Introduction

When I went to France on April 2005 on my high school trip, I bought different postcards to send them to my family and friends. Accidentally I forgot to post one of them so I brought it home. It represented the Cafe de Flore of Paris, the famous cafe of french existentialists and artists. I liked a lot and so I decided to realize it with computer graphics techniques and instruments.

I just wanna say "thanks" to my old PC: a Pentium 4 processor with a Radeon 9800pro and only 512 mb ram memory. For the realization I used 3ds max 7 and Vray Advanced 1.46. A great post-production process was possible with a Wacom Graphic Tablet. I have Intuos 2 A4 format.

Modeling

When you decide to realize an image like this, you have to know that the modeling part is the simplest.

All the objects of the scene are modelled in Max with polygonal instruments. The coffee mug, the saucers, the glasses and the fluids were created with lathe tool and then converted to editable polys for texturing. The eggs are simple geospheres with a lot of subdivisions.

The woman drawing is a simple editable spline converted to editable polys and then distorted with FFD 4x4x4 modifier. The table is a primitive cilinder converted and modified as editable polys.

Texturing

The scene is embeded  in various complex vray materials. We'll begin from the simplest.My drawing is as diffuse and a texture created in Photoshop as bump (with value of 80).The coffee mug has a texture created in Photoshop (simulating porcelain) as diffuse, a clear gray color (R211, G211, B211) in Reflect slot and fresnel reflection activated.

The pills are a Multi/Sub-Object material with two Vray embedded materials ;both have Reflect slot with a gray near white color (R228, G228, B228) and fresnel reflection activated. The egg material has a texture created in Photoshop in diffuse channel, a dark gray (R59, G59, B59) in reflect slot (FR activated) and refl.glossiness at 0,7.

The water and  the glass have very similar materials (see image below for Milk material too) except for IOR value; water has 1,335 while glass has 1,606.

The teapot has a chromed material; diffuse at black, reflect slot at R228, G228, B228, fresnel reflection activated and max depth of reflection at 10.

Now complex materials are coming. The table is embeded in  two materials. One with a texture realized in Photoshop in diffuse and bump slot (30 like bump value); reflect channel has a procedural map (Noise, with standard values) in its own slot.

The other one has diffuse at black, reflect at R176, G124, B74 with 0,85 as refl.glossiness and 3 as value of subdivision. Furthermore refract channel is black but its number of subdivision is 50. At last the Index Of Refraction is about 0,47.

Lighting

I believe lighting process is the most important of a project.

In this case watch  the image below for the lights used.

There are three Vray lights with multiplier at 3, 3,5 and 4. All have “Store with Irradiance map” activated. For a great result I placed also a HDR image called “Kitchen” and downloadable from Paul Debevec web site with 0,5 multiplier.

Rendering

The final resolution image (3048x2287) demanded about 5 hours of rendering.
Below there are Irradiance map and Antialiasing settings.

You can see render settings in the images below. Environment slot have HDR image of Debevec.

Post-processing & Depth of Field

This process is really important. An ordinary result could be improved a lot with an excellent use of post-processing software.
In this case I used Photoshop of Adobe. Computing depth of field of image (or animation) with rendering engine that's really problematic.
It's advisable to make it with internal 3ds max plugin. I used ZDepth. In my case I used values as: Z min 155 and Z max: 230.
Once rendered the depth map (see below), you have to import it in a compositing software (Photoshop ad example) and set it as alpha channel.
Afer done you can load the alpha map in Filter > Blur > Lens blur and you can modify various parameters to achieve good results.

Background is simply a bitmap image saturated and then blurred.

With simple small brushes (with help of blending changes) I created some micro-details like scratches on table and coffee mug.
Important advice: it's very useful enhance or reduce Hue/Saturation and Brightness/Contrast settings. Try with various filters for achieve interesting results.

