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3DMax2011 Tests...and Spaceships.

Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
edited November 2010 in Work in Progress #1
Hey, folks. So I recently got a home-use license for Max2011 64bit from my art director at work. Thought I'd give it a shot, and started using the new graphite and object paint tools (new to me, anyway - the last version of max I had legally was 2009...32bit) and it's been a blast. The whole thing is waaay slicker, and much smoother. I really like the feel of it coming of of XSI...
Everything in this model took me about 5 evening of work to accomplish - that's so far. :d
I'd list the influences as a bit of Homeworld, a bit of Starship Troopers, a bit Millennium Falcon, and a bit generic anime. I used the object paint tools for all the raised panels and squirrly little detailed nurnies, and lots of graphite stuff to help the modeling go really quick.
So here are the links to the high-res versions...
http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test12.png
http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test13.png
http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test14.png
http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test15.png
http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test16.png


Those are all pretty huge. I've also attached lower-res jpgs to this post. Anyhow, any suggestions are welcome - I'm not doing this for any particular project, it's just for the joy of it. I've yet to detail the engine section, or the interior of the landing/launch bay. The orange part of the hull is also lacking in polish. I might do some sort of fighter to go along with the landing bay, but I might not, too. :P
It's lacking all texture currently - just flat colors - and takes about 25 seconds a frame to render.
Thoughts?
81748.jpg
81749.jpg
Post edited by Howard Day on
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Posts

  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #2
    I was just thinking were you have been lately, I gotta say NICE!

    Now you got me wondering how you achieved the great looking glow on that bay - regular render effect or MR magic? :p

    Sorry, got no suggestions :)

    ...it looks like a cute crocodile in the first attached / 2nd linked picture :D
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #3
    Haha. Thanks, Melak. If it matters, and if I can link off-site real quick, I've been working on my own game recently. Kinda taking a break because work's so hectic, but I'll get back to in within the next couple of months...
    http://www.wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=9591.0
    Boom. GunApe rules your face.
    Anyhow - that glow is a regular Max effect - this is rendered in straight scanline, no advanced rendering trickery. Just sneaky underhanded trickery. I'm sharing the file so you can take a look - http://www.hedfiles.net/bayglowdemo.zip You'll need max2011...
    But for those that don't have that, here's a quick run-down...
    I render the scene at 20% brightness - and use a series of brightness contrasts render effects to brighten it back up to the normal brightness. I put the lens effects in the middle of those to help simulate an HDRI render.
    It's pretty cool.
  • fractalspongefractalsponge254 Posts: 1,088Member
    #4
    Hey Howard!

    Welcome back. Stuff looks great, as usual :thumb:
  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #5
    Wow...first of all, thanks for sharing that scene file =)

    I've seen posts of yours describing this method of yours..but seeing it at work is quite another thing. The render turns out practically black before it's treated with the effects!

    You manage to make these looks so fine without any advanced shading or lighting...I have a lot to learn, sensei :D

    And that sidescroller project is really impressive as well!
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #6
    Yep - the key to how this works is that the scanline 3dsmax renderer doesn't clamp the color range of the render till after the render effects are applied. So, before those effect passes are finished, there's true floating-point render color depth. So, for those of you who'd like to give it a shot themselves... here's how to do it.

