autoVino

do you include the ground plane in your caustics calculations? if you are using mr sun, you can set the radius for caustics illumination as optimization. Also, make sure that you apply caustics to only the objects that need it, not to the whole scene, otherwise you get awfully long caustics renders. I can usually get 2 million photons within ~5 min (but that doesn't say much since it depends heavily on the scene). Also, cut down the caustics bounces to like 2 or 3, this will also speed up renders. If the raytrace material works, then that's great! It isn't necessarily optimized for mental ray though, but as far as I understand it should still work (I remember in 3ds max 9, it would cause aweful artifacts to appear with caustics calculations).

Very nice Seraf! The water gives a fairly convincing effect! Of course it's missing reflections, depth, and shadow (which would come with depth), but I don't know if I would necessarily add these since it look fine already. A couple pointers 1. on the plaza surrounding the fountain, the white paving seems to have overlapping geometry or bad texture coordinates, making it look a bit messy 2. A good idea would be to do your renders with a neutral grey background to get a good idea of the contrast and shading of the model. Try setting the grey to about ~0.22 for RGB (or brightness in HSB) in environment or apply a mr Physical Sky shader to the environment to achieve the same effect.

Yes they will be released! :-) I'm working on some memory saving techniques right now for some of the larger models. The coal plant is more or less ready for final render with the exception of a couple lights and memory problems when calculating FG. I think I've found a way around this, though, but the calculations are only 81% done so there's still 19% left to mess up on in FG calculations! As for lotting and modding (probably mostly modding), I do believe the ITC team at sc4 devotion is responsible for this (and other models) after export. I will probably do all the modding that is necessary for the s3d files. The centrepoint model will be next after I get this done (and it should be far easier to export as well since each render averages 40 min instead of 3 or 4 hours)! edit: here is a very basic example of image compositing: Both are the same image. The first is the render output (on a white background) the second is the raw alpha output. If these are mapped on an cleverly created LOD, then reflections cam appear in simcity! of course this will require transparency in the s3d file mapping.

I've been really busy (working on character modeling and video compositing using some of the new production shaders introduced in 3ds max 2008... but not officially supported until 3ds max 2009). This brings up an interesting idea of how to include ray traced (and HDRI lighting) surroundings in simcity. I don't know if the method will work, but essentially it is using the method described above to simulate ortho perspective with normal perspective (for HDRI maps to work well) and using the production shaders to simulate a render designed for compositing. I will post some examples on this later if I can get this to work, it is merely an idea right now.

Mental ray should have no problem handling 2 million polygons (in fact I've seen HD renders done in under two ours of physically correct scenes with over 8 billion polygons with V-ray! I'm sure mental ray can match that easily) as long as you meet the minimum requirements for the software. It's more of a "how much memory do you have" than "can mental ray handle this?" Poly count is only a limiting factor on render time of you do not have the memory to process the scene. A few points about using glass in scenes: generally, thin glass is better for architectural renderings where the thickness of glass is not distinguishable (e.g. windows from a distance) because it's fast and easy to model. Thick glass is better to use when you need physically correct glass to show different effects (such as refraction and internal reflection) and where it will be distinguishable. For your aquarium, you may want to use thicker glass (not actual glass, but a polymer glass) because aquariums need thick strong glass to hold the water pressure. This especially holds true if you wish to do a close up render to the "Hanging Gardens in 1902". In order to model correct "polymer glass" (aka acrylic glass), you would need to pick an IOR of about 1.48 instead of 1.52 as normal glass has. The transmittance properties also vary a little bit for polymer glass. So I suggest you make the glass from mia arch&design material. Water color can also be control through the pro materials, but I would try to make a convincing water out of mia arch&design. The mental ray tip's tutorial that I posted a link for can also be used for general purpose water and is good because you can control the index of refraction (so that you can control internal reflection if you wanted to). Some stuff about glass: http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2008/11/mental-ray-glass_07.html http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/2009/01/glass-reflections-its-all-about-bump.html Stuff about water: http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html Stuff about good grass (I haven't tried this, but it caught my eye) http://3dsmaxrendering.blogspot.com/search?q=grass

Wow, everything is very nicely done. Great job!

