hkabat-forum-threads PaulvMontfort's Showcase

[connorc24 2]

Nice work dude!!!

[tankmank 853]

wow that was fast and its amazing

[bixel 1,224]

Excellent!

[ilikehotdogsalot 311]

GRRRrrreeeaaattt!

[bbfan02 23]

Amazing! I love the color.

[Cockatoo 2,257]

Oh man, it's Hong Kong overload!!! 

[faka 11]

I have a question: how do you make window reflection ?

ps I like your buildings VERY VERY much!!!

[ngeeves 5]

You need 3ds max. In the material editor you can set the reflection in the maps rollout. Thats how i do it anyways. Are there ay other ways?

ngeeves

[paulvmontfort 617]

The way you do reflections depend on what renderer you use. Scanline or Mental Ray. For scanline I recommend you use Ray Traced materials. There's a tutorial for that by Ill Tonkso. If you use Mental Ray, I suggest you use Arch & Design material. This only works in 3dsmax ofcourse. If you use gmax the only way to get reflection is by faking it with textures.

[faka 11]

Thank you ngeeves and paulvmontfort

I will try it

[HONG KONG 74]

NOTE !!

Please download the updated PvM_BOC_1 file. (when updated!!!!) sorry, my mistake

[vivydu29 60]

Great, It's very beautiful

[SimFox 802]

It looks great! Only thing that bugs me is the shadows at the base...

They look highly unrealistic as if you would have just a couple of point lights (bulbs without any diffusers) under the tower proper. In reality there will be A LOT of very defused light there, so the shadows (if there would be any noticeable ones at all) would be very washed out. Also light would spread soo far out either - that way it would be incredibly bright inside. Again it looks more lik there are couple searchlights there rather than realistic lighting. I think you should fix that given that it is rather simple.

You can simulate natural looking lighting by using large rectangle with self-illumination material applied to it, or some large number of small rectangles with same material simulation multiple light sources. In either case you would get very very soft areal light with no clear shadows- something more a kin of ambient occlusion.

[paulvmontfort 617]

@ HONG KONG, Thanks, I updated the file, It should be available in a few minutes.

@ Simfox: Thanks, also for the pm although I figured much of it out myself , I'll look into changing the lights. Somehow I knew you wouldn't like it . Rendering the night view took pretty long though, almost 2 days :s

[ilikehotdogsalot 311]

Aww, you're going to rerender it? I think it looks great!

[SimFox 802]

Paul:

Yep, cause it makes it look small, like a toy.

BTW, if it takes soo long to render night view it means that there is something wrong with the setup. Normally truNite night view would be rendered significantly faster than day view. (unless you use hundreds of lights). The reason for this is that you don't have sun and all the shadow calculations that go with it. The way skylighting is calculated is MUCH faster.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

If you're going to re-render, that would be no problem from my part. As long as the dimensions remain the same, I wouldn't have to change anything on the lot.

Should you decide to give it another go, though, you might want to take a look at the colour hue - at least on my screen, both the Capsule Tower and this BAT have a very cold, blueish hue that doesn't really fit into the surroundings.

I dunno how to fix it, but in my books that's definitely the only major issue that's left between you and perfection: texturing non-reflecting surfaces. Your modeling skills are beyond question, your lighting is really nice, and your window reflections are really great as well. But when it comes to texturing stone or concrete (or adjusting the material settings), I don't think you have found the sweet spot quite yet.

Taking BoA Tower as an example, the base walls look quite nice, and those plants look more than nice - they're superb! The main texture on the parking lot, on the walls of the tower, and on its roof section, however, look a tad too smooth and cold in my opinion.

[paulvmontfort 617]

@ T Wrecks: I get what you mean, but now I want to know one thing: do you think this of all my buildings or only the last few which I've done with mental ray (Nakagin, BOC, BOA), I think the problem is my lack of understanding in photoshop for making quality textures so I use standard 3ds max ones. Another thing that i notice is that the mental ray daylight setup washes most of the textures detailing away leaving a very clean surfase.

