hkabat-forum-threads Amthaak BATS Thread

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Good to see you back! Brilliant model so far, I'll be interested in how you texture it.

[SimFox 802]

Amthaak:

About characters...

I'll try to get them to you in ai form, but they wouldn't be in the same font though...

I would suggest to try to fiddle a bit with a glass thin geometry preset of Arch&Design material. It is a very good starting point.

You would need to set a ground plane and texture it with some sort of image to be reflected in the glass. The plane should be made invisible to camera.

[grbac80 5]

Nice to have you back, I was wondering when will you post in your thread again... I'm not a batter so I won't comment on the model except that I like it. Nice to see you picked Singapore, there aren't so many buildings from there on STEX.

[Amthaak 1,501]

SimFox: thanks for yr advises. Hereafter is where I am and I 'll need some precisions in order to correct the errors I (certainly) did! Thanks again for yr patience!

nota: the ground plane is visible because, to hide it, I would like to be shure that I can do it by right clicking on the selected ground plane, then "hide selection":

2- hereafter the different steps for the windows texture (I am using the material n°2):

step 1:

Please note that I put a medium blue color for the Diffuse color.

step 2:

Note: when I select in the dialogue box the "glass(thin geometry)" the diffuse color changed back to black, and I have to re-selected the initial medium blue color. then I close material editor after dragging the texture on the windows.

step 3:

Note: I re-open the material editor and the selection "glass(thin geometry)" is not anymore selected, and I have no refection of the ground on the windows which BTW looks very transparent. What did I do which is wrong?

[SimFox 802]

First of all glass doesn't have any defuse color, so you should leave it at black eg NO COLOR.

if you want change what people mistakenly call glass color you have to change REFRACTION (or see through) color.

You would also want to increase the reflectivity of the glass a bit. Go to BDRF roll-out and select there "Custom Reflectivity Function" and set reflectivity at 0 deg. at about 0,2.

As for the ground plane you're going about it in a wrong way. You have to select the plane, and from the quad menu select Object Properties. There in the Rendering Control uncheck "Visible to Camera option Make sure you are changing setting to the object alone and not to teh the entire layer, or put the ground plane to onto the layer of it's own. Actually that could be a good idea...

[Amthaak 1,501]

SimFox: Thank you! how can I have the "windows reflection" a little bit more visible?

Next step: roof buildings and stuff!

Thank you all for your support!

[jacqulina 162]

looking good my friend

[Amthaak 1,501]

Hi Jacky,

Thanks for your comments!

[jacqulina 162]

your welcome my friend

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Make sure you extrude the ground plane just slightly on the z-axis (0.01 or something really tiny.) For some reason it's not visible to reflection's otherwise.

Don't hide the ground plane otherwise nothing will be reflected. Select object, Right click > Properties and uncheck Visible to Camera but be sure not to uncheck Visible to Reflection/Refraction.

Doing those two things should give you reflections in your windows.

[Simbourgeois 139]

Oh la la  Looks very impressive! I'm looking forward to seeing this completed! It will certainly find a good place in my city

Keep up the great work

Yours sincerely,

Simbourgeois

Mayor of Belleville

[Amthaak 1,501]

cockatoo: dear friend thanks a lot, I'll try it right now! I'll maybe need more of yr advices when I'll start the nightlights...

Simbourgeois: Hi my friend, glad you like my new hotel, maybe it can be use for your next "Amthaak Avenue"...

BTW are you still in Singapour? If yes, I'll be very grateful to have a pic of the top of the roof bdg, the only pic I have is the one I got with Google Earth and the quality is very, very bad. But if you have no time, or if it's too complicated, don't worry, I don't want to bother you.

hereafter the pic I have...

[Amthaak 1,501]

Well! I just install "LetThereBeLight1" which seems to help me to make a big improvement for the day rendering. In particular, for the windows rendering which has more reflection. However, the colors seems to be more saturated. Any Idea (M. Simfox for instance...!) ?

[jacqulina 162]

nice work

[SimFox 802]

OK, now it start looking right (lighting wise). I've was wondering it there is some bug in LetThereBeLight. seeing how dark you shadows were and how overbright sunny spots were.

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.

Speaking of the reflections....

I'd say at the moment they are may be a bit to strong. just a tad. They are more visible because LetTherBeLight properly gamma corrects you input bitmaps and also boosts their saturation. But the exact level of reflectivity is after all up to you. One thing that would benefit is a bit of irregularity to it that could be added by applying a bump map to the glass material.

See how reflections are distorted here:

Here are examples from real life:

[Amthaak 1,501]

Dear Simfox: Thanks a lot for your explainations! I am changing all my maps with less saturation in order to find the correct textures in the render. I have to go step by step , but after the first trials, it seems that I have to desaturate a lot...!

For the "irregularity" in the windows reflexion, if I understand well (in the real life...!) it's come from the "iregularity of the glass which give the aspect. I am wondering, can I Bat some glass windows with some irregularity to get the same effect. Why, you may ask? It's because I have the reflexion of the swimming pool in the windows behind it and to add a bump map to the glass material will not have any impact on that. What do you think?

Thanks again for your support and you patience! You can't imagine how much I appreciate!

[Amthaak 1,501]

Here I am...!

Nota: the antenna is still under construction...

[SimFox 802]

Bump works, but the effect increases the greater is the distance between reflective surface and what is being reflected. So clean reflection of pool that is very close to the windows is normal/correct.

Antenna looks more like a speaker...

[Amthaak 1,501]

Next steps? Do you have any comments...?

 

[Francis90b 748]

I think it's really coming along !

[SimFox 802]

not more than that I think it looks great! Love the water tank on the roof :-) I'm using similar one for the Hangzhou office block...

[io_bg 249]

Looks fantastic, can't wait to have it in my plugins folder!

[Amthaak 1,501]

Simfox: Thanks a lot, I also think that maybe the roof is a little bit "empty" but , as you can see on the google earth pic (supra), it's not very easy to fill the place "correctly" .

I also try to add some vegetation , here is the result...!

Detail, the antenna...! On the render, I can get so much detail, how can I ameliorate that? any idea?

Hi io_bg: thanks for visiting my bat thread , I'm afraid that you will have to wait a little bit more to see it released! 

[bixel 1,223]

wow man tunnnnns of detail there, you are a top notch modeller

[Amthaak 1,501]

Hi Bixel: I just try to copy you...!

BTW : do you have a pic (drawing will be fine) of the 4 chineese characters for my building. I can't "read" them on the wall very well specially for the first one and for "jiu dien" ?

[Amthaak 1,501]

Chineese characters in progress...!

[Amthaak 1,501]

Hi, I have a question! Is the mat. editor limited to 24 materials ? If not, how can I get new ones? Thanks

[Amthaak 1,501]

W.E pic!

BTW I have this message, any idea of what it is? Thanks for replying...!

[autoVino 26]

It means that the uvw coordinates do not exist for the objects. You can either ignore them, or give then a simple method of mapping, such as uvw coordinate modifier and it should solve the problem.

This shouldn't affect your render too much unless you use textures for mapping those objects. UVW coordinates tell how to map the textures on the object.

[Amthaak 1,501]

AutoVino: (I like it, it's remind me Mundo Vino...!) Thanks a lot for your advice!

Okay, so now I try to work on the transparancy / reflection of the swimming pool water! I was, yesterday spechless when I saw that...! (M. SimFox Bat thread) " Impressionnant , le mec!"

That is of course the kind of work which give me motivation!

So here is the next step (funny, I have the bad impression that i am boring everybody...!

Just one pb, the water seems very "quite"!