MIA Promaterial is pretty good at simulating realistic water. If you want a little bit more control over your water, try the following basic tutorial: http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html Also, look around the blog, there are a lot of very good mental ray tips and tricks... as well as just plain cool mental ray stuff in general. edit: looking back at the most recent picture you posted, what effect are you trying to achieve with your glass? It seems to be thin geometry (making your glass walls look like a thin sheet and nothing like the type of glass required for an aquarium), where what would be best: physical glass that would be much thinner. This does, of course, depend on what you are trying to achieve with your render.

He. Also, the method that Is stated has three surfaces and there is no air gap, just in case that is not clear. Having an air gap can cause nasty artifacts, especially with caustics. The article has a diagram which makes it very clear what I mean, should be on page 51 or 52. Have fun modeling.... physically correctly!

I don't see what you mean by the black stripe. This is also not a physically (or mathematically) correct way to produce water and glass touching. The best way is to work with edit poly so that you have very close control over the direction of the face normals. Normals are very important in correct display of physically correct transparent materials! For example, an object with a normal facing toward you with IOR = 1.33 will look like water. The same object but with normal multiplied by -1 (flipped) will exhibit an IOR of 0.75 and will look you are in the water. Imagine the scene as a fluid with IOR = 1.0, because this is exactly how mental ray calculates refraction. Also, refraction is calculated using a plane and a normal. Why is all this so important? It is important when trying to set up a physically correct representation of glass touching water or vice versa. Because mental ray treats empty space as IOR = 1.0, you must adjust the refractory index between two materials. This can be done by dividing final refraction by initial refraction with respect to the normal IOR = (If/Io) normal to "Io". So for glass (IOR = 1.52) to water (IOR = 1.33) with normal facing into the glass, the IOR must be 1.33/1.52 = 0.88. This and the shader responsible for ray depth tricks the viewer of your render into believing that the touching objects that were rendered are defined by volume and not by planes and normals. To set up a correct scene where water and glass are touching, you need three different materials with three different IOR. You need a water air material with normal out (1.33/1.0 = 1.33), glass air material with normal out (1.52/1.0 = 1.52), and a glass water material with normal out (1.33/1.52 = 0.88) or normal in (1.52/1.33 = 1.15). You can read more about this and ray depth in pp. 47-52 of the Mental Ray Architectural and Design Visualization Shader Library which should have come with 3ds max 2010. If not you can read a 2008 version which can be downloaded here: http://www.mentalimages.com/products/mental-ray/documents.html Actually, I strongly suggest that everybody (who uses mental ray) read the articles (esp the arch and design) because they offer very valuable information about mental ray and tips and tricks! This will get rid of any black stripes and give you physically correct caustics because you will have no overlapping normals. Again, I strongly suggest that you use edit poly to do this because of the control it offers over normal orientation and some of the graphite selection tools to help quickly and accurately select faces.

cleaner xl? it's a very powerful media converter. It has encodings for most media formats and has advanced settings. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=5562182 autodesk combustion: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=5562397

Ya, usually when 3ds max is bought with dvd, it comes with virtual help files and virtual example files explaining all commercial features of the product. Depending on the retailer, it will also come with other products (my 3ds 9 came with combustion and cleaner xl--very nice video compositing software)... new student autodesk package for about $200 USD includes most all of the autodesk software actually, but I do believe that they leave stamps. Autodesk is also offering a lot of its software for free if you can prove that you are a student. It offers a 6-month trial version for 3ds max 2010 for students (these may also leave stamps on renders, but I'm not sure).

You should have it virtually. There is a very complete manual in the 3ds max help menu. It describes ALL 3ds max tools, how they work/how to use, etc. Mental ray and maxscript are also fully documented-either on the mental images website: http://www.mentalimages.com/products/mental-ray/documents.html (this one is mr 3.6) or in their corresponding help files. ...And the reflections look the same :-)

You are correct, as far as I can tell. Make sure that the LOD encompasses the whole building before export and this should fix your problem.

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.

It does sound like you lack memory to run the script, since the most common error for error code 6 is having unit problems or memory problems. At 10 minutes, do you get any render visible, or is the script still trying to process the scene?