Making a HUD effect in 3DS Max

triple111

Hey guys, I've been working on a starship bridge in the WIP section in Inventor, but I've switched it over to 3DS Max today and I'm starting to learn it.

I'm trying to get an effect where the HUD looks like it is being projected from the bottom holding bar and the light fades out as it progresses toward the top part, like a gradient. I want it to look as if its being refracted throughout the glass , but also to sort of spill over and gently illuminate the surrounding area.

Heres a rough sketch of what I'm looking for:



I had an early HUD in inventor that was similar to the thing i'm doing:


Also, what would be the best way to create text or images on the screen? I want them to glow like in the picture above, or have a sort of bloom effect coming out of them.

I'm a complete noob to 3DS max and I'm trying my best to figure it out as quickly as possible.

Thanks a lot!

Chris2005

Not sure how to accomplish the actual effects in the glass, like a real HUD, you'd have to wait until someone comes along that does a lot of effects with glass refraction's, etc., but you could set the items that are being displayed with an ID either object or material, and add a glow, and choose that ID, however to get it to show through the glass, I'd get the plugin "Ky_Throughout" you can set the glass with an ID, and set that ID in the plugin, and it will allow the glows to show through the glass...

Melak

For the gradient fading out part you could use a gradient

I don't know exactly what you are trying to achieve, but for the part about illuminating the sourroundings you'll probably want to use the mental ray renderer if you aren't already.

Create a dummy copy of your screen and put an arch&design material on it, set it to a solid color and you'll find a "special effects" groups in its settings.

There you can enable the Self Illumination, and the "Illuminate scene when FG is on" checkbox.
In your dummy objects properties, you can set it to be invisible to the camera - however it will still light up the scene, and allow you to control it separately from however you tackle the actual display
You'll need to render with FinalGather enabled

L2K

a simple plane inside the glass of the hud will do the trick.
you paint your text inside photoshop white on black background.
new layer, and make a vertical gradient, white on bottom, black on top. then change the mode to multiply.
save as, and use it as the opacity map for the plane you just made inside the glass of the hud.
use a simple solid color as the diffuse, and set the self illumination to 100.

you re done.
to fake the projector, use a spotlight with a very large spread, very little strength, and a short "far atenuation" (you can use the inverse squarre mode too, but for this kind of subtle light, i dont see the point. its more for larger and mor important lights)