Long time viewer, first time poster. I see a lot of amazing work on this site, and I thought I'd finally chime in with a project I'm currently working on. It's a 10km rural highway upgrade, the animation will run for approx 13500 frames (Aerial, Northbound and Southbound runs).

The attached rendering is straight out of the VFB, using 3ds Max 2009 with mental ray (32-bit).

I'm still very green when it comes to post production work, my company has just purchased After Effects which I am looking forward to getting into - looks like a lot of fun. I have just rendered out a separate AO pass at this point - I obviously have a lot more work to do.

I'm really looking to improve the quality of the animation, so any ideas/suggestions/comments would be most welcome.

Thanks in advance

AM

Regards

AM

I think you are off to a great start (take the trees away and you'd have a typical scene in Wyoming)!  Couple of small comments:

1) I assume you are using Forest Pro for the trees?  They look pretty good except for the ones up close.  The lighting (from the front) doesn't quite fit the scene's lighting (from the back).  Not a huge worry.  Those who don't do viz may not pick up on it.  Also, check out Tom's tips on Bitmap blur.  As you start expanding yourassets and plug-ins, I would highly recommend going the 3D/proxy route...

2) This is mimor, but the camera height is causing some confusion with the braded cable barrier on the far left shoulder.  I would suggest raising or lowering the camera just a little so that the top of the barrier doesn't line up with the outside edge of the shoulder gravel. 

Be sure to let me know if/when you can show the animation.  We can try to link it from an external site (YouTube. Vimeo, etc.).

Nice work!  Thanks for sharing.

Glen Loyd

Lead Design Visualization Specialist  | Parsons Brinckerhoff
www.pbprojectviz.com

How ya planning to get that rendered in time? (@3 min a frame it's 650 hours!) Even on our farm that would take a few days.

I just wanted to also remind you that post-processing is your friend, even if it's something very simple like adjusting the color, adding a bit of haze (using your z-depth pass) and adding a bit o' vignetting and your Ambient occlusion helps images a lot:

THOMAS SHANNON

I am using Forest Pro for the trees. I haven't looked at 3D trees and proxies yet, I probably won't until we go to a 64-bit platform. Or are they suitable in a 32-bit environment?

You're right about the sun, it's set to 11:30am (close enough to noon!). The shadows are turned on, they just make everything look a bit flat. I was looking to animate the sun rising behing the hills in the distance, but I found you can't see the mr sun behind the background image. I'm using the background switcher in the environment map to get some clouds in the background - I find that putting a map in the haze slot doesn't look too flash.

Claudio, you're spot on about the issues integrating a road system into existing terrain. I am firstly an MX designer (the visual side of things is just a side venture at the moment - but it's gathering momentum), so I have a pretty decent modelling workflow setup - lots of AutoCAD customisation/lisps etc.

Thanks for the tip about the reflectance, I've never really looked into those settings too deeply in the past

Tom, the 3x animations add up to 13800 frames. I have setup a pretty big render farm (IT loved me for doing that!). I should get the whole thing done across 2 nights, including the separate AO passes.

I am pretty much finished with the modelling, and am awaiting the last round of comments from the client before hitting the GO button. I'll try to put a sample of the animation up when it's completed - I'll probably have to get the client's permission of course.

Thanks again

AM

Regards

AM

MX is a road and terrain modelling package from Bentley (www. bentley.com). It creates all the strings required to define the edges of road formation. I can either create a seeded triangulation from this design (and use the Dynamite plugin), or I can export my strings into AutoCAD and mesh them up with my own custom lisp tools - which I actually prefer as it gives me more control over the resulting mesh.

It's a bit of a long winded method, but I end up with a pretty clean model, with quads instead of tri's which make mapping a whole lot easier.

Easysite sounds interesting - I should look into it

AM

Regards

AM

Looks good i have a similar set as you, first i wouldn't go for the proxy route until you have a x64 bit setup i tried it on my last job after mark showed me it looked great but i got to about 50 proxys and mental ray ran out of memory.

Make sure you turn your expand to view upto about 40% in forest pro to stop the trees in the foreground suddenly dissapearing off the screen. 

I would pick a time of day where the sun is largley behind the camera (as if its coming over your shoulder) this will give you shadows stretching away from you. If you pick a time of day where the sun is directly to the left or right the you tend to get thin lines for shadows which will be come big shadow as the tree turns to face the camera. If the sun is directly in front of you the trees display really dark and you will have to up the output value on the materials.

The only thing i would do to the image is to add a little atmosphere If you try the dynamite fog settings expect some really odd outcomes you will have to really up the output values on the sky bitmap

I put a lume map in the atmosphere map togther with the new glare shader and a lot of playing around to get something like this.

Gamma is my next project my couldn't advise cos i still don't know how to control it lol

Tim Messer

Parsons Brinckerhoff 
29 Cathedral Road,
Cardiff

Claudio, please find attached a simple maxscript I made a few years back that places selected objects along a path at random intervals - it might help you out. You're right, since Bentley bought out MX they immediately scrapped the existing engine and rebuilt the program within the Powerdraft. Coming from an AutoCAD background this was a bit of a shock.

Is Easy Site compatible beyond AutoCAD 2007? The website looks a bit dated and we're using 2008 here.

I'm also trying to steer away from Dynamite, I find it takes a bit too much control away from you when you're working in MAX. I prefer to work directly in MAX to get the results I'm after.

Tim, I use the mr proxies for vehicles and light posts only at this stage - and from what you're saying, I won't be heading to proxy 3D trees until we go 64-bit (which is nowhere on the horizon at this time!).

Another thing in Forest Pro you might use in addition to the 40% expanded view is to use the Back Offset. I use a 50m back offset to make sure there is no sudden disappearance of trees. As for atmosphere, I'm rendering out a ZDepth pass so I'm hoping to do that in After Effects (it looks a little temperamental though).

I have also played around with generating glare in AE - seems pretty straightforward, so that will save a bit of additional rendering time.

Regards

AM

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	ALM_ExtendedPathController.zip (2 views, 1.90 KB)