3DS Max Getting a Ship's Hull to Look Real

[Madkoifish]

Well if you want to blend scanline elements you can I just try to avoid it at all costs as it will slow things down and often wont "blend" with other elements. So What I would do is composite them in photoshop IE render them all as parts. You loose things like bounced light or reflections and any interaction of lights on the individual objects but often there is very little of that unless it is a station or say a docked ship or pod. It is not as important in a space scene as it is in say a building or on a planet IE a car or other vehicle.


What to choose casts shadows or not. Generally I will set all decals made of geometry to not cast shadows. Other than that it is often when you want to create efx or create a trick that you want to turn off some sort of interaction of an object IE visible only to reflections refraction, or atmospheric etc. You wont use do not cast shadows much with mental ray and arch design materials as you would with say standard materials as those will not (well least when I last used them) transmit light through then ad affect that transmitted light based on their IRO or transparency/translucency.

Self lighting render will always have the body of the ship in. As you apply these as additive anything black will not matter at all. you WILL need to make sure there is only the SHIPS light on. No ambient, no self lighting IE spot lights etc. So the ship should render as a silhouette with just anything like windows marker light bussards warp glows etc. I often then separate these things as sometimes I do not want the windows as bright as they are right out of the render, so I will cut them out and place them in a separate layer.

SO when you go to render the lighting pass you need to kill all light gizmos (easiest to use the LIGHTLISTER tool (which is in TOOLS/LIGHTLISTER) Then make sure your environment shader is off (background slot in ENVIRONMENT AND EFFECTS menu) Also make sure that background colour is BLACK. and no global lighting (area below environment shader slot in the earlier mentioned menu)

So with those set you should get an image like this. The images shouldt have the white this is to just show the alpha transparency you would get in say a PNG. (never save output as jpg unless it is final distributable work for the web etc)


Not this



Why does it do this? Well The environment chrome ball tut for the environment slot I linked to earlier is to create reflections and what not for a backdrop or to use HDR like images where you use a environment photos or image to light a scene. This is where your blending of the ship into the environment around it comes into play. BUT when you are doing a lights only pass you do not want this additional light as it will affect the output.

Reason for it is you only want the lights to affect your diffuse layer or layers. This also allows you to increase render settings so that if you use like I do the "glow" or LUM shader I can ramp up settings to avoid artifacts or grain IE higher quality render. I also allow these lights to light up or reflect on surfaces. Some people only want a alpha like mask of just the lights. I do not do this as this creates that artificial shooped look that is generally built into 3d apps that overlays a blurry glow over specific material IDs etc. IE what I call 90s glows. I have yet to find a app that has this post filter option that allows you to control the way it overlays them onto a scene. IE it is just a transparent layer which is WRONG optically.
improper

IE this



VS this
CORRECT look


Here are some examples of bad glows from some of my older work from ages ago. These are all material ID glows.



This one suffers bad from attempted bloom and self light glows done within max. Do not be lazy and just use GIMP or Photoshop to do this work. YUCK. hah

Another one using Material ID glows.


This one is a bit better as it has better tuned colour but it still overlays vs lightens.
These are all from my scanline days like 05 or 06.

 

[Madkoifish]

Madkoifish, thanks so much for helping this chap out. THIS is the sort of behavior I like to see on this board and others.

No prob I just knew the subject and had the time this weekend.

The hope is the thread can be of some help to others as well even though I do tend to wander and stray from a direct answer. I hated having to tease info out of people or spend hours online looking for an elusive answer with it all ending up feeling like some elitist secret. Mostly all the jargon terminology or just lack of time or motivation is the real excuse of not seeing this stuff.

 

[trekie015]

I felt like it was that elitist secret for a while, so I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. btw, your klingon ship looks niiice.
Here's a test scene I did. each element is a separate layer. The bussards still have to be taken care of.

 

[Cjohnson1701]

I felt like it was that elitist secret for a while, so I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. btw, your klingon ship looks niiice.
Here's a test scene I did. each element is a separate layer. The bussards still have to be taken care of.

You still have that after glow the Madkoifish described as the "90's glow".

Now, I don't know 3ds Max, but I am well versed in Maya, and some concepts stay the same. Now I don't know what post processing you used but if you are using mental ray there is a Maya equivalent Shader ultility, called "mia_light_Surface" which uses Ambient Occlusion to spread light locally, in V-ray this is simply a light material, but most shader's will have an emissive channel. Now that is a separate texture.

Here is how I would build it:

First I'd start off with a black background like this, and reference:

Then I'd would build a background glow, cause well light ain't static. I'd start dark. Now this would be the very base of your emissive map: See next figure.

Step 3 would be to build the grills, but it will be easier to just build one then copy and paste, now looking at the source material the emissive properties of the warp grill is less intense at the edges then at the center.

