autoVino's bat projects

[autoVino 26]

Glad you like the buildings!  Yeah, I used different intensities (from 0 to 1 to no glow on the egg builidng, but this is because of mental ray and from no glow to 500 on the bowlingreen building, this is because of the bright sun )

Anyway, Caustics anyone?

For those of you who don't knwo what caustics are, look at the "v" shape coming form the glass teapot.  Now look at the chrome teapot, see that bright spot where the teapot meets the ground plane?  Those are caustics, and I'm amazed by how fast Mental Ray can calculate them!

A building with casutics:

enjoy!

[SimFox 802]

Oh my you keep changing the name of the topic all the time!! :-)

Ok, since you call its a Caustic now here we go some tests of caustic (reflective and refractive) in different rendering engines. The model and lights are exactly same in all only different algorithms:

Mental Ray 3.5 (rendering time was about 8,5 min)

Final Render for MAX Stage1 release2

V-ray Adv. 1.5

 

[autoVino 26]

I think v-ray won...

I have the demo version of it on my computer, but when I install it and run the renderer it says the licence cannot be found, and craches...

Here I rendered one of my buidings with caustics...

A little bright... and I think I need to increase the ray depth too. edit: The problem I saw isn't really a problem.  I increased the raydepth by 4 times, it didn't do anything.

The rays seem to terminate not too far from the point where the light from the sun hits the glass wall.

Btw, anyone know how to make Arch & design (mi) textures work with casutics?  I get a no photons stored error when working with them.

[SimFox 802]

Well I'm a bit confused as to the nature of your problem with caustics. Ray depth is almost 100% irrelevant as caustics arte basically prime bounce from the reflective or first go-through refractive surface. that should also answer your question about materials - they have to be reflective and or refractive. And last one should have index of refraction other than 1.

As I’ve told I’m not sure what do you perceive as a problem that caustics are very blurred and shapeless? Or not bright enough? And where do you actually expect to see them as you don’t have much space where they might fall onto…

Also you have to enable your caustic generation, but I´m sure you know that.

Those error messages are normally the sight that rays traced by MR are not hitting anything with shader MR can read or understand like say VR material or just plain color.

V-ray problem is most probably caused by the fact that you haven’t fired up the V-ray license server, or attached the usb thingy…

[autoVino 26]

Wait, so in caustics, there is only one "caustic photon bounce"... that is it will only reflect or refract once?  Or I completely misunderstood you.

My problem is that the light from the caustics ends up in a odd line in middle of the building.  This may be perfectly correct (and probably is) It's just that I didn't expect such an effect at all.

I used caustics on this building mainly to light up the midddle of the building, as normally it is way to dark and looks rather unrealistic.

And as I understand it, the caustics will not be calculated with "arch & design (mi)" materials... I hope that's not true and I'm just missing something, because there are tons of options that can be tweaked in those materials that I don't understand at all!

V-ray license server? usb thingy? I had it work on w2k, but not on xp, maybe that's the root of the problem.

Thanks for all the help!

edit: upped the photon count from 100.000 to 1.000.000, It looks much better now, but render time turned intensive one hour for one zoom, and 2/3 of that was caustic calculations.  I either need to get vray or change the ray distance in mental ray, which I don't know how to yet

Here's a render (click for the full thing, 932px by 1398px, 722kb):

enjoy!

double edit: Figured out the problem with v-ray... that is, finished reading the readme file which said some standard max materials will crash vray... so it works fine but leaves a stamp.  Need to get the full version, don't I?

[SimRabbit 48]

WOOOOOOWW that is beatiful!!!!!!!!! those jewels and that tower!!

[autoVino 26]

Glad you like them!  But those jewels belong to Simfox ...

How about a Hotel, Casino, and Convention Center?

Top:

Side:

Game:

Still under construction, though... but this is a huge building!  that preview was only a zoom 3 at 144 meters high, and the hotel has 28 floors!

Enjoy!

[crazyarchitect 7]

very nice casino complex

[Sim shady 12]

!!! The irony! I have been camping up in Oklahoma this past week and while i was driving up there, i couldnt help but think about the lack of casinos in SC4. lol

[autoVino 26]

crazyarchitect: Glad you like it!

Sim shady: Heh heh... Well, If this comes out, you could start making a vegas styled city!

Anyway, tried to do zoom five preview, but realized that I did something wrong.  So this is somewhere between zoom 4 and zoom 5...

edit: ahh, broken link!... now fixed.

Almost z5 preview, Warning: 2334 x 1443, 674kb!

Almost z5 preview, Warning: 1605 x 1899, 721 kb!

[scififan68 23]

Impressive Casino Complex! Great work autoVino!

[Sim shady 12]

ahh...gotta love fiber optic internet pics took half a sec to load. Excellent so far

[autoVino 26]

scififan68: Glad you like it!