I was only planning to rerender the night part of the BoA because of the amount of time it takes..

[T Wrecks 10,209]

It's only the last few - your earlier 3DS works like HSBC, Central Plaza etc. were stupendous, and I really liked the textures. The only weakness that was sometimes to be found were some slightly bright, undercontrasted and somewhat cloudy textures, but only to a very small degree so that it didn't really hurt. (The Pacific Place buildings are examples where this can be seen in some places). Other than those really, really minor issues I don't really see anything wrong. (And in all cases, let's not forget that I'm measuring againt the "texturing gods" like 6459978 or Jasoncw here)

Of your latest building, Nakagin had a very clear and obvious blueish hue, and so does BoA. I reckon the same counts for your Bank of China, BUT this latter building is blueish by nature, and most of its walls are glass-clad, so I don't think tweaking BOCT is a priority.

If I were you, I'd take the BoA for a spin to practise texturing a little. Its boxy shape both makes it easy enough to apply a few textures and hard enough to get them to look right, because there is no geometry on the walls to help you. It's a make it or break it job with the textures...

[paulvmontfort 617]

How's this: I only changed the mr sky light into a IES sky light:

Please note, the picture is a PNG

[bixel 1,224]

looks beautiful

[Jasoncw 11,933]

It looks a lot better as far as the blue goes, but now it looks kind of drab.  Maybe from there you can make the sun brighter and more yellow, and the sky more blue?

Are you sure you want to be done with the base?  You didn't put the sign in, or those small holes, and the tiles aren't the right size.

[paulvmontfort 617]

@ Jasoncw: let me finish the lighting problem first

I think I found the solution. This is the mr sky and mr sun setup, the only change I made with the render on the previous page is that I put the saturation down by half:

[SimFox 802]

I want to make couple of points here.

Hue shift / White balance.

Yep I'm in total agreement with TWrecks on this one. It doesn't fit into the game universe. The issue here is with both the MrSun/Sky setup and the game itself.

Let’s consider game first.

The way the sun and sky are set up there, well in the rig used to render buildings, is such that it effectively separates the two for most of the surface of any building. That is effectively gives the possibility to adjust each independently. Since change in the “sky” wouldn’t affect the sunny side. In Proper SunSky situation is very different. Sky (as it should do) affects all exposed surfaces ,  not only those in shadow. So any changes done to it will affect all image. This, in effect, void the possibility to simply go and take hues from original rig. So we should not copy but emulate the result.

About the nature of SunSky components.

Default settings are not too suitable for use because what they do is emulate lighting conditions of totally cloudless sky on high altitude alpine resort in winter. In terms of physics that means air absolutely clear of any dust particles, vapors and high in ozone. This isn’t too realistic setting at any rate.

Also Mr Sky is intensely turquoise and hue controls there don’t work as advertised. May be there was a problem translation hue names from German to English or something like that but Redness in effect means Yellowness. So, that hue control is largely useless in our case. But another one could be quite handy – HAZE. It is responsible for saturating air with all the rubbish we typically find in urban and low lying environments – dust particles, pollution, vapors etc. Apart of eating away some turquoise and saturation it also softens the light and brings a bit more of it into the shadows and reduces burns in the sun. Try to play with it. I would recommend to start with 2.

But the major tweaking should be reserved for white balance. It affects the entire image and as such doesn’t really do what original rig does with its separations fro sunny and shadow parts, but with some tweaking and understanding of color it will do decent job.  You can fix the color cast by either adding or subtracting a hue. The method used depends on the type of exposure control used.