To achieve this I would normally make a long, skinny rectangle and color it the darker color of that less intense glow. Then I would Copy and Paste that layer, squish it horizontally and follow that up by setting your layer to "Screen". Finally use a Motion Blur, try to get it at 0 degrees.

Repeat until it should look like this:

Then copy, paste, and transform until it look's like this:

Now, I would not call this finished, I would fiddle, and do a lot more artist mumbo jumbo that I can barely explain. But the end goal is always the same: to match or improve upon the reference your basing the work on.

Combining this technique with some lighting will achieve a look like this:

Hopefully this helps.

If you really want to know the secret to good looking work, it's in the application of the knowledge on how real life works.

eg. Knowing the physics behind light, how it affects surfaces, and how light is affected BY surfaces. (Reflection and Refraction)

In short, a great cg artist is a polymath.

 

[Madkoifish]

I was talking more about lens efx vs texturing. I do not think max wants to work with lum as a texture as much as it used to. TIP though is max dumped the mia naming I think in the v8 Mental Ray so some googling should bring up matches for maya flavor naming. Basically mr between the apps is fairly close just version changes. I think there are like 3 or 4 other render engines that are just slightly altered mental ray as well.

Either way just make sure things are set to a additive type layer IE the impulse glow is not as it does not lighten the scene. It looks more like a blot of spray paint on the image. After that my next biggest complaint is how the highlights clip. You want the white areas to have detail and not blow out (google clipping in the white and black in relation to photography as it is the same situation.) You also might benift from reading up on linear workflow. I hated how it was a hot topic but it really helps you to match up all your work over time and when you mix things up. Also idea is to get the widest rage of detail across the render. Even if it makes the RAW render look flat. As you can always adjust it in post.

Just in case also look up sample images and read up on how to set up your monitors. Avoid any in driver adjustments try to adjust everything via the OSD unless you have lcds that lack a scaler (IE cheap Korean or Chinese panels) Only rely on software correction as a last ditch effort (usually something you have to resort to with TN panels) Anyhow off topic a bit but one of those just in case and BWT it might help things. I often see a lot of images where a person has way WAY too much contrast in thier display so you see all these black or contrast issues in compositions. IE you can see where they painted out things in black or say pasted in ships or objects black areas are darker or lighter than the rest of the scene.


As for this model if it is the one I think it is it had textures on those areas, he might not have applied them yet.

NOW to 3dsmaxify the above tut, I would look for the lum or GLOW shader, place it in the self light or additional colour slot in the arch design material. You might want to stuff it in the diffuse as well. If you version of max and mental ray has the built in self illumination feature in arch design I am not sure placing anything in the filter slot will work well. Though making a mask of the grills might work to black out the unlit sections.

NOW when your applying the gaussian blur you might want to do it in steps IE first blur on layer 1 set to #4 layer 2 set to 23 3rd set to 50. ETC the amount is variable depending on rez etc. Then use screen or dodge/lineardodge additive and set the transparency of the layers to what looks good. IE rarely do I ever use it at anything more than 60% unless the lighting is very dim. Also depends on the look you are after.

Reason why I do this in post is sometimes you want to vary the brightness of these effects. Only way to do it in render is to increase strength of the glows material by material. A real PITA.

Anyhow give it a shot playing around with the textures and playing around with the self illumination shaders and the lum/glow shaders. Really wish max would use the phrase emission vs self ilum as in scanline it refers to materials that are brighter than base white and produce a glow but no lens glow no real light. While lum/glow and the new built in self ilum will produce a ambient glow. IE produces FG photons

Anyhow experiment and play around. Id probably make some scenes with simple objects to minimize the waiting about to see your results though. Help speed up the understanding of what change cause what reaction in the scene.

 

[Cjohnson1701]

As for this model if it is the one I think it is it had textures on those areas, he might not have applied them yet.

You're on point there Madkoifish!

Her lighting rig is nowhere near done, and the Image I used was an "old"(read as a week old) one. I just wanted to show that texture based emissives as a base can lead to some nice results especially for animation when you can rig the shaders for some really cool effects.

I'm pretty sure my gamma was set up correctly, and I was using linear workflow....hmm I'll have to triple check my render settings.

On that note though, totally copying and saving some of the stuff you put on this thread Mad. Hell, I might be only 2 years into this but I learned a bit here, just gotta translate it all to Maya!

So thanks, Mad!

PS: the black in the render I put up is actually a transparency mask put in the render! But the ship is barely lit at that time so yeah...woopsie :P

 

[Madkoifish]

As for this model if it is the one I think it is it had textures on those areas, he might not have applied them yet.

You're on point there Madkoifish!

Her lighting rig is nowhere near done, and the Image I used was an "old"(read as a week old) one. I just wanted to show that texture based emissives as a base can lead to some nice results especially for animation when you can rig the shaders for some really cool effects.

