Hi all..

Although not been regularly posting here for too long, I see the 3D threads are as popular as ever and many people wanting to learn new things. Rather than clog up existing, specific threads, I thought maybe one specifically for asking and discussing tips, tricks, techniques and other things related to rendering and 3D

If this is a pointless thread, please delete it mods.. but thought it might prove useful also to newcomers as a kinda "knowledgebase" too if all under one thread



Regards,

Ian

Very good idea You can bet i'll be back here soon! Got stuck last night and got fed up with it going nowhere, but i'll grab a bottle of Red Bull tonight and have another crack

should collect some links in post 1 i'd say :up:

Ok, I'll start, may be simple to some, but others might want to know how to do it.

How to render multiple cars.

1) Download and unzip the required scenes from http://ds-autos.digiserv.net/

2) In MAX open 1 scene, if you are render 2 or more of the same car, go to step 7, if you are rendering multiple cars go to step 3

3) File, Merge, select the MAX car file you want to merge, you will see a dialog box asking you to select the items, you do not want the plane, or cameras.

4) Now you can move the merged object, scale the reflection plane to cover both/all vehicles.

5) Now you need to add the merged vehicles material to the material editor.

6) Open the material editor, pick an empty slot, using the "pick material from object" tool, make sure the merged vehicle is selected and pick the material, now you can add the skin in the normal way.

7) If you are doing multiples of the same car, all you need to do is select the vehicle, edit, clone, instance, and follow the instruction above for adding the material to the editor if the cloned car is to have a different skin.

Dan,

Does anyone happen to know how to enable merging materials when merging scenes? Alternatively you can export them into a matlib, but that sucks :P

Press M, choose an open field and press the Standard button or sth, choose "scene" from the left and double-click the right material from there. I hope it was clear enough.
So it basically picks up the material from the object you merged to the scene.

Quote from ORION :

Does anyone happen to know how to enable merging materials when merging scenes? Alternatively you can export them into a matlib, but that sucks :P

I normally hit auto rename for merge materials if the merge object has a different material assigned.

Quote from ORION :

should collect some links in post 1 i'd say :up:

Good call Orion.. have some real work to do today illepall but will add some links later tonight.. I think my 3DS bookmarks dir is the most populated one I have

Glad to see people like the idea and already started with info



Regards,

Ian

Quote from ORION :

Does anyone happen to know how to enable merging materials when merging scenes? Alternatively you can export them into a matlib, but that sucks :P

not always, thats what i've started doing instead of just autoloading them in with merging files (since.. thats the best way to model rather than having every part in 1 file would.. kill my computer) but, that way when your rendering you can spot out mistakes and EASILY change the settings rather than deleting that part, closing scene, go back to merged scene, change material settings and hoping for best, go back to other scene, merge it, autorename materials, render.. and possibly find it hasn't gotten any better

but.. its 3dsmax so.. of course its bad when it comes to how material mapping works (which.. actually trust me.. even blender which is free has a better material holder) 3dsmax has the worst.. i wish they would fix it so you arent limited to like.. what? 24 spots
(but yes, i know about multiple materials.. im just saying it would make it much easier)

Here is a handy article on efficent material use. Might save a few headaches.

I don't find managing materials in 3ds max is hard at all. you can use the 'get material' button to get what you want, or use the very simple eyedropper to pick the material from scene, very easy to manage once you understand its functions. And remember to use 'instance' for materials that sharing the same maps e.g. make reflection map instance across the material you use in the scene, so when you make adjustment to one, all the rest of reflection map on your scene change too, which could save you a lot of time.

Well, I think some of you may know this tips already (especially if you have used 3ds for long enough)

Also when editing materials, becareful that you may editing a cloned material which is not active in the scene, and you would wonder why your changes has not make any effects to the render.

its not that its hard; its the lack of spots for materials is the problem

May be that is my preference of working, I never need to use all the slots in the material editor as it is very easy for me to pick what ever material I want from the scene by using the eyedropper to pick, and then work from that slot, and I will be sure that is the actual material I am editing, The only time I will use more slot is when I am experimenting materials and it will be handy to have them side by side for comparison, even so, 24 slots are enough for me as I don't need to display the whole scene's materials at once.
Once again, that is only my way of working, every body has their own prefer way of working (may be a better way than mine)

lol when you get into real modeling of cars and scenes etc. you'll deffinetly need more than 24 slots; and multiple slots aren't fun to work at at that point

Looks like things are going well already

Thanks for some of those not-so-obvious tips sam. I've looked at those corner markers of the material balls forever but never known their purpose.. now I do

Likewise, although I knew materials assigned to objects were retained, I've never thought about overwriting materials in the way you mention here.. I've always gone on the theory to have all materials available in the material editor. That said, I prodominantly use multi materials which gives me a kinda infinate list of available slots (at least for anything as complex as I'm likely to make in the near future).



