Tutorial: How-to Create Seamless Texture Patterns
September 17th, 2008
Creating repeatable patterns is a great skill to have in your toolbox. The technique is a must for creating 3D textures, but can benefit graphic design needs as well.
It’s easy to find a pattern, but not so easy to find one that can be tiled without some work. Usually this is the case:
If you tried to tile this, it wouldn’t work. There isn’t enough of the pattern shown to line up the repeat end to end. Fortunately, there is enough pattern throughout the image to create a full repeat -it just needs some re-arranging.
Annoyances: Version Cue & Storage
August 23rd, 2008
I haven’t given up on Version Cue. I love having all my artwork in one place with a nice version control system, and the benefits have out-weighed the weirdness.
And there is some weirdness to be found- for instance, here’s a common warning box I get: “The file has changed, do you want to discard changes or continue editing”. What? I just opened it. Discard what changes? Am I going to lose something if I click this? I don’t need this kind of stress in the morning.
All that, however, is for another discussion.
This is about how Version Cue can become a damn liability when it comes to storage. Bull in freaking China shop. Version Cue seems to have been birthed with the mindset of ’storage is a non-issue, everyone will be working in the cloud with thin clients in a few years anyway’. I admire the vision, however, we’re not there yet.
I didn’t worry too much about the versioning system taking up space when I started using it. I figured, hell- a small price to pay for being able to jump back and forth between states of my layouts.
Until one fine afternoon while working on a layout, I get a message from the yellow Windows bubble telling me that I’m running out of space on drive C:\.
Strange, the files I’m working on are on an entirely different drive.
Tutorial: Strong Glares using Camera Shaders
June 8th, 2008
This tutorial will show you how to add realistic lens glares to your renders using 3ds max, Mental Ray, and Photoshop. I’m going to assume that you already have a scene to use that has any bright reflections, highlights, or exposed lights.
The best glare I have been able to produce is through using Lume Tools‘ glare camera shader. This shader ships with 3ds max (I am using 3ds max 9), however, it needs to be unlocked before you can see it in the material browser.
-So let’s unlock it:
Browse to your mental ray shaders folder: “C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 9\mentalray\shaders_standard\include”, and open “lume.mi” in notepad.exe (be sure to make a backup before editing anything). Once you have it open do a find for ‘glare’, and put a ‘#’ next to ‘hidden’. Save the file and fire up 3ds max.
Tutorial: Creating Photo-Realistic Renders with HDR using 3ds max & Mental Ray
April 23rd, 2008
The technique I use to create photo real product image renders is called Image Based Lighting (IBL). There are no lights in the scene, all of the illumination is provided through the HDR texture map. The images above are some recent 3d models I have rendered using Image Based Lighting with an HDR map I created. I have this HDR image probe available for a free download as you go through the tutorial.
First thing you want to do is start with a fresh scene and merge in the object that you want to render. I’m going to use a wall sconce that I modeled recently. If you don’t have any 3d models off hand, just create a few spheres or a teapot and apply a shiny or glossy shader to them. Try to keep a realistic scale to them, for instance, give them a 3-6″ diameter. This goes for any model that you merge in -make sure it has a realistic scale. If you don’t already, everything you model should be to scale. It helps textures, lighting, and cameras play nice together -not to mention adding realism.
HDR with 3ds max & Photoshop: The basics
April 19th, 2008
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been learning more, and applying more HDR techniques in my work. I’d like to post some tutorials on how to work HDR techniques into 3D renders, but first I want to go over some basics before we jump into the step by steps. Also, keep in mind; HDR can get pretty deep as a topic. There are lots of ways to take advantage of HDR imagery, but I can only share what I’ve learned and how I take advantage of it. If I’m missing anything about the theory or process, please let me know!
Now, without getting too technical, here is how Wikipedia sums it up,
…High dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.
Using HDR images in your 3d work can help your renders look extremely realistic, however, outputting your renders in an HDR format also allow for greater post-production flexibility. The part about, “..allows a greater [...] range of values between light and dark area[s]” is the key here. An HDR image holds information underneath the bright white areas in an image -this here is why I see so much value in using HDR imagery in my work. Take this image for example: 
See the white areas in this image? Since this is an HDR image, there is image data underneath (or inside) that can reveal more of the environment that was caught in the reflection. An image with a standard dynamic range, your basic .jpg for instance, would only be able to turn those white areas grey, revealing no new information.
Turning down the exposure in a capable image program can reveal what’s hiding underneath the white in a true 32-bit HDR image.
This is what happens when you try the same thing using a typical image with a standard dynamic range. No new information is revealed in the white, it just turns grey.
Next is the tutorial where I’ll get into how to create and output HDR images with 3ds max, as well as some HDR post-production techniques in Photoshop. Until I get to that, here are some good links to learn more about HDR:
- HDRI on Wikipedia
- Paul Debevec’s Site - This is the authority right here. Check out his bio.
- Earthbound Light - Great write up on shooting images in HDR and file format details.
Here’s a full res of the above image. This is an old character I created while at the Art Institute of Dallas. It’s called a Triavera.
hdr_global-illumination-and-reflection-copy.jpg
Sconces!
