed by some kind of artist who specializes in those kinds of things, and uses tricks to create something that's aesthetically pleasing. I saw some tutorials talking about Promaterials and a little tutorial about using a Raytrace material to create water. I read the blog you suggested, autoVino; but it talks about a pool without transparent walls and my problem isn't in the water-glass part (plane with noise), but in the water-glass part. So, this is what I want to do: I want to create an old structure, very similar to the Grand Palais (Paris) or the Crystal Palace (London). This is what I've already done: (This is a fast render, with very low settings and poor textures)  Title of the building: Hanging Gardens in 1902. In the central dome (now empty),I want to build a big pool where exotic and sea plants can live. The tank must have that type of tricks, Jasoncw, because everyone who see this building should say "That is a pool with exotic plants inside!" The building is for a contest, so atm I don't know where I'll put the camera, so that pool should be detailed and visible if I want to put a camera near it. Probably I'll export it also for SC4, but I don't know how much time mental ray will spend to export in high quality a model with 2 million polys!! |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1636595
Oct-28-2009 10:40 AM
| Mental ray should have no problem handling 2 million polygons (in fact I've seen HD renders done in under two ours of physically correct scenes with over 8 billion polygons with V-ray! I'm sure mental ray can match that easily) as long as you meet the minimum requirements for the software. It's more of a "how much memory do you have" than "can mental ray handle this?" Poly count is only a limiting factor on render time of you do not have the memory to process the scene.
A few points about using glass in scenes: generally, thin glass is better for architectural renderings where the thickness of glass is not distinguishable (e.g. windows from a distance) because it's fast and easy to model. Thick glass is better to use when you need physically correct glass to show different effects (such as refraction and internal reflection) and where it will be distinguishable. For your aquarium, you may want to use thicker glass (not actual glass, but a polymer glass) because aquariums need thick strong glass to hold the water pressure. This especially holds true if you wish to do a close up render to the "Hanging Gardens in 1902". In order to model correct "polymer glass" (aka acrylic glass), you would need to pick an IOR of about 1.48 instead of 1.52 as normal glass has. The transmittance properties also vary a little bit for polymer glass. So I suggest you make the glass from mia arch&design material. Water color can also be control through the pro materials, but I would try to make a convincing water out of mia arch&design. The mental ray tip's tutorial that I posted a link for can also be used for general purpose water and is good because you can control the index of refraction (so that you can control internal reflection if you wanted to). Some stuff about glass: http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2008/11/mental-ray-glass_07.html http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2009/01/glass-reflections-its-all-about-bump.html Stuff about water: http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html Stuff about good grass (I haven't tried this, but it caught my eye) http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/search?q=grass |
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#1641173
Nov-05-2009 01:49 PM
| Thanks for the answer.
I decided to use a Raytrace material for the water. I can't post a render now because I've not enough time, and the render is going to be veeeeeery long (when I tried the first time, mr spent more than 1 hour only to calculate photons for caustics). Very useful links! The grass tutorial is very good, but I think that if the camera will be very close to terrain I'll use the Hair&Fur (I'm sure that mr won't have enough memory for it). As soon as possible I'll do a render. |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1642271
Nov-06-2009 11:03 PM
| do you include the ground plane in your caustics calculations? if you are using mr sun, you can set the radius for caustics illumination as optimization. Also, make sure that you apply caustics to only the objects that need it, not to the whole scene, otherwise you get awfully long caustics renders. I can usually get 2 million photons within ~5 min (but that doesn't say much since it depends heavily on the scene). Also, cut down the caustics bounces to like 2 or 3, this will also speed up renders.
If the raytrace material works, then that's great! It isn't necessarily optimized for mental ray though, but as far as I understand it should still work (I remember in 3ds max 9, it would cause aweful artifacts to appear with caustics calculations). |
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#1642352
Nov-07-2009 02:16 AM
| I'm sorry to barge in but I seriously doubt the helpfulness of the posts you those link...
