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Junior Member
 
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Last Login: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 5:14 AM
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Hey guys,
I've been reading a lot of great posts and tutorials on this site and I decided it was time for me to throw in a post! I'm a newbie to 3ds Max (I've been learning as a hobby that recently became a part-part-time job) so please go easy on me, but comments and suggestions are more than welcome. Clearly the surrounding area (tiled grass, lack of trees, etc) needs a ton of work but those were left out because my company has incredibly limited rendering capabilities.
I developed a short animation, and have posted a frame from that animation above, that shows how we engineers would handle construction staging for an upcoming project to build some flyover ramps for the I-93 I-95 Interchange in Woburn, MA. The image above shows an alternative we considered using a pier in the median. Another alternative was to use a single span to cross I-95.
The questions I have for you guys are (1) what is a good way to show the different segments of the box girders and (2) how should I texture the ramp merge areas that should have the hatch-like white stripes? I wanted to show the different segments of the box girders (e.g. 100' sections) but I wasn't sure what the right approach was.
Thanks,
Eric
Eric Pheifer
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"old dog"
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| Eric, Great start! Let me get right to your questions and then I'll add some comments. 1) To show the sections for the flyovers, don;t feel like you have to do it with the model you have. Take an oppotunity to step out of the box. One way that has worked for me in the past is to simply "cut" your model at a location that will highlight the section: 
You can also so a slick "drop fade" animation where a section of the roadway fades out and the camera moves in to show the section. It might be disconcerting of there are cars driving "off" the bridge, so perhaps a 90% fade? 2) The gore areas are always a little tricky. Honestly I usually just use the default material (asphalt or concrete) and apply the stripes as a separate object (sweep). A nice touch of skidmakrs may not be fully appreciated by the client, but would be fun! Quick comments: Yes the grass will need some help, but I would start by getting some trees in there first. I saw the in Autodesk's Area, there is a large selection of Xfrog trees for free. I found it through Itoo Software's website. If the grass still look finky, I can make some suggestions, but the bottom line is to use stragegic placement of your trees to help break up the grass area. The image could use a little boost in contrast. Are you using Mental Ray? If so, it could be your exposure setting. It's also an easy fix in Photoshop, and honestly, I try not to send out images unless they've had a little post work TLC. Keep up the great work!
Glen Loyd
Lead Design Visualization Specialist | Parsons Brinckerhoff
www.pbprojectviz.com
 
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Junior Member
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| Glen, Thanks for your quick reply! I think that showing the section by cutting it, like in the image you uploaded, is a great option. Even just putting a small frame in the top right corner showing the section could be very helpful. I didn't know some Xfrog trees were available for free. I've been trying to get some needed plug-ins. Free trees that are much better than the AEC Extended stock trees would be amazing! For plug-ins, I have been looking at Xfrog or Onyx Trees, and especially VRay. I think those seem like they are well worth the investment. I used Mental Ray for this scene. I've been toying around trying to figure out what the right exposure control settings for Logarithmic and Linear exposure controls are. I agree the image lacks the right contrast. I'll play around with my exposure settings a bit more. I have been using VRay at school so using Mental Ray at the office has been a change of pace. I think I can get my settings OK in VRay (see image below...comments welcome on that too) but I'm still having issues with Mental Ray looking overexposed. Then when I turn the brightness down, I'm finding that the image looks too dark. Do I need to play with the bright and dark multipliers? Thanks a ton for your input. Talk to you soon. Thanks, Eric P.S. The render below is of a portion of the Tobin Bridge in Boston, MA (Little Mystic Span) which is the subject of my graduate thesis. We are working to instrument the bridge with sensors and model it in CAD, MAX, and a structural analysis program SAP2000. Thought you might be interested... 
Eric Pheifer
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| Argh....frustrating! I just tried putting some MrProxy trees in the scene and adjusting the contrast to show you an updated render, but I have insufficient memory. I added 21 trees, but each of those free Xfrog trees had about 200,000 polygons. I will try to find some less detailed trees. Maybe Forest Pack? Still, I thought that you could handle millions of polygons, especially instanced Proxy objects, with the new MrProxy. Maybe it is because I am using 2GB of RAM on a 5 year old computer. Time for an upgrade... -Eric
Eric Pheifer
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For doing 'good' foliage, a 64 bit system running XP 64 (or vista or 7) is essential. I couldn't work without it.