Final Image see below:

This video is about creating a camera projection (camera map per pixel) for an animation with pointing photo realism and maintaining rendering speed with Mental Ray in 3dsmax..Video has no sound but I believe everything is clear without the sound. 30 minutes 106 mb quicktime. Exclusive for 3dm3.com

http://rapidshare.com/files/100681630/3DM3_3dsmax_Camera_Projection_EmreGoren.zip.html

Reference:

I was looking for some references that could help me put things together. Basically I was aiming for a dramatic shot of an ancient passage, and so after doing some research I came up with these references:

Modeling:

Most of the objects in the scene were poly modeled. I believe poly modeling is more flexible and a commonly used technique in similar scenes as it facilitates the process of laying out UVs later on. I had to use other techniques like Splines and Loft objects. I find it more convenient to set up the camera angle at early stages so that you don’t have to model what is not visible to the camera. This is the camera angle that I chose:

Now it is the perfect time to move on and model all the details you want to have in your scene:

Since it is an ancient scene that we are after, it is a good idea to give your models an irregular shape. This can be done easily by adding more polygons to places where you want it to look and feel old, and then adding Noise modifier with reasonable values. It might look a bit exaggerated in viewports, but you have to put in mind the distance from camera, and GI calculation which blurs details due to interpolation:

More tiny details were added with the aid of Cut tool:

As for the awning (sunshader), I’ve used Cloth modifier. It started out with a simple plane, with enough segments to deform properly in simulation. Two cylinders were positioned below the plane to give it a shape of an awning stretching over a structure of support posts. In order to give it some wrinkles and folds, I’ve added Vol. Select modifier and on the vertex selection level I’ve selected areas where folds will most probably be. Soft selection had to be turned on to make it right. Wave modifier was added at the top of Modifier Stack. You can play around with values until you are happy with the result. To fine tune it even more, Noise modifier was used with a low value in Scale:

Texturing & Unwrapping

We are going to use Unwrap UVW to texture our objects in the scene. The process is mostly the same for all objects, for that reason I’m going to take this object as a sample:

Select planar faces and apply Planar map:

I had to unwrap the UVs for the door step, the inner part of windows and doors separately and then stitch them together. After positing UV groups next to each other, this is how it’s going to look like in the Edit window:

There’re no tricks to it, just simple and straightforward unwrapping! Now we can take our UV template to Photoshop and paints our textures. I’m using 1500*1500 resolution for this part. I’ve used some textures that I found in my library. Here is a sample of what I got:

Using regular techniques in Photoshop, I’ve ended up with this:

Other objects in the scene had Alpha Masks and Displacement Maps:

All plants are simply textured with a mask in opacity slot, to cut down on RAM usage.

Lighting

One emitter (Spotlight) was used to light up the scene.

As you can see, I have created some boxes to block the light in certain places, allowing for more shadows to cast. By turning the viewport to Spotlight, you can manage to see which parts of your scene are exposed to light:

You can find the settings of the Spotlight used in the scene below:

The GI Environment has a light blue color. I was experimenting with different shades of colors, and I found this to be most suitable:

Rendering

I used V-ray 1.5 as a rendering engine, and rendered with a VrayPhysicalCam:

It is all about testing with different values in f-number, shutter speed and ISO. Vignetting was turned on to make corners darker. When you are testing, it is advisable to render at low settings and at low resolution for quicker renders, and when it is time to render the final scene you can pump your settings up. I’m using Linear workflow in V-ray, these are my settings:

My PC couldn’t handle a 1200*1600 render, so I had to use region rendering and then stitch all the render pieces up in Photoshop. Glow and Sharp filters were added in post production. Here is the final render:

Hope you enjoy ;)

This video shows how easy is to setupcaustics in Final Render within 3dsmax.

http://rapidshare.com/files/85306009/3DM_Final_Render_Caustics_Ders1.rar

Making Grass

Create a Plane object and press the Add Hair button. This created a new Hair object and a default hair texture will be assigned to it. Leave all hair settings to default for the moment.

Make sure the Hair object is activated and select the hair scale tool (Hair > Tools > Scale). Use this tool to bring the future grass to the desired length (either by using the tool controls in the attributes manger or by clicking and dragging in the viewport).

Now select the brush tool (Hair > Tools > Brush). Adjust the radius and bring in some variation in the grass. Make sure to rotate the viewport and work on all sites of the object.

This is it for the 'modeling' :) Now select the hair material. Three channels are activated by default: Color, Specular and Thickness. This is what you should see when you do a quick render of your scene.

Color: Create a brownish-green color gradient. The left side of the gradient will be applied to the grass root, the right part to the tips. If you want your grass to be slightly withered, select a light brown color at the right end. Create some color variation by setting the Var-H and Var-V parameters to something around 10.

Thickness: The hair still looks to thick, so decrease the Root and Tip values to 0.8 and 0.08.