If you use Logarithmic Exposure subtractive method is most useful and straight forward. The images coming straight from Mr SunSky have very pronounced turquoise cast. The amount of it depends on the Haze setting of the Sky, but it is still there. While the game environment (overall buildings and the lighting of the actual game) has a pronounced red cast. So the solution is very straight forward as those two are perfect opposites on color wheel.  Logarithmic Exposure uses subtractive method of white balance (control itself is labeled Color Correction). So you pick the color that you think is too prominent in your scene and it is removed! I would suggest hue of 128 and saturation of 30 as a starting point adjusting it further depending on tweaking you have done for you MrSky haze, hue etc…

 

If, on the other hand you use Mr Photographic Exposure the method should be different. White balance in this control (at least the way it is realized in MAX interface) is set to sort of emulate one in high end dSLRs – by the light temperature in K. Although technically right it doesn’t help our problem as it mostly does yellow-blue shift and we need red-turquoise one.  So, instead of it we can affect the overall light of the scene through Global Lighting (in the same Environment window). This control is additive so instead of turquoise we should pick some pink there. My suggestion is Hue 239 and Saturation of 30.

[sim_city-freak 0]

very cool keep those buildings coming

[paulvmontfort 617]

Thanks for the advise, Simfox. This is the result. I think I'll go ahead with it and render it again.

[SimFox 802]

you've used the png, right?? if so just past it over the regular game view grab to judge the suitability. cause otherwise it may be difficult to do so... But it seems to be quite a bit better. Only may be shadow is a bit desaturated but then again it might be inevitable...

[paulvmontfort 617]

I've got a problem: When I reopened the scene this morning and made a test render, it got whitewashed by the gamma control. How can i solve this?

[paulvmontfort 617]

What do you guys think of this: I used this bat to experiment with because it is easier to handle then the BoA

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Oh, my! What do I think? I think it's an enormous improvement over the last attempts on Boa! You can see that it's supposed to be a bland and boring tower, but it doesn't look unfininished or badly textured! The colour has lost its massive blueish hue, and both walls and windows look far more defined.

Maybe you could go for a tad more brightness in the window textures, in a way that scarcely a window remains entirely black. Those windows that happened to get a bit more colour and brightness appear more convincing and realistic to me than the darker ones. On the shorter triangular section of the main tower, the 4th and 5th row of windows (counted from the top downwards) look best to me. Then again, after seeing some photos of the real-life building, the effect would probably have to be subtle because the windows are somewhat dark.

Those window reflections on the shadow side look really cool, by the way! And once again, the effect is best where there's something more than just mere black in the windows. The black ones look as if someone had punched rectangular holes into the wall, but the others give a cool impression of reflective glass.

Some words about the roof sections: I suppose you made the roof junk close to the real building, so we'll have to live with large open spaces. Hence, once again it's the textures that define success here. It might be an optical illusion or light reflected from the blue HVACs etc. on the upper rooftop, but the lower rooftop appears to have a more brownish hue than the upper one. I also notice a slight tiling effect on the lower roof texture. Maybe a bit more contrast or some smudges following the general outline of the roof shape or roof junk elements (plus some wear and tear randomly distributed over the area) might make the roof look really interesting despite its emptiness. I strongly recommend taking a look at nofunk's last screenshot of his up-and-coming BAT, Wolverine Hotel, for a really nifty roof texture. Not to say you should imitate that, just as a tiny demonstration of what's possible.

I suppose the textures on the roof of the podium aren't final, though, right? They don't look as good as the rest, I think... yet.

Btw, did you know that Odainsaker SCURKed that building for SC2K? Here's a linkie:

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Maze/9975/asiscurk.html

It's great to see so much progress, and I didn't even mention that the night lights are looking really cool already, although SimFox and/or autovino might want to add their 2 cents as well... just keep going!

EDIT

One more thing before I forget it: I saw on some photos that the panels on the walls aren't all entirely the same colour. Some are a tad darker; that might be a nice detail to get some more variation. And I think you wouldn't have to be afraid to give the overall wall texture a tad more brightness and a warmer hue. Not as much as Coit Tower, which can be seen suspiciously often on your picture, but a nudge in that direction might be ok.