March 21st, 2008
-Just a few sconces I modeled for some recent jobs. These were rendered in an IBL setup. Basically, create a big sphere around the models with an HDR map applied to it, turn on Final Gather, tweak the exposure and BAM!
Theater Render: Experimenting with HDR & Tone Mapping
February 1st, 2008
Update: I wasn’t too happy with the sampling in the previous image (anti-aliasing and FG blotchyness) so I cranked up the settings and let it render overnight.
The render time was about 3 hours, compared to the earlier image which came in at only 10 min. -A huge amount of time for only a little gain, imo. There are still some artifacts that are bugging me too: The glossy reflections still have some grain even though the sampling on the material reflections was set to 64 (versus 8 in the previous image), and the anti-aliasing is still jagged (pixel sampling set at 256/16 versus 64/1 in the latter image). Am I missing something here?
Below is the older image I’m referring to with the 10 minute render time and lower samplings. I tone-mapped this one by hand, whereas, the above image was tone-mapped using Photoshop CS2’s “Automate | Merge to HDR…” from the File menu (with a little hand-tweaking to bring out the chairs a bit more). I found it interesting how the ‘Merge to HDR’ gave the image a little more warmth.
A little bit of info on the project: This theater was designed around Senator Palpatine’s Office from Star Wars. The room is small as well as the budget (relatively speaking) for a full blown themed Star Wars theater, but I did what I could to make it all work.
The faux windows are looking out into Coruscant. The image is printed onto fabric and framed with a custom profile. -These images wrap around the back of the room (most of it isn’t shown). I modeled and rendered the entire city from scratch with 3ds max and Mental Ray. The biggest issue was rendering out the image at a decent resolution without crashing max. The final size is going to be roughly 22,000 x 3000 px. This was accomplished with plenty of blood, sweat, and tears but I finally cracked the code. I went through about 4 or 5 different plugins and scrips that render out the image in segments, but the only thing that cranked out the segments without crashing was doing it by hand using the ‘Blow-up Region’ and ‘Sub Region’ controls under ‘Viewport Configuration’.
So… If anyone ever needs help rendering huge images, let me know -I’ve been to hell and back on that topic.
Tutorial: How to Make a Shiny GUI Icon in Photoshop
January 11th, 2008
This icon is designed in the popular shiny style that we all know and love, possibly hate. It’s heavily influenced by Apple’s iPhone icon and GUI environment.
The icon shown here is for a “settings” control, hence the gear-clock, and muted colors. It’s shown in both the off and on state.
There are two main elements that make up this image; the icon button, and the icon graphic. The icon button is the common element that gives all the icons in a GUI a consistent look -think of it as the background. The icon graphic is the part that visually describes the purpose of the icon. This tutorial is about the icon background.
Theater Render: Express
January 9th, 2008
Fabrics! The room is all fabric. Its so much more fun to render rooms with glossy wood or paint to get a lot of play with the reflects, but not this time.
I’ve always had a hard time to get a real realistic fabric look. Looking at the close up shot, you can see the texture of the black diamond panel, but to me it looks more like cork board than anything else. The bump map is a ‘cellular’ procedural map, rather than the usual ‘noise’ that I use. I gets the look a I’m going for a bit better, but its still not where I want to be. The black fabric is called “Sensa” and it has a nice sheen to it in real life. I tried to recreate this here, but I think it looks more like a painted surface in some areas (see the front view by the base board).
If anyone has any tips on getting a good fabric look, please let me know!
The alabaster sconces were working with me this time. Sometimes alabaster can be a real bitch. I don’t know how many times I’ve searched google for help on rendering alabaster (to no avail). I’m thinking this will be one of the first tutorials I put up here. These do not use Sub Surface Scattering, btw, however I’ve been wanting to learn about SSS for some time now.
This was a very awkward room from a design standpoint. It has a vaulted ceiling, and there is no real “back” of the theater. I will post the existing room photos to explain it better. Lots of windows too; I believe HTS will be installing motorized black-out shades. The renders only show the very front of the room, none of the windows or stairs.
Originally designed for Chris Lam of Home Theater Solutions. The room is roughly 20′ x 19′ x 8′5″h. The screen is measured at 110″ diagonal.
Theater Render: Tearoom
January 8th, 2008
This one took about 8 hours from breaking down the AutoCAD .dwg to being able to render the final scene. The renderings themselves took about 15 min each.Everything was modeled from scratch except the theater chairs and the sconce -These were already in my library.
One of the things I love about tackling architectural scenes is that the modeling is a piece of cake. -Just straight lines, no organic objects to create.
This is a pretty small room to build a full-blown dedicated theater, but it still works with just one row of seating. The only real odd thing about it is that the floor is wood. This may make the room sound a bit too “live” with it reflecting the sound so much, but it was important to the client to keep it in -and thats really all that matters at the end of the day.
Originally designed for Zack Deily of Definitive Electronics. The room measures about 14′ x 14′ x 10′h, screen is 95″ x 56″.
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