Scale: At the moment every blade of grass has the same length, which looks to uniform. Activate the Scale channel to bring in some variation. Beware not to confuse the Scale with Length channel. Length cuts the hair which looks to artificial for real grass. You can leave the Scale settings at default. If you want more variation, increase the Variation parameter.

Frizz: Enable this channel to add chaos to your grass. With Frizz you can let your grass bend in any and all directions. Depending on what effect you want to get, use values between 30% and 50%.

Kink: If you want to have even more distortion in your grass, you can also enable the Kink channel and add a little bit of kink to the grass (I used a value of 15%).

That's it for the hair material. Now select your grass object again and go to the Hairs tab. Increase the hair count from 5.000 to something about 50.000. But this value heavily depends on the size of the surface the grass grows on. You can also decrease the Segments to 6. If you do a close-up render and you realized that the grass blades are to angled use higher values.

Here is what I get with two light sources and soft shadows. You probably will notice that your grass looks way too dark once you enabled shadows. Therefore, go back to the grass material, Illumination tab and reduce the Self-Shadow and Received Shadow values.

Create a new material and leave only the Color channel activated. Chose a brown color and apply this material to the plane object.

About the image

There are many rendered portraits in a lot of galleries. I was always impressed by the high quality of the MentalRay FastSkin shader and how easy it was to set it up once you understood the basic concept of how skin works. But as I 'only' have Cinema 4D, MentalRay is not an option for me. But isn't it possible to render realistic skin in Cinema 4D? I wanted to find out with this project.

Modeling

I usually start my 3d models with a simple cube (box modeling). I know that many prefer point-by-point modeling (or poly-by-poly) but I like using a cube and 'cutting' the detail in, step-by-step. Box modeling allows me to quickly block out the basic shape of the figure and thus to have a better feeling for the proportions of the model. But because I am using good references, any modeling technique would have worked.

The face finished, I began laying out the UVs (maybe the most annoying part of this job). Fortunately I found UVLayout (by Headus), a program that flattens 3D geometry automatically.

Textures

I took the model into ZBrush to add a texture to the face. Every inch of the texture comes from high-resolution photos which where projected onto the model with the ZBrush tools. Wesclei Barbosa has written a tutorial about how to do that. All my reference photos as well as the texture references are from www.3d.sk

This is how the final head texture looks:

I used this same texture to create the skin details. I turned it into a black & white image and created a mask of it in ZBrush. Now I was able to use the Inflate brush and sculpt all the little skin details. This technique is explained in this video tutorial. I also included some volume for the hair with a custom brush. Finally I created and extracted a displacement map of the head.

The skin shader

Now comes the hardest part: setting up the skin shader. For this image I used the Vreel Skin Shader, a plug-in shader for Cinema 4D that allows you to set up different layers of skin and which also includes a SSS effect. It is possible to setup parameters for secularity, surface and translucent. The shader is loaded in the Luminance channel.

As you can see on the left picture, most of the texture has been 'overwritten' by the shader. That's because I only loaded a color map in this test render. In the right picture I used an epidermal map and a subdermal map mixed together with a weight map. All maps are modified versions of the original color map.

This is how the luminance channel looked like after loading the different maps. The default color map is loaded into the standard Cinema Color channel.

I think the default c4d color channel is much easier to set up, so that's why I left 'Calculate Surface Shading' blank. I used 'Calculate Specularity' to create an even amount of overall brilliance in the skin (see picture below). The standard C4D specularity channel has been used to create nice sharp specs on the edges (e.g. the lips and on the nose). Both specularity channels have been restricted to a map.

The final skin shader is made up of 6 different channels: Color, Diffusion, Luminance (with the Vreel shader), Bump, Displacement, Specular and Specular Color.

Scene

I quickly modeled a simple shirt, took it into ZBrush, divided it a couple of times and sculpted some cloth wrinkles with the Inflate brush. I also modeled the arms and shoulders and composed everything together in Cinema. There was no need to use displacements on the shirt; I simply exported the high-resolution mesh from ZBrush. I have a lot of memory, so I don't have to worry that my computer might crash. There is almost no difference in render times between the low- and high-resolution shirt.

The texture for the shirt has been created by playing around with some filters and by using the 'dodge' and 'burn' tools.

Lightning

For this image I couldn't use the Global Illumination system because Vreel Skin doesn't work with GI, so I had to use standard Cinema lights. I created a 3-point-lighting with:

1) Main Spot @ 115 %
2) Fill Area @ 95 %
3) Rim Spot @ 190 %

I also include an area light (4) with very low intensity, placed below the model to simulate bouncing light from the bottom. All lights use soft shadows and 'Falloff' is set to 'Inverse Square'.