I'm pretty sure my gamma was set up correctly, and I was using linear workflow....hmm I'll have to triple check my render settings.

On that note though, totally copying and saving some of the stuff you put on this thread Mad. Hell, I might be only 2 years into this but I learned a bit here, just gotta translate it all to Maya!

So thanks, Mad!

PS: the black in the render I put up is actually a transparency mask put in the render! But the ship is barely lit at that time so yeah...woopsie :P

No, no heh. I was referring to trekie015 and his set up of gamma and workflow. On his lcd it might not appear as contrasty. For me I see a lot of white clipping in his render EXP the station.

I think this model does have maps though with the values you mention so he can easily rig them up to be used in a similar manner as you mention I think. I have only used gray scale maps in the lum/glow shader and never tried to apply anything to the newer built in light emitter in arch design.

Maya I think it seems to be one of the closest related packages to max, only thing I have had issue replicating is how fine light gizmos can be manipulated in it vs max. That and it seems MAX still lags behind in fine control of other elements. Though I am I think 3 versions behind now.

 

[trekie015]

Okay, so for whatever reason, my scene keeps getting corrupt and crashing max whenever I try to open it. I can create a new one and merge everything over, but same result when I try to load it again. At any rate, I have hooked up the self ilum image to the right slot on the arch and design material since I switched over, and even before when I was using default materials. As far as the blown out areas, I was thinking that , as in the world of photography, sometimes you do have those blown out areas, esp if the ship is metal and being hit by direct sunlight. Like with your example image on page one, I believe there are a couple slightly blown out areas. At least, what my monitor sees. So what's a good balance to strike between having those areas and not?

 

[trekie015]

and I tested this out a couple of days ago.. to get the glow for this, I duplicated the sequence and masked everything out except the impulse and warp grille, then applied the linear dodge. But it gets that odd morie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SivuXQPBjac

 

[Cjohnson1701]

Okay, so for whatever reason, my scene keeps getting corrupt and crashing max whenever I try to open it. I can create a new one and merge everything over, but same result when I try to load it again.

At any rate, I have hooked up the self ilum image to the right slot on the arch and design material since I switched over, and even before when I was using default materials. As far as the blown out areas, I was thinking that, as in the world of photography, sometimes you do have those blown out areas, esp if the ship is metal and being hit by direct sunlight. Like with your example image on page one, I believe there are a couple slightly blown out areas. At least, what my monitor sees. So what's a good balance to strike between having those areas and not?

Well as for your scene file being corrupted, this could be anything, from you're Max preferences being all screwed up to the model's you're using. Did you model, UV, and texture the assets yourself? If not, it could be something in the models you may have overlooked. On that note you did say "merged" so Most would assumed that you made all the geometry in the scene one object, which is usually a no-no.

Either way I would check each asset for things that might lead to a crash, such as "engons", overlapping faces/ vertex's, anything that would make a mesh not "Clean".

Note that these options are based off the assumption that nothing wrong with your copy of 3ds max, or your PC. If it is just the file, then you gotta trouble-shoot each asset/material in your scene.

It also helps if you delete your history, and freeze transformations, on top of cleaning the meshes.

OH! and to avoid having you lose all your data when your scene crashes it helps to save incrementally

EG: sceneName_001, sceneName_002, etc.

As for the lighting, this is a preference I normally do but if I'm aiming for photography level quality, I would not have blown out whites in my final render, but would have the specular information in a separate channel so I could manipulated in post so I could tweak it. Because, the blown out glares and whites are based on the light exposure level to the film itself.

 

[trekie015]

Thanks. So I did not model or texture myself, but I set up the scene, was lighting, whatnot, then sometime around page 2 of this thread, when I tried to open the scene, it crashed saying it encountered an error. So the only way I could get it to open would be to create a new scene and merge all elements of the original into the new one, eg. models, lights... This worked well, I save, and then when I try to open this one next time, same error. so it's constantly create new scene > merge old scene > save > do work > close > try to open most recent scene > can't > repeat process...

 

[Cjohnson1701]

My best guess that it could be the model's themselves, can you export the one's you have?

Also can you make a new scene and just create something random. Then save it? Then load it, then add a model, then save it incrementally, then add another model then save it incrementally until the problem occurs. If the problem occurs before you add any models then it's your program, or PC.

Next, what is the error code that pops up when your save corrupts?

 

[trekie015]

Well I can open other scenes, and:
Application Error
An error has occurred and the application will now close.
Do you want to attempt to save a copy of the current scene?

Then if I choose yes, the recovery file does the same.

 

[Madkoifish]

Max when a file goes corrupt is it in the code. Rarely is it some element like a open face doubled verts etc. Often it is say the file thinks there is a object there and it is a null. I have gotten this multiple times in 2013.
First thing update all available service packs and patches from discreet.

