hkabat-forum-threads Amthaak BATS Thread

[Amthaak 1,501]

AutoVino: Thanks a lot, it is exactly what I was waiting for...! Thanks also for your avaibility. BTW, when are going to upload this one? (really fantastic...!)

[autoVino 26]

You're welcome! Thanks, I still have that model close by and I plan to work on it after I finish my current project.

[Francis90b 748]

Well, i do really hope it won't be lost in the fog anymore !

Your night scene is wonderful, best of luck in fixing it up.

Keep up the wonderful job Pierre, and don't forget the unlettered version too !

[Amthaak 1,501]

Hi Francesco: I will do it for shure, no pb! Thanks for your support!

[kellydale2003 2,276]

@Amthaak - Yikes! I thought you had it all figured out

Your supposed to play with the setting when in the middle so you dont have to change your textures around! haha - oh well. You'll get it!

Just make sure to back up that baby! I think you should put you camlightrigs to default and start them from scratch, gettin errors is a bad sign my friend.

Good Luck! Autovino and Simfox are Gods when it comes to things like these

[Simbourgeois 139]

I know it is not how it was intended to be, but those last two pictures look quite stylish! It could be a perfect place to shoot some scenes of a dreadful horror movie

Bon courage, mon ami! Prends ton temps!

Simbourgeois

Maire de Belleville

[kellydale2003 2,276]

OHH!!!!!

You didn't set the nightlite up yet? Ya know you could just press Maxis Nite in the "Let There Be Light" rollout (if you have it installed of course).

[autoVino 26]

Okay, I did some testing on the ltbl script, and it seems as if the settings for night between max 2010 and max 9 are slightly different. The max 9 settings are a little bit brighter, so try going into your exposure control (render-> environment) and make sure that log exposure is on, and

*turn down the brightness to about 42.5 or 42.

See how that looks. My results may be different since I am testing the max 9 settings in max 2010.

It is important that you makes sure that there are no lights in your lighting rig, so don't forget to delete any if there are. Check to make sure that you have no sun lights in your scene as well. If you do, delete them. Make sure you keep the sky though. Also, make sure that final gatherer is on with 3 or more diffuse bounces. It looks like right now you don't have FG on or your diffuse bounce is really low (this also could be because you have no sky object).

edit: aha!  It turns out you have the wrong cam-light rig for this.  You can either do what I told you to do in th PM and edit the file, or replace the cam-light rig with the one that came with the 2.6 version of bat4max.  

The camera/lighting rig file (called TB2_CameraLightRig) file should include the following instances:

1. Camera Array (a group that holds all of the following

 a. ArtCamera 6

 a1. ArtCamera 6.target

 b. Camera Z1

 c. Camera Z2

 d. Camera Z3

 e. Camera Z4

 f. Camera Z5

 f1. Camera Z5.Target

2nd edit: Make sure that you replace or edit the camera light rig file in both start folder up and camlightrigs folder.  You only need to edit the one with the file name listed above, not the medium, large, etc. size.

3rd edit: you get the error in the ltbl because you have no x-ref file.  I guess you need the x-ref for the script to work.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Thy Lord has Answered!

[SimFox 802]

yes SF is in China... and behind the great Firewall of china.... For some reason all imageshack pictures are off-limit.. So I can't really see any of the illustrations Amthaak had posted...

but...

Please don't goo modifying LtbL. Yes settings are different, because different rendering engines and gamma correction are used in different versions of Max. I've spent a lot of time to get them visually as same as i could.

I know it may sound rude, but the problem is not with LtbL. I've tested it with all versions of max - 7, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010. And all works fine. Since i don't see pictures it is a bit hard to diagnose, but i can see one wrong step from the description. Namely merging of the rig... may i ask you why do you do that? Do you even understand what it means? Do you know what rig is made of? Where those parts are? To put long story short - follow the instructions. My experience tells me that so far all problems with bat4max (at least my editions) and LtbL have been caused by failure to follow instructions.

