3D Studio Max performance

[Czar]

The problem is not the renderer since the 3dsmax native scanline renderer is pretty good and very very fast
The problem is the materials you are using. You seem to have raytraced basec reflections along with alot of lights which makes it very very very slow to render.

Almost a year ago I did a project for school that involved modeling, texturing and rendering a realistic looking scene. It was also be in high enough resolution to come out well on an A3 sized print. Took me about 2-3 hours to render out mine on an athlon 1800xp because I had no raytraced materials. A friend of mine did the same project (cant find his render though) and he added a demolished bicycle that had a hint of raytrace on it, the rendering time jumped from 1-2 hours to at least 6-7 hours, we dont know becuase we never finished the rendering

this is my render
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/czar/Render15Small.jpg

 

[rainypickles]

Originally posted by: Czar
The problem is not the renderer since the 3dsmax native scanline renderer is pretty good and very very fast
The problem is the materials you are using. You seem to have raytraced basec reflections along with alot of lights which makes it very very very slow to render.

Almost a year ago I did a project for school that involved modeling, texturing and rendering a realistic looking scene. It was also be in high enough resolution to come out well on an A3 sized print. Took me about 2-3 hours to render out mine on an athlon 1800xp because I had no raytraced materials. A friend of mine did the same project (cant find his render though) and he added a demolished bicycle that had a hint of raytrace on it, the rendering time jumped from 1-2 hours to at least 6-7 hours, we dont know becuase we never finished the rendering

this is my render
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/czar/Render15Small.jpg

that render looks amazing! any particular sites you found handy in doing something so realistic? or perhaps you wrote your own tutorial?

as for the OP, everything looks so shiny, it detracts from the architecture. try toning the shiny down. as other people mentioned, maybe that'll cut render time down too.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: rainypickles

Originally posted by: Czar
The problem is not the renderer since the 3dsmax native scanline renderer is pretty good and very very fast
The problem is the materials you are using. You seem to have raytraced basec reflections along with alot of lights which makes it very very very slow to render.

Almost a year ago I did a project for school that involved modeling, texturing and rendering a realistic looking scene. It was also be in high enough resolution to come out well on an A3 sized print. Took me about 2-3 hours to render out mine on an athlon 1800xp because I had no raytraced materials. A friend of mine did the same project (cant find his render though) and he added a demolished bicycle that had a hint of raytrace on it, the rendering time jumped from 1-2 hours to at least 6-7 hours, we dont know becuase we never finished the rendering

this is my render
http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/czar/Render15Small.jpg

that render looks amazing! any particular sites you found handy in doing something so realistic? or perhaps you wrote your own tutorial?

as for the OP, everything looks so shiny, it detracts from the architecture. try toning the shiny down. as other people mentioned, maybe that'll cut render time down too.

I agree, that's an amazing rendering, czar. Your work with textures is very impressive. That's my main weakness; I know little to nothing about how to texture objects. I used scalable material maps (I think that's what they're called) for my scenes. I find that the metal and glass look great on mine, but my stucco would look much better the way you have done it. If you could point me to a tutorial on how to texture things like concrete, wood, and stucco I would greatly appreciate it.

As for the shininess, I already toned that down from what it was and I'm pretty happy with the result. The one thing I would like to do is improve the texturing of the interior walls; they are too shiny. I'm thinking about chaning the paint from gloss to a semi-gloss. Some bump mapping would be nice and would definately help out immensely. The floor looks the way I had intended; it has to be easily cleaned seeing as it's a public building.

Thanks again for the comments everyone.

 

[Cat]

Perfect reflections and shadows are often what people cite when asked what make CG images unrealistic. Just a thought.

 

[Czar]

what totaly saved me when I was doing that scenes is that I bought the first 3 texture cd's from 3dtotal.com, highly recomended and for me I couldnt texture anything without those textures as a base.

Try turning off all raytracing in all the materials in the scene, then work your way from there, only use raytrace and reflections if you realy have to. You can also use refract/reflect or whatever its called, sortof does fake raytracing and is quite alot faster.

And then ofcorse for these sortof renders you want to visit this site
http://www.cgarchitect.com/

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Cat
Perfect reflections and shadows are often what people cite when asked what make CG images unrealistic. Just a thought.

Yeah, doesn't hurt to drag your image into an image editor and add just a touch of Noise to it either

 

[rjcoolpix880]

great building - i like the colors and the detail, you have obviously worked really hard at it.