Import in the objects Dump them all to a unique layer IE anything but the "default" layer. Then check each object by selecting the elements manually and moving them to a new layer. NOW a quick way to find out of there is a ghost object is if you cannot delete the old layer. (unless it is the "default" layer.) Next time you merge in the scene do not merge in that object. This is often the cause of crashes.

The other one of corrupt saves which is what it sounds like is a BUG. Save your file then SAVE again. At one time I had to double save because when you close max it somehow corrupts the last open file. So try the double save and open the first save if that fails start looking at the scene for some corrupt object or entry. I would start with collapsing all objects if possible into a editable poly. Even if they are one already. Sometimes this will clear out corrupt entries.(code) If the above all fails start by merging things in one by one until you find the one causing the issues. YOU might have to restart the scene itself from scratch and just merge in the OBJECTS only. IE no lights no animation no gizmos etc.


In photography you have to be even more aware of blown whites and burned darks. Pros will always shoot for detail in the whites. If your whites are blown in a photo it means you failed and the shot is ruined due to over exposure. Trust me on this I spent 20 years shooting B&W film. NOW if you want blown whites Do this in POST as you will have control of it not the other way round. Blowing out whites in the render creates one of the "tells" of CGI. Proper term for this is clipping in the digital realm, it means there is no information. And in digital no information is the worse case scenario.

POST #13 is a good example of overall light it just dropped off to dark to much. Look at the samples I uploaded using that image and see how the highlights work I still have some detail there but I have control over if I want it to blow out. And where it does get close to it is due to the bloom and not the actual diffuse. Anyhow it is a lot to take in all at once. What I know is from years of goofing with things and from exp in photography painting and other visual media.

That wobble I think is the FG flicker just overblown due to the blur. I dunno if you are doing the bloom in post or not. IE After effects etc. I do all my edits in an app like aftereffects. You have to shoot the photons in FG a specific way to get it to be stable in motion. The work needed is much too deep to go into on a forum post. Google around for FG flicker in 3dsmax there are a bunch of blog tuts out there on it. Key is to preshoot all your photons. So instead of it doing all the FG on each render it refers to a cache file.

I think it was zap that has a tut on it
http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/
I forget as it was back in 2012 that I had to confront this as I knew I would have to do a animated version of the 2012 calendar image.

There is this to be aware of as well but it is not as common now.
http://www.jhjariwala.com/2012/01/09/its-not-fg-final-gather-flickering/

FG will flicker but you can often tell as blotchy bits will move around.
Your video is a bit too short to really tell wtf is going on but I think it is a definite FG issue. You either need to properly preshoot the photons from a static sampling or increase accuracy settings.

To do the glows in post you should not need to mask anything as applying the layer type as additive screen or dodge will make all blacks transparent. Remember the bloom or glow passes should only have the bits of the ship that are emitting light.

You can use this break down of the SOTL 2012 animation to see what I did for that. It fails some due to the fact I did not think about animation when I did the still image. So some things come out blown as working with 1280X720 does not give the fine control as 8000X4000 lol I think that scene was larger than that as I resampled the final work. Animation I generally will try to render at least 2X the final size so it give me more granularity issue is time as I have old pcs and my main work pc to render with vs a proper farm. Anyhow that is a bit off topic here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvH9o_RUlk
NOW the passes you see are black no transparency, some of them have alpha but it is moot as most if not all passes are layer types that treat black as transparent.
Breakdown as follows

Star field with parallax. If you watch carefully youll see distant stars change positions more than closer ones as well as compared to the blue gunk.


Diffuse pass with the AO pass falling in a gradient. (note lit hull has reflective hits in the pearl hull material, this is where the final comp fails as those details blow out or clip to white (0 0 0) in the final render)

Ship self lighting pass All the glow junk. Most marker lights or animated lights are removed turned off etc. Self lighting IE spots or anything gizmo driven is turned off.

Bloom passes for ship surfacing. (boosted here so it is in detail.)
Build up of the bloom pass, part of the fail here is the ships spot lights should have been turned off. Those will never compete with a sun for brightness sadly I messed up and left them on and the time involved to re-render was as no go.

Flare pass this is all the lens rubbish on the ships and little things lying about. It also includes the animated lights.

Pass with everything from previous passes.

main lens artifacts IE flares gradients etc.

Final composite.



Anyhow hope you can nail the crash corruption issue. Also I would recommend you move all working folders OFF your root drive if they are not. IE not the C: drive or my docs etc This can cause that save corruption as well as slow things down dramatically. EXP with auto back turned on.


Hopefully I got everything and it all makes sense as I gotta go as food is up!! OM NOM NOM lol

 

[BK613]

Like to echo Potemkin_Prod's appreciation of your helpful sharing here. trekie015 is not the only one learning from this thread.