Those instructions, among other clearly say to use rig that comes with LtbL! Notice not "with Bat4Max v2.6" but with "LtbL" And from what I can gather from the text there is you problem - you use wrong, not LtbL compatible rigs.

[Amthaak 1,501]

Mr. Sim Fox:

Woaw, I beg your pardon Sir! don't worry! I never had the pretention to think one second that the pb should come from LTBL. I should have put you in CC of al my PM to AutoVino, who fortunatly try to make me understand what it is wrong with my night render. Of course, I don't understand how it works , that's why I ask for Help! Recently, it seems that the pb maybe come from the fact that I use (from the beginning) Jason's rig. Is it correct? compatible with LTBL ?? why there is (apparently) no pb with day render??? why there is pb with night render ????????????????

So better,  for me to come back to Gmax! (that I don't understand either!) (Nooo, I'm not angry, just jocking)

Coming back to the instruction refering LTBL, I think you are refering about that: well , I red it very carefully to make exactly what it's written!

But sorry again for my ignorance, I just want to learn something which is far to be my speciality! When I start to use 3ds max , I try to find answers to my questions, picking here and there details, if you read this thread, it will proove that at the beginning, I got the advice to use Jason rig...! if it  is compatible with LTBL, how can I know that? Is there a tread , where it is clearly mentioned that , using LTBL I have to change with the light Rig of LTBL ,anyway nobody talls me (well , I did'nt ask either.., so is my great mistake).

Now I know (better than before...) I just replace it, and to do so, I had to red again Jason tutorial how to change it in the X-ref scene. At least is tutorial is well done, at least understable for me, the kind of 1, 2 , 3 etc...exactly what a beginner need (nothing more!, except maybe some patience and benevolence)

Well thank you very much  if you want to help, anyway, if I can't make a correct night render, it is not so important...! I will survive

[autoVino 26]

^^Hmm, different rendering engine explains why the difference in max 9 and 2010 renders (with the 2010 renderer with max 9 settings as I vaguely mentioned above).

It seems that you skipped step two!

You may, actually, have to adjust your day scene if you used the wrong lighting rigs, but test it out first with the right lighting rig files before you do anything.

Essentially what I told you to do in the PM (or the post above) is either replace the lighting rig or edit it so that it would match the LTBL lighting rig.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

So I know the 2k rendering engines are lighter - but I also have a question since were on the topic.

For Max 9 there's a required Service Pack 2 to download which will stop the bugs when first downloaded. and when I use Day in Ltbl, it seems super bright! My textures are purposely dark by 200+% just to correct the color. My gamma and everything else is correct, but I better see if I can fix this before my texture library expands overtime.

Even for the textures provided by Amaathak - the original textures I checked through colour spy seemed very close to those in amaathk's renders. But my renders of the same textures are not even close. Even just to get a neutral gray I have to almost put the HSL close to black. and this is with lbtl. I can't really learn how to do the camlightrigs myself because photos are missing in the Forces of Light and Geometry thread. And then when I export the saturation is dull, but I can't really correct if I have no knowledge of what's going on. =/

Any ideas?

[Amthaak 1,501]

Hi Kelly (may I call you Kelly???), here is the explaination gave by Sim Fox in this thread (page 8 I think)

Quote:

"Thing is LetThereBeLights does much more then just setting lights. It is sort of presentational engines. One important part of it is gamma correction. It compresses overwise to great dynamic range into values that could be displayed on computer screen and still look natural.

The particular method used for this compression differs depending on the version of Max you have. Best result - most natural are achieved in Max v 2008 and newer.

For older versions Logarithmic correction is used and problem with that one is that it had little mistake in the approach how algorithms were written in the first place. These algorithms didn't do proper desaturated while compressing. this led to the oversaturated images. This problem existed for Max versions till Max9. Then Autodesk finally figured out what was wrong and "corrected" it. But with a vangens! As a result Images color corrected with new Logarithmic Exposure were very, very bleached out.