-but-

the "grass" is SUPER distracting.you should smooth out the countours. also make it a different color. real grass is not that color. the grass is the only strong bit of color in the shots so that robs the attention from your building. i would try a really really toned down green (almost grey). you also could try white??

BTW where do you go to school? i am getting my masters at NC State in architecture. just curious

 

[thirdlegstump]

Max rules with dual Xeon and SCSI.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: rjcoolpix880
great building - i like the colors and the detail, you have obviously worked really hard at it.

-but-

the "grass" is SUPER distracting.you should smooth out the countours. also make it a different color. real grass is not that color. the grass is the only strong bit of color in the shots so that robs the attention from your building. i would try a really really toned down green (almost grey). you also could try white??

BTW where do you go to school? i am getting my masters at NC State in architecture. just curious

Yes, the grass is a little loud now that I think about it. As for smoothing out the contours, some people think they look better that way, others don't. At this point I don't have time to fix it. Apparently there is a very easy way to use a mesh in 3D Max to make superrealistic contours. Next time.

I'm finishing up a 4-year undergrad degree at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada.

I'm impressed that you're in a masters program. You must be quite talented. Very few people go on to a masters degree out of my program. My plan is to get my apprenticeship overwith with the OAA; we have to work 3 years under a licenced architect to get our licence here in Ontario. After that I have to take a few courses and write some exams and hopefully that's the end of the cherade.

Thanks very much for the compliments by the way, I *have* been working very hard on this project for quite some time and it's nice to hear positive feedback 4 days before it's due.

If only I had enough processing power to generate a decent animation of this project...

 

[Czar]

4 days.....

few tiny things I would like to suggest
1. Lounge shot, there are alot of unsmoothed edges there, expecialy on the pillars and realy realy expecialy on the floor (the black circles)
2. For the grass its easy to replace it with a plane and then meshsmooth it, then add something like the grass on this page http://jeffpatton.net/Mental-ray.htm ... might take too much time though. Also there is an awsome scene there with indoor rendering.
3. Can we get updates


and good luck

 

[Rhombuss]

Hey SickBeast - looks like a really interesting project here. Where are you planning on getting your apprenticeship? KPMB is probably up there with your top choices eh? I'm over at UofT in my 4th year of Structural Engineering, so there's a slight possibilty we might collaborate in the future!

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Czar
4 days.....

few tiny things I would like to suggest
1. Lounge shot, there are alot of unsmoothed edges there, expecialy on the pillars and realy realy expecialy on the floor (the black circles)
2. For the grass its easy to replace it with a plane and then meshsmooth it, then add something like the grass on this page http://jeffpatton.net/Mental-ray.htm ... might take too much time though. Also there is an awsome scene there with indoor rendering.
3. Can we get updates


and good luck

Czar I sent you a couple of PMs about your suggestions, plus I'm having some serious problems w/ my latest set of renderings.

If anyone can tell me what the root problem causing the artifacts in these two images is, I would be extremely greatful:

elev_persp_messed.jpg

left_messed.jpg

As for smoothing the edges for the lounge shots, I fixed the floor spots by making the curves import in 1 degree increments (either that or I set it to 100 curve steps), but that didn't fix the columns. I'm also having this problem on the spheres on my exterior lamps. Bottom line: I don't know how to fix this problem properly.

The grass looks too time consuming to fix at this point, and I think they will appreciate the fact that it ressembles an architectural model.

I will definately keep you guys updated on this project. Just give me a day or two to recover after Friday.

Thanks again for all the input, and wish me luck in getting this project together.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Rhombuss
Hey SickBeast - looks like a really interesting project here. Where are you planning on getting your apprenticeship? KPMB is probably up there with your top choices eh? I'm over at UofT in my 4th year of Structural Engineering, so there's a slight possibilty we might collaborate in the future!

Rhombuss I'm planning to do my apprenticeship at the best firm that will hire me. I would love to work with well-known people such as KPMB, but I'll have to wait and see. I actually live 2 minutes from their Centennial College project and to be honest I'm not very impressed by the design. The same goes for their embassy in Berlin. That's my subjective opinion though.

If I had my choice of architects in Toronto it would be Moriyama. He did the Scarborough Civic Centre and the new engineering building at Ryerson. The guy's a genius IMO.

Anyhow, yes, we may indeed collaborate in the future, esp. considering you are a structural engineer. Good luck finishing up your 4th year! :beer:

 

[SickBeast]

I solved the artifact issues; they were caused by radiosity.