I'd like to chime in on your renders. Your Highway model is very nice. Vary clean with nice textures. The lighting is a bit flat and the car models are kinda toy-like. Make sure the materials you are using are 2-sided. I can see the road behind the car through the windows. Also, adding reflections will help them look less unreal. Choosing a more 'interesting' time of day (Not 12 noon) will also help accentuate geometric detail. Also, MentalRay has a very nice ambient occlusion pass you can use to really help define the shapes in the renders and avoid using global illumination.
As for trees, Onyx is good, but even with a lot of work, you'll still have trees around 30-70K triangles. With a 64 bit system and using Vray proxies we have rendered thousands of 100K trees in our scenes. Fora lot of distant work, low-poly bitmap-based trees are still fully acceptable. Just don't get 'em too close to your camera. A trick we have used is to take a single high-res tree, put it in your scene with the final lighting and render it from a face-on view, creating a cutout-bitmap-tree that has the same lighting as the rest of the scene so it doesn't stand out like a sore thumb.
I agree with Glen. 'stepping out of the box' and doing something creative is a great exercise and can help tell your story without resorting to distracting methods like putting a CAD daring overlay or some kind of text all over the image.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but it's a common theme I see with people new to MAX and especially Vray. Have you become comfortable with Gamma and rendering in a gamma corrected color space? If not, be sure to ask your instructors about it. If this doesn't become second nature both Vray and Mental Ray will quickly become frustrating. You bridge rendering is great, but I am seeing a very high contrast and desaturated colors. That usually means not gamma corrected. GAMMA GAMMA!
Hey Glen, congrats on 500 posts! SUPREME BEING!
THOMAS SHANNON
SENIOR DESIGN VISUALIZATION SPECIALIST
PB Project Visualization
http://www.pbprojectviz.com/
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Junior Member
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Last Login: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 5:14 AM
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| Hey Tom, Thanks for your comments. Your idea to use a single high-poly tree with the same lighting seems excellent. I'm going to try that soon. How would I use the Mental Ray Ambient Occlusion pass in an animation? Or is that something that just works for still renders? I have done AO passes in VRay before and have been very satisfied with the AO applied to the rendering during the post-processing phase in Photoshop. I have not looked at any render elements in Mental Ray yet. That is a great catch on the gamma for the bridge! I did not use a gamma corrected workflow for that rendering. Right after I finished that rendering was when I read Tracey White's Gamma 2.2 topic. Now I am using 2.2 gamma correction for all of my scenes. The highway scene did use proper gamma settings, although I'm pretty sure I still have a long way to go with really understanding how to use a linear workflow. I wish I could ask instructors! Or co-workers! I'm a structural engineering student who is the only one at the company with limited 3ds Max experience. I would love some professional instruction on Max but I'm not sure where to go to learn good fundamentals of AEC visualization. Thanks,
Eric
Eric Pheifer
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Awesome. I can spot bad Gamma a mile away  Your Highway looks much better (I can see into the shadows). With some AO or some improved lighting it will really pop.
You would have to apply the AO pass in post using After Effects or something of the sort. In fact, you can improve the look of your images by learning Photoshop and how to do color grading. If you look at some of the great architecture renders on Evermotion or CG Architect, you'll see how much they add after the rendering process.
I'm so glad you're finding this site to be such a resource 
THOMAS SHANNON
SENIOR DESIGN VISUALIZATION SPECIALIST
PB Project Visualization
http://www.pbprojectviz.com/
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Junior Member
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Last Login: Tuesday, June 14, 2011 5:14 AM
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| Thanks for all your suggestions. I have a good idea what direction I need to go in to improve my skills (AO, learning After Effects & Photoshop, etc). I'll keep reading all your posts and try to post some more of my work as time passes. This site is a great resource! I wouldn't have been able to even start to tackle an inch of this project without Glen's Rules of the Road tutorial, suggestions from Claudio on various forums about how to model terrain (EasySite got me going in the right direction, although I didn't end up using it), and Tom's posts to move all of the CAD data to 0,0 to avoid some funky MAX stuff. Keep up the great work! Thanks,
Eric
Eric Pheifer
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