So when I was making LetTherBeLight I was faced with dilemma what to do. As i was already dealing with 2 different tools - Logarithmic Exposure for Max prior to 2008 and MR Photographic after it. Should I introduce another branching for Max9 alone... I decided against it and now it used "legacy" Logarithmic exposure algorithms. So the image from Max7-9 will be identically color corrected.

This said one must remember that often "textures" and other images found on the WEB are shamelessly distorted, oversharpend and oversaturated, to make them look "more appealing". I suspect tha old Logarithmic algorithms were actually set to do the same.

Anyway on this composite (taken from the LetTherBeLight presentation you can see the difference color correction method makes given exactly same textures:

So, I would recommend to simply take as granted as it is always far easier to desaturated both textures and even defuse colors (in Photoshop or right there in max) to compensate for Legacy approach then boost saturation (without horrible side effects) as would have been needed for Max9 new Algorithms. And since for Max users prior to Max2008 this is the only method of gamma correction built in the program this is the method I've chosen."

Unquote:

Max 2008 seems to be, today, the best option...!

Hope it helps!

[Amthaak 1,501]

Dear AutoVino, thanks a lot. Some people are experts, some are teachers, you are the Both!

I think that I reach the end of my pb, yesterday after PM to you , I reinstall Bat4Max 2.6 and replace the light Rig (in both folders) with the one of LTBL, put the "z_SF_LtbL-CC.ms file in the Scripts\startup folder.

Then I open my Bat (the day one) replace in the jason rig with the LTbL one: make a day render, check if I can rotate the Bdg for the day render, NO PB!

The shadow seems IMO, even better than before!

Then I opened my Night Bat, replace the jason Rig Lite, add some omni light for test, made a render (with Maxis Nite):

I didn't merge the rig lite (as SimFox, STRONGLY recommend not to do that), but it seems that it's more like it shoud be, of course there are too much omni, but it seems that I don't have any parasit lights in this night render, neither strange saturated color.

So I think that the pb I faced, which was not so evident for the Day render (maybe, excessive shadows) came from the fact , that I was not using the correct Light Rig (as simple as that!) . Anyway thanks a lot for spendind all this time and helping me.

And now, I can start to work on Nitelites...!

[kellydale2003 2,276]

No no I got that part amthaak - It's this part: https://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=37&threadid=81699&STARTPAGE=2&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear#952639

There's missing photos - I think this maybe the last puzzle piece to all my problems.

And yeah - Call me whatever Kelly is my real name. I'm a guy though haha.

www.myspace.com/Kelly-Edwards Just check my blog "LINKIES!!" if you don't believe me.

March 18th 2010 - I'm going to France for 9 days. Going to land in London than off to France. My birthday is March 19th haha. Is Paris far from where you live?

+This is my last post until Wednesday or so. But I'll reply to your message/post in this thread. I'm off to see some family for thanksgiving. (Canada has thankgiving earlier than Americans )

[SimFox 802]

People! Read instructions!!

In LtbL instructions it clearly stated that rig included in download is to be used! Not any kind other rig, be it Jason's, old mine ones or any other.

If you will take 5 minutes to read instructions and do EXACTLY that they tell you to do you wouldn't have any problems. And all my instructions are exactly 1, 2, 3... Step by step. Also newer instructions replace older ones, naturally... So there is no need to go to ancient stuff. LtbL takes care of ALL lighting (environmental), gamma correction and Renderer & Final Gather setting. It also automatically recognizes the version of Max you're running and sets everything specifically for that version.

Unless you really well understand all those topics don't poke in it. You are highly unlikely to improve on it and are much more likely to create problems.

Again I can't see imageshack images here in China, so I'm sort of writing this blind.