They are more show off then actual tutorials. They revel just so little and omit the crucial points as to get the effect - look I can do it and you can't. You are stupid. Making point to tell about reflection and refraction of 1 and omitting the whole caustic issue is just an indication of that. Particularly taking into account the fact that by default those (caustics) are off in max. People who know about that are definitely knowledgeable about basic Material setup he is preaching about... Second one about the bump on the glass is same kind of show off, that in effect shows off his own luck of understanding what he says, or may be same approach - look you've been explained things and still your renderings look stupid, stupid... He pompously talks "...Often though, a noise map is used in the bump slot, and I haven't seen this done properly. n reality each pane of glass has air pressure on it, forcing it to bow in or out. The frames or mullions keep the edges in place though. There is nothing wrong with using a noise map for the bump, it's how it's distributed throughout the glass between the glass frames. Often I see the same noise map passing from one pane of glass to another. That is incorrect." And then right away suggesting "The trick to getting the same map on every face is using the UVW modifier on your glass and selecting Face for the Mapping type." Yet this method will create exactly SAME glass over and over again. And if you look on the examples he presents the distortion ther is EXACTLY passing from one window plane to another... so there is some short circuit in there... In this respect Zaps post are a model of how such help should be offered! Too long calculations are sure sign of badly set up scene. People typically thing bigger is better. And hike up the photon count through the roof... Notice how Zap achieves perfectly good caustics in the pool with only 5 (!) photons! As Autovino pointed it is important to take into account when do your photons fall and if they have something to bounce off after initial hit. Sun would shot them in all directions, you don't really want that. Instead create target for them (look it up in Help). |
| my threads:
Asian buildings | Non-Asian buildings | Forces of Light and the geometry of Shadows (general info on modeling, lighting etc) 
my BATs on STEX |
#1642738
Nov-07-2009 04:32 PM
| Those tutorials aren't tutorials but a "hey, I tried to do this, would you like to see what happens?".
Maybe he doesn't know why he got those effects, but he got them! It's interesting to see how he did them. About the number of photons, I'll try to create a target. On post #1632100 for the pool I used 950.000 photons (then I reduced them to 50.000 for other renders) and mr spent 2/3 minutes to calculate them - a scene with 500.000 polys -. Raytrace material should work (it works on 3dsMax 2008). The material has IORs, so it can emulate the Arch&Design. Sometimes my renders are too long when the file got corrupted somewhere, and 3dsMax 2010 seems to corrupt every scene with lots of polys. |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1646447
Nov-14-2009 09:43 PM
| quick question: what specific setup do the units have to be? sorry if this is a repetitive question. |
#1646458
Nov-14-2009 10:13 PM
| I don't have 3dsMax, but at the top of the main Bat4Max thread it says meters. That's what it is in BAT so I'd assume you'd use the same. |
#1646614
Nov-15-2009 07:17 AM
| right click on the "Snaps toggle" button, "home grid" menu:
grid spacing: 1,0 Major lines every Nth: 16 Perspective view grid extent: what you want Make sure that when you're in the viewport there is "grid = 1.0m" above "add time tag". When it's "grid = 16.0m", in the viewport you can see SC4 squares. |
Feel free to partecipate to SimFuture, the SimCity 4 (or CXL?) of the future. Sci fi city BAT team: me and Simcity4fan12 PM me (I love to see the flashing icon!...) A 3ds Max 2010 user. |
#1647396
Nov-16-2009 06:16 PM
| Hi guys...i don't know if this is explained somewhere, i couldn't find it but could someone explain to me how to export BATs after installing "let there be light". When i press export button and it starts rendering both day and nite render is so dark that you barely see the building |
 Socialist Republic of Serbian Krajina |
#1647406
Nov-16-2009 06:31 PM
| Read the explanation in the "Bat4Max v2.6 HD" thread stickied at the top of this forum.
http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=37&threadid=107258&enterthread=y I think you'll figure out whats going on and hopefully it won't be too much an issue
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