Sim shady: Grrr... I envy you.    Takes about 2 seconds for me.  Glad you like it!

I think I finaly got it right, zoom five preview, here.  Added some fans to the roof junk on top of the convention center and added some textures to it too.  Unfortunatly, quality of that render had to suffer in order for it to be uploaded to the internet.

Enjoy! 

edit: just came up with this casino. A waterfall based casino.  The only problem is that I can't create a realistic looking waterfall.

[SimFox 802]

I think this newest design is significant improvement on previous one and you should really take to develop it!

 It really worth the effort!

Waterfall may be faked with either particle system or with some material/geometry combo. What you have got right there is already looking not bad (quite like most canal sets and so on.)I would continue same balcony structure all the way around the tower. Only the base looks boring... Given water theme you're going for make it (tower) rise from water. Or maybe go for stylized (heavily) Meso-American pyramid rising from jungle lake - that could be nice Indiana Jones style casino.

[autoVino 26]

Glad you like it!  Yeah, I'm gonna continue a water or jungle theme for this casino.  But as for the base, I'm afraid that such boring bases are common in many Las Vegas Casinos.

Here's what I mean:

There is(are) usually major feature(s) in casino's that block or make the people look away from the boring plain buildings that contain all the fun.  For that Casino, Mandalay bay and theHotel, it is a large resort pool and many palm trees (and a monorail too!)

Although it doesn't look as good from the "simcity angle", let me assure you that at ground level it looks very attractive and fun to be in.  The boring roof was just never ment to be seen by the people.

[CDI_spy 5]

Wow the caustics are blowing my mind, but they look cool!

[autoVino 26]

Haha!  Glad you like them!

Mini update.  Added a little bit more to the roof of the first casino.   See the zoom five preview here.

Hmm... I have to give it a name don't I?

[beskhu3epnm 8]

I see you are much like me in that I tend to start 50 projects and never seem to finish any of them for release!! (I currently only make maps).

The basic shapes of your latest creations are very inspiring. Just when I thought I could live with my plugins folder the way it was, I now would like to possess completed versions of the buildings you are now working on.

Your first projects here turned out very nice, if a little abstract. I don't know if I could find a good spot for the egg, but the three-sectioned building could work for me.

But your latest preview shots, if given the detail of your previous works, will be very impressive at the least.

[autoVino 26]

beskhu3epnm: Lol... Well, I just get many building ideas and start to work on them, leaving the others alone for quite some time.  I have at least 20 different projects or sketches that I have started on and have yet to finish.  Anyway, glad you like the buildings!

Today I learned how to use the proBoolean tool correctly.  It beats the old boolean tool by not producing any terrible errors and works fast and easy!

This is what I came up with on the waterfall casino:

[topcliff 1]

Hm, what would Borat say? Oh yeah! Very nice! Leonardo

[autoVino 26]

topcliff: lol!  Glad you like it!

Here is an update, with some more las vegas casinos:

Here's the Waterfall Casino:

and the MGM Grand:

And the Mirage:

enjoy!

[Sim shady 12]

Very Nice! *Borat accent included*

[autoVino 26]

Lol... is Borat suddenly attracted to my Casinos?  Glad you like it, Sim shady!

Here is another update:


Also, got some high res pictures of the Old Morrison Administration Building, so been working on that:



enjoy!

eidt: to finish off today, here's a ground view picture of the waterfall casino:

[lil_momo 0]

I love the Waterfall Casino. The windows are simply amazing I look forward to the final building!

Oh the Administration Building is nice too!

[Sim shady 12]

Yea, i just love the windows, the textures are jaw-dropping! My favorite BAT thread atm Just make sure you release some of these beauties

[toxicpiano 125]

Originally posted by: autoVino

Lol... is Borat suddenly attracted to my Casinos?  Glad you like it, Sim shady!

Here is another update:

quote>

Sheer awesomeness! Could you show the bump map you used for the windows please? (or was it something different?)

[autoVino 26]

Mómó Glad you like it!  The winodws are a bump map, I'll post it from toxicpiano's request.

Sim shady I'll try!  I hope I don't start on another project before I finish and release these. 

Toxicpiano Glad you like it!  Yes, they are bump maps:

It isn't perfect, just somehting I quickly put together in photoshop for good looking skyscraper windows.

[Simfan34 11]

Amazing! AMAZING! Now, these caustic things- I was going to try BATing, but you're making it look so complicated!

[autoVino 26]

Complicated?  In 3ds max 9 it's as easy as clicking a few buttons... that is, If you know what buttons to click.   Glad you like it, Simfan34!

Anyway, here is a preview of the main hotel entrance:

Unfortunatly you won't be able to see it in the game, but just to know it's there, right? 

enjoy!

[Sim shady 12]

lol if you ever upload this casino, link this picture to all the voters looking to diss your work