    Step 1: Light your scene normally, include some obvious areas that could be overbright, like windows, nav lights, engines, whatever.
    Step 2: Add your scene lens effects... they won't be awesome at this point, mainly because the lens effects process doesn't treat the glows as additive effects, rather as an alpha blend...
    Happy with your scene? Hawt.
    Step 3: Go to the environment settings, and set your global lighting level to .2. Leave all the other settings the same.
    Step 4: Go into every material that has a self-illumination value and reduce it to between 25-50% of it's original brightness/output level. This is important - if you don't do this, all your glowie bits will be very blown out.
    Step 5: Add 5 "Brightness and Contrast" effects in your render effects settings. They should have the following values, to to bottom:
    0.83, 1.0
    0.76,1.0
    0.79,1.0
    0.87,1.0
    0.7,1.0
    (not sure *why* these values work as well as they do, but they do. If they're not working for you, render your scene normally, then clone the rendered image. Use the interactive update options to tweak the new 20% render back to an exact match with the original duplicate....or alternatively, set all the B&Cs to 0.8,1.0 that's a good place to start. )
    Hit render. Your render should now be very dark, but with the glowie areas marginally brighter. As the render ends, it should snap very quickly back into full brightness.
    Step 6: move your lens effects into the brightness and contrast stack - I usually place it 2 entries up. After you do this, your Glows will blow out - you'll need to decrease the intensity on each to 60-75%... in most cases. If your glows are also tied to the brightness of a certain pixel souce, you'll also need to drop the clamp intensity for that to about 60% of the original render.
    Voila! Super-speedy-HDR. All in scanline. This can also improve the quality of image motionblur, if you disable the one in the render options dialog, and add one in the render effects stack *before* the B&Cs. This can make the super bright sources in your scene look less washed out and grey when the motion blur is applied.

    Good luck!
  • SyklonSyklon0 Posts: 0Member
    #7
    Awesome, glad to see you back at it. Love the sidescroller project and the new ship is great. May have to download the 2011 trial to have a look at that scene.

    Mind if I ask if you have plans to do anything more with your previous project, the alien strike animation? I really loved how that was looking.

    edit: Never mind, thanks for the more detailed run-down, will have to give it a try!
  • L2KL2K0 Posts: 0Member
    #8
    i'd love to have an art director that gives me max licenses...
  • StarshipStarship465 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    #9
    Welcome back master! ItA’s a long time without to hear news from you. :)
    Great wips, as always! And thanks for sharing the file and tips. :thumb:
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #10
    Skylon: I sorta do. This was originally intended to take the place of the :human" cruisers in that battle. I'm not willing to promise anything, though.

    L2K: I got pretty damn lucky, that's for sure.

    Hey, Starship. :P

    Okay, so I've spent some random time this long weekend and added more greebles, effects, texturing and general polish to the whole endeavor. It now takes on the order of a minute and a half per render on my laptop - but that seems to be the upper limit...as I've added a buttload of stuff since it first hit that number, and nothing I've done since has seemed to increase it.

    As always, high res PNGs link to elsewhere. :P
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test20.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test21.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test22.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test23.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test24.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test25.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test26.png
    aaand my personal favorite...
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test27.png

    ENJOY, I COMMAND YOU.
    81811.jpg81812.jpg
  • somacruz145somacruz1450 Posts: 0Member
    #11
    Whoah it renders in 1.5 minutes !? :o It's just as unbeliveable as the ship itself ! The 2D project you posted earlier is impressive as heck as well, great job Howard, looking forward to seeing more :thumb:
  • StarshipStarship465 São Paulo - BrasilPosts: 1,976Member
    #12
    Very good Howard! Looks like something that could be in the old (and good) TTA books. Makes me remember Peter Elson in fact.
    That shot with the bay (is it?) exposed looks awesome!
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #13
    A little more. Spent some time getting the textures grunged up a bit. Also played with the engine effects. There's also an additional color scheme with the orange areas tagged more towards dark green...
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test30.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test31.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test32.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test33.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test34.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test35.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test36.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test37.png

    Thoughts?
    81889.jpg81890.jpg
  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #14
    Nice dirt!
    The whole ship looks awesome, and I think the orange fits it very well. Looks very homeworld-ish that way :)
    But then again orange seems to be my favourite colour these days, so I might be biased :p
  • SyklonSyklon0 Posts: 0Member
    #15
    Very nice dirt indeed. I'd have to agree with Melak and say I prefer the orange to the green.
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #16
    Thanks guys. I had a slight bias against the orange because those are the primary colors of that side-scroller I was working on...I didn't want to become a one-note-horse.
    Two more Ridic-U-Huge Renders....still in blah-no-body-likes-me-green, but shows off the detail quite nicely.
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test39.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test39A.png

    HUGE!
  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #17
    Haha it's not that I don't like the green, it certainly makes the orange bay pop!