[autoVino 26]

My bad, guys. I think I was a little unclear at first about what to do to fix this (with LTBL... I meant replace with LTBL rig not the bat4max one).

@Amthaak - no problem, glad to help!

@kellydale2003 - Not sure why you have to darken your textures so much. I have a hunch that installing the new service pack may have confused the gamma somehow. Try these things in this order:

1. reset the ltbl lighting rig.

2. check to see if your gamma correction is set up correctly (and turned on).

3. If this does not work, try adjusting the log exposure settings (brightness) until you get a desirable balance between texture brightness and render brightness.

Of course, with these darkened textures, you may not be able see the results correctly, so restore your textures (or colors) to the original before you do the above.

The forces of light and geometry page that you cite will not help because it talks about different types of (old) lighting set ups, not LTBL.

@SimFox- You're pretty spot on. Most problems are caused by not closely following instructions.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

kellydale2003: was the model in question originally made in another version of MAX? I found that when opening my 08 models in 2010 I would have to turn gamma off to get it to show up properly (which is to say, like it was in the previous version with gamma on).

[Vlasky 1,803]

Great. I can't wait release, cause it'll fit perfect on riviere in one of my cities.

I must say that I don't like the colour of those palm trees. Sorry

[kellydale2003 2,276]

I told you that the LBTL wasn't really the cause of it - but when I use scanline the textures are much better. I'm using 9 - And I want to create my own Camlightrig, but I cannot see those photos. Helping with this area could help me how something else functions. And yes my gamma and everything else is better.

I belive it is the Service Pack Update 2 provided by AutoDesk just as Autovino said. Other versions of 3DSMAX work really fine, but 9 was the only one that required an update to function properly on Vista. I even had to remove an update from Vista using restore point (Coincidentally same name): "Service Pack Update 2 - 32B Vista". The SP2 by Autodesk was to fix the UI of Max because of some bugs and glitches. I think it may have patched something in the renderer too.

But I'll find the problem soon enough now that you guys pointed out some directions

[Amthaak 1,501]

Nitelites...!

This side is facing the river, which explaines the blue reflection ! I took the inspiration from Cockatoo 's HK Pics.

[Delecto 941]

Good achievement Amthaak, I like the windows on the day version, very realistic,

and it seems that you finally get a nice result with the Nightlight version.

[Larks2242 251]

Looks really nice good job

[Amthaak 1,501]

Delecto: Thanks a lot for visiting this Bat Thread and for your nice comment. You are right , I need to improve the nite view to have something more realistic.

Larks2242: you're welcome

What about this pic?

[Delecto 941]

To make it easy, I think there are too many reflections on the windows and not enough light coming from inside the building. I'm having the same problem with my BATs at the moment and it's not easy to find the right direction.

I hope you find a good compromise.

EDIT: mince alors, j'avais pas vu que tu était un voisin français... héhé, salutations!

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Not enough light coming from inside, probably.

Not enough reflections, nah! IMO you can (almost) never have enough on glass structures like these. Keep it up, the day render is very impressive and your night-lighting is coming along nicely too. I quite like the ambient blue light around the pool area.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Looking Nice and Sharp!! Way better than before!

+ are the Chinese lettering neon? or just logo type material (lights over plastic).

[Amthaak 1,501]

Delecto: Salut "cousin", I'm still testing, trying to assimilate all these new tools. You are right , it's not easy to get the right balance between  the reflection and the "inner light". But I think Cockatoo is right . it's not a pb of reflection strenght but, i still don't find the way to give the impression that the light is inside.

Cockatoo. Thinks my friend for your comment, I want for the nitelite  a kind of 2 ambiences, the one facing the river with few lites and to have the attention concentrate on the pool area. For the front side (facing the street) , something more "lighted" with the reflection of the city. Well, just something like that:

Hi Kelly: for the neon letters , just use red color with self_illumination! that's all

[kellydale2003 2,276]

kk - this makes the letters more realistic if the lighting is right.