Regards,

Ian

Quote from samyip :

I don't find managing materials in 3ds max is hard at all.

Ever tried to unwrap a whole car, like my RAC GTR - NOT FUNNI
Imo its less the actual material editor (which is limited to 24 or something, like XCN said), but rathe the ugly texturing ("unwrap uvw") tools...

nah, there are easy way to unrwap, yes it will take time, you just have to know how to do it properly

about the X button deleting materials from material selector and not scene.. yes, nice... but.. how do we get them back?.. or do we just drag and drop them back.. nevermind, kinda figured out my own answer, at MTL editor, those are the scene materials.. or.. scene i dont know, i dont have 3dsmax open right now

Quote from XCNuse :

...about the X button deleting materials from material selector and not scene.. yes, nice... but.. how do we get them back?.. or do we just drag and drop them back..

As I mentioned before, use the eyedropper tool to pick from object, you can even pick the sub-object materials, very handy tool! no need to use 24 slots ever again, because you are not going to edit 24 materials at the same time if you know what I mean. You don't have to worry about replacing the slot with another material, because you can retrive them so easily with the eyedropper tool.

Edit: Some scene I created before has over hundreds of materials, it doesn't mean that I 'll have over hundreds of slots to display them all, even if the editor can give 100s slots, the monitor will not be able to fit them all.

Quote from Ian.H :

Looks like things are going well already

Thanks for some of those not-so-obvious tips sam. I've looked at those corner markers of the material balls forever but never known their purpose.. now I do

Ian,

Yes, they are not-so-obvious tips, a lot of people don't noticed them and that has cost them time when they made a mistake - a mistake which does not come from the software, but the lack of understanding of the software. (that includes me when I first started 3ds)
when you use 3ds max long enough and familarised with its tools then you will be able to pick up things like that automatically.

Quote from Ian.H :

Likewise, although I knew materials assigned to objects were retained, I've never thought about overwriting materials in the way you mention here.. I've always gone on the theory to have all materials available in the material editor...

The slots in the material editor are just like clipboard to me, they can just come and go, I don't have to keep them there all the time, you will get what I mean when you get used to this idea...

REEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :arge::mad::grumpy:

Ok, this is starting to shite me.

I can't for the life of me work out this damn materials editor illepall

I can't get skins on the cars

Can anyone post up a simple, noob, 3d rendering for dummies type step by step instruction on how to paste a skin onto a model?

I can get the models into the program, i can spin them round, zoom in and out, ladidadida... but i get stuck when it comes to material editor

for a beginner, just getting the skin on, hit M, go to a material, go to diffuse slot, and click on bitmap, then find the skin, select the skin (helpful to see skin if you hit blue and white checkered box in materials editor) and then click the car body while keeping materials editor open, and then click the 3rd from left button just below pictures of blue circle with the curved arrow that goes to white box

Quote from Shinanigans :

REEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :arge::mad::grumpy:

Ok, this is starting to shite me.

I can't for the life of me work out this damn materials editor illepall

I can't get skins on the cars

Can anyone post up a simple, noob, 3d rendering for dummies type step by step instruction on how to paste a skin onto a model?

I can get the models into the program, i can spin them round, zoom in and out, ladidadida... but i get stuck when it comes to material editor

I am afraid there is no short cut when learning 3ds max. You will be better off go to the reference files/Tutorials in 'Help' to read through the basic tools of 3ds max.

XCNuse, thanks for that, i got the skins on!

Here's my next problem: Lighting...

http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/593/rend7cm.jpg

I'm going to bury my head in those tutorials again. See if i can pick up some more things I can tell i'm just going to keep running into problems!

I can see what you guys mean by how dodgy 512x512 skins come out like! Looks hideous!

Ahh well, back to it!

okay, first, it depends on what light system you want to use, but im guessing your using default lighttracer, so what you want to do is go into create, go down to lights, and somewhere in there you will find skylight, deffinetly add that, yes it will slow render times tremendously, but thats what keeps a scene from looking fake or not

someone else can respond here, but there are settings you can change in your render settings to speed it up (yes it will look crappy, but its just for test renderings [one way i know of speeding up is turning of antialiasing])

then, go back into lights and find an omni, that will be your actual light source while the skylight creates soft shadows, the omni will produce the actual light and another shadow (depending on which type you want)

okay.. there is a website that i used to have saved that tells you what type of shadows are produced, but i cant find it, but i can tell you that area shadows will produce soft shadows (on ground this is)

and yes, this is an extremely simple lighting scene, nothing like what i've been doing lol, scenes like mine http://s15.photobucket.com/albums/a392/XCNuse/
visible there, take.. many many lights and different types with color values, just.. all sorts of settings which, if anyones curious i can talk about it lol, its nothing private