    And I definitely like huge renders that have more to show than you see at the first glance.
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #18
    Hokay.. Some more. Mostly complete, except for window lighting and some detailing around the engines and nose...

    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test40.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test41.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test42.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test43.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test44.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test45.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test46.png
    These are all huge renders.
    I swapped out the orange bay color to a more neutral blue-green. I think it looks faaar more entertaining. And welcoming.

    Thoughts?
    82009.jpg82010.jpg
  • MelakMelak332 Posts: 0Member
    #19
    She's looking beautiful Howard! And if a blue bay is what it takes to keep the orange paint, I can live with that :P

    The blue glow on the bay looks really nice!

    I found your collection of panels and thingies in the scene file you posted - You used those with the new ObjectPaint tool?
    How'd that work out on the curved surface?
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #20
    Melak: That I did. They mostly worked just fine on the curved surfaces - those areas that didn't I snaged the pieces that were up off the surface, made them unique, and then cut and FFd's the pieces into place. Pretty simple, actually.
  • VALKYRIE013VALKYRIE013547 Posts: 1,473Member
    #21
    ooooo i like the blue glow and orange box as well! is the thruster blue fx something in max or photoshoped?
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #22
    Glad you like it! Those are just simple volume fogs in Max.
  • DimitriyDimitriy0 Posts: 0Member
    #23
    Wow, Howard Day. Exceptional model. Do continue :)
  • Howard DayHoward Day632 Posts: 434Member
    #24
    More goodness....
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test50.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test51.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test52.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test53.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test54.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test55.png
    http://www.hedfiles.net/max2011test56.png
    82171.jpg82172.jpg
  • ComcoComco317 Posts: 1,281Administrator
    #25
    Looking badass, Howard. I have to admit though, my eyes are drawn to the paneling on the "wings" every time I see a render of this baby. Perhaps it's just me, but those panels look out-of-sync with the rest of the design - they look taller than the paneling everywhere else and, to my eye at least, tend to lower the scale of the ship.

    Regardless, she's a great looking ship. :)
  • somacruz145somacruz1450 Posts: 0Member
    #26
    Yeah I think they are too big and a bit too high but overall this ship blows away most of the ships ever made !
  • ComcoComco317 Posts: 1,281Administrator
    #27
    Oh, one other thing, Howard. I love those yellow struts around the outside of the ship - amazing how a single element like that can really finish the ship off so nicely. One thing that I notice right now though is some sort of artifacting on the diagonal "struts". It's hard to describe but it looks a little like a normal or smoothing issue right now but could be a procedural texturing issue or something else entirely. Might be worth taking a look at though...

    Love the turrets, btw. Looking forward to seeing you animate them firing in your typical badass way. :cool:
  • OzylotOzylot332 Posts: 0Member
    #28
    Very Pretty. I dig the Homeworld relation!
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]2 Posts: 3Member
    #29
    I love this ship. It's just beautiful.

    I was wondering if you would give me permission to use it for a short filmed sketch my group Elephant Larry is putting together? We need to create an establishing shot for a 2001-style sequence. We'd of course give you full credit.

    You can see more of what we do at elephantlarry.com. I can also send you the script if you like.
  • MephMeph331 Posts: 0Member
    #30
    Beautiful ship indeed! Say, from the renders it looks those two front turrets can barely turn away from each other. Do the back-ends touch or cross, or is it just a really tight fit?
  • Gog3t3kGog3t3k0 Posts: 0Member
    #31
    Impressive.
    I really like youe greebling style, it's kinda cool ;D
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