Hair

Now comes the funny part: the hairstyle and the beard. I used Cinema's hair module for this job. I created two additional maps: an alpha map for the beard and one for the hair. Both maps were loaded into the 'Density' channel of the hair objects. Unfortunately the density map will not take effect in the editor view. It will only be visible in the final render. So I would suggest setting 'Display' in the 'Editor' tab to 'Hair Lines' if you have enough memory in your computer.

I created eyelashes and a wet layer for the eyes. For the eyelashes I selected an edge loop around the eye, created a spline from it and pressed the 'Add hair' button.

Rendering and Post Production

The render with Vreel skin shader and displacement took about 4-5 hours (1h 30min without displacement). I rendered the hair and beard in a separate pass and composed both in Photoshop. Further more I rendered an Ambient Occlusion pass and multiplied it over the picture. I wasn't happy with the way the eyes looked, so I copied parts of an eye photograph over the image. I finally did some color correction, applied Gaussian Blur to simulate DOF and added a grain layer. Here is the final image.

Thank you for reading my 'Making of'. I hope it was any help for you. For further questions you can contact me any time. Keep on rendering!

Такой боле менее, Хотя бы временно!!!

Идем на редизайн, чтобы сайт был по больше а новости всеравно будут идти!!! Спасибо  за внимание!!!

1. Open 3DS Max . Press F10 to show rendering settings dialog or the button with the tea-pot icon on the main panel as shown on the picture 1. At the Common tab expand Assign Render rollout and show the dialog to select V-ray reder by pressing the button with the triple-dot.

2. Set parameters of V-ray and Indirect Illumination rollouts as shown on the following pictures:

3. Then create a line (not necessarily NURBS, but my opinion is that nurbs is the quickest and high-quality mean to create beautiful bends what is actually needed to form the wall of the studio)

4. Apply Extrude modifier to the newly created spline to model the wall. After extruding convert the object to Editable Poly or apply Edit Poly modifier to make bottom of the wall fluently become a floor. For this purpose select the lower edges of the wall, hold Shift and move a lower verge forward, and after Scale Down you will get new edges. After that operation you will have the floor with a direct corner in relation to walls. To create a smooth transition select edges along connection of the wall and the floor and apply Chamfer. To create the same for ceiling apply Symmetry simply. And also use Mesh Smooth for smoothing the surfaces.

5. We will create illumination with V-ray lights. You can see how to locate them correctly on the picture 5. All of the light sources are directed on walls. And exactly this will give the effect of the dissipated light as in the real studio. Intensity (Multiplier of every source is to be picked up by the means of several experimental attempts)

6. We do not have the last wall. Just make it as an ordinary plane. Well and for the tests of the auto paint create a sphere in the middle of the studio.

7. After the required foreshortening of the Perspective View is selected (along the diagonal through the studio having the sphere in the center of the view) press Ctrl+C to create a Camera and fix the chosen foreshortening. In future pressing P will allow you to switch to the Perspective View mode fast twisting the view and turning it and then going back to the fixed one simply pressing C. This will help you designing your environments really fast having the final shot controlled as well as the overall scene structure.

The most important effect of a studio is the illumination that goes beneath the background. I achieved the best results with Target Spot. Target it from a sphere on a wall as shown on the picture 7. To make the background illuminated softly from beneath you would have to decrease Hotspot/Beam and increase Falloff/Field in Spotlight Parameters

8. Create material of the studio - ordinary grey V-ray material (picture 8) and material of the auto paint (picture 9)

9. Making a render test by F9 at the active type of camera/perspective or pressing the Render button as shown on the picture 10

10 Add another thin Vray Light as on the picture 11 for more contrast thin reflections.

12 The same scene and material of paint on the car model.

Good luck! Don't forget that surpassing my result is very simple – just experiment more.

Download Studio Sphere (max2008) ~30kb

http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/vray_render_studio/be_fastStudioSphere.zip

INFO:

Size of original movie: 14 MB
Compressed in .rar size: 12 MB
Duration: 3 minutes and 1 seconds
Format: QuickTime movie (.mov)

Скачать:
http://rapidshare.com/files/85759553/3DM_Tagging_Rig_SoftImageXSI.zip