Harpers Bazaar and a BMW rendered in Corona A7

A couple of pieces to report this month, firstly I went to EUE in Utrecht back in June, as usual it was great to catch up with the CG heads and learn lots of interesting things about 3D. Particular highlights were meeting Eric de Broche of Luxigon fame and Nils Norgrens from Neoscape's talk on leadership and starting a company. Write up coming soon. Whilst I was at EUE I bumped into Adam Hotovy who was kind enough to give me an early release of Corona A7. I took it for a spin with the new BMW i7. Corona is unbelievabley easy to use, get the conversion script from the forum and pretty much hit render and your good. I left it overnight and this is what I got, I did some minor color adjustments in Photoshop, but here that is now built in to the release version.

Harpers Bazaar also did a piece on the super yacht I have been working on recently. The images they used included a double page spread and some older interior images.

Aston Martin Rendered with Keyshot and Mental Ray

Here are the first few images of an Aston Martin rendered with Keyshot and Mental Ray . The first two images of the Aston Martin Vantage are rendered in 3ds Max with Mental Ray and a HDRI environment, later on in the post the Aston Martin is rendered with Keyshot. The feedback on the studio shots are that as the car is in a studio the reflections should be of lights and not of an environment.

Below is the next stage of the Aston Martin rendered with Keyshot. In this render I used Keyshot rather than Vray or Mental Ray and 3ds Max. It has proved to be a great learning experience, proving to me that Keyshot is an extremely quick and powerful tool. I also used HDR studio which I highly recommend. The next step for this project will be trying out Vray, 3ds Max and HDR Studio with higher resolution HDR images and backplates. As well as using the problems I encountered during this stage to improve the workflow in future. I hope to revisit this project when I can find time.

Here is a quick update image using Vray in a full 3D environment. That is three render engines and counting! :)

Camera Focus Studies

I am happy to present a some new renders from a Vray Physical Camera study. In this study I wanted to looking deeper into the Vray Camera focus and motion blur settings. The table and chairs scene was very basic using three Vray Lights. For the paper clips I used a studio with a HDRI and  Rayfire to animate.

NOX Free Render Engine

"Nox Renderer is a rendering software based on unbiased methods. Development is currently in beta stage." Evermotion.org

NOX Renderer is available for download here.

This is how I got on with NOX renderer in 3ds Max, this is not so much a review but my first impressions. Once the Renderer is downloaded and you have also installed the Material Library open up 3ds Max and choose NOX as the render engine.The next step was to set up the scene, I used the Fendi Dorchester Chair which you can download here. The Sunlight System is in the Standard Lights Menu in 3ds Max and Camera is in the Camera Menu.

Next up was applying the materials. Open up the Material Editor in 3ds Max and click on Standard and choose Nox Material. The material Libery that comes with Nox is very nice. I then applyed the fabric to the chair and wood to the legs and floor.

After hitting Render this is what I was getting, in fact it was a lot more over exposed. Also I turned off Real-World Scale in the UV Maps on the Chair. The problem was with the exposure, aperture and camera distance. Once I had adjusted these three I got the render below which took 21 minutes.I found Nox Renderer nice and simple to use and I am looking forward to working with it more in future and seeing it develop. NOTE. After writing this post Evermotion have posted some tutorials here. Check them out, there are some great features and you will probably get on better than I did.

VW Camper Van

After seeing all the VW Campers in Brighton (see post here) the other week I decided to create this one. The Camper Van was modelled in 3ds Max and rendered in Mental Ray using the HDR lighting technique I described here in HDRI Reflections. I applied all the materials using a multi-sub object.

Vespa

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I have finally got around to finishing up my Vespa. This images was influenced by my time in Brighton. The Vespa took two days to model and adding materials, rendering and post-production took another two. Rendered using Mental Ray and post in Photoshop. The lighting set up is described in this post.

New Mental Ray Aircraft Render

I have just completed a new render modelled in 3ds Max, rendered with Mental Ray and some post production (Light flares and ambient occlusion) in Photoshop.

How To Easily Create Nice Renders in 3ds Max

This video will go through how to quickly add materials, lighting and render good looking images in 3ds Max. I created this video with Adobe Captivate which I am trialling at moment for teaching and it is turning out to be a great program. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDBTOrgDdt4

Basic Compositing in Post Production

I recently completed a couple of new interior renders for an Avro RJ using 3ds Max and Mental Ray. So I thought this would be a good time to explain the basic Photoshop Postwork I go through.

Compositing in post production is one of the most important and probably most over looked parts of CG. It was only recently I started compositing different renders to improve the quality of my final images, so I am in no way an expert but this is how I composite my images.

The most important thing is lighting, something that I am yet to master but here are some great links to get you on your way. 8 Tutorials To Make You Fully Understand 3D Lighting In CG. But this will only get you as far as the render output on the image above.

Adjusting the Levels (Image > Adjustments > Levels) in Photoshop will make sure you are getting the most colour range out of your image.

Rendering out an Ambient Occlusion Pass from your 3d application is one of the best ways to improve results. The render will look something like the one here. Put it on top of your image in Photoshop and Multiply or Overlay it in the layers, you can also adjust the opacity. I then duplicate and merge the layers and adjust the Levels and the Brightness and Contrast.

When rendering out of 3ds Max I have found the images could do with crisping up. To do this add a Unsharp Mask. (Filters > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask)

To get a Lens Blur or Depth of Field you will need to render out a Zdepth pass. The output should look something like this one. You can override all materials instead of replacing them in 3ds Max (Render Setup > Processing > Material Override > Check the Box and drag the material in.) The last thing I do is adjust the contrast and save the image out. There is so much more you can do but here are the basics of what I generally do.

New Interior Renders using Mental Ray

Here are a couple of new client interior renders for a Avro RJ modelled in 3ds Max, rendered Mental Ray and post in Photoshop. A quick low down on the post production in Photoshop is in this post.

How to Model, Texture, Light and Render a Macbook in 3ds Max

I have a series of lectures coming up and one of them will be Modelling a Macbook in 3ds Max, here is the first attempt. This video is at about 10x speed and shows how to set up blueprints and model the Macbook using simple primitives and pro boolean. I am not the biggest fan of boolean but in this case they proved very effective. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fbc_jj8MXg In the second video of the series I go through Texturing, Lighting and Rendering a Macbook in 3ds Max. This time it is a brief introduction to materials and texturing. Again the video is at about 10x the speed and shows a simple Mental Ray setup for rendering, materials and adding an animated texture to the object.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stxr7l-yZxM

You can also buy my model from turbosquid.

Studio Lighting in 3ds Max using Mental Ray

Some time ago a watched a great tutorial by Chad Ashley on Vimeo called Studio Lighting in 3ds Max using Mental Ray. It has since disappeared but here are the results I got from following the tutorial. You can download the scene file in the downloads section on this site.