3DDeath Star Hangar w/Stormtrooper + Tie - iRay

JMoney

Just finished this up today. A special thanks to TALON_UK, and Wiz for sharing some tips with the floor materials in his threads. Hopefully I did ok.

This version of the hangar uses modeled floor panels. 15 minute iRay render. I added some minor color correction in post, nothing more. One of my computer monitors looks more color saturated than the other (my primary), so I didn't want to adjust it any further with fear of ruining the image.

Let me know what you think!

Updated 12/12/14 based on feedback

Hangar3.jpg

Two new images 12/13/14

02.jpg

03.jpg

evil_genius_180

Dude, that's frakking awesome. The hanger looks real. The stormtrooper looks really good too. The right hand should be a bit tighter around the pistol grip. If it was, he'd look real too.

Wiz

Coooool

A few bits and bobs;

Overall, I would try a bit more contrast from the exposure settings.

Also the Stormtrooper looks a little off white, think he needs to be a bit whiter and brighter (with strong specular reflections on his armour - reflecting just the brightest lights).

With Arch & Design you can achieve a higher specular reflection by using a lower value in the reflection colour, with iRay a stronger roughness value on reflection should help.

Also did you render an AO pass? I tend to handle this separately, dropping back into Mental Ray and using the shader override.

Hope this helps.

Wiz.

Tralfaz

Awesome models and beautifully rendered!

homerpalooza67

really nice work!

JMoney

Wiz wrote: »

Coooool

A few bits and bobs;

Overall, I would try a bit more contrast from the exposure settings.

Also the Stormtrooper looks a little off white, think he needs to be a bit whiter and brighter (with strong specular reflections on his armour - reflecting just the brightest lights).

With Arch & Design you can achieve a higher specular reflection by using a lower value in the reflection colour, with iRay a stronger roughness value on reflection should help.

Also did you render an AO pass? I tend to handle this separately, dropping back into Mental Ray and using the shader override.

Hope this helps.

Wiz.

Thank you everyone for the comments!

Wiz: I took a few of your suggestions. This Stormtrooper uses texture maps instead of materials, but I think my color correction was throwing off the color. The new one looks more white now. I increased the reflection glossiness which was previously set way too low, and added glossy samples which were previously set to 0. I also re-color corrected the entire image from scratch, but this time in After Effects using a 3-way color wheel which I am much more familiar with since I do more animation work. The previous color correction was done in Photoshop. I think it came out much better. What do you think?

I try to stay away from using AO with iRay. I read an interesting article a while back that AO with a physically based renderer like iRay is actually incorrect. However, people are still so used to the "AO look" now because of Hollywood.

Dude, that's frakking awesome. The hanger looks real. The stormtrooper looks really good too. The right hand should be a bit tighter around the pistol grip. If it was, he'd look real too.

evil_genius_180: I took your suggestion and modified the grip as well.

Check out the new (lower) picture up top labeled "Hangar3.jpg"

evil_genius_180

It looks perfect now. :thumb: In fact, I had to put it on my desktop.

TALON_UK

Nice, loving that new floor you put in. One crit I would add to what has already been mentioned is that the blaster the Stormtrooper is carrying looks a little too big, you might need to scale that down a touch. Other than that? Looks excellent.

Loving the reflections in the Stormtrooper's armour revealing the details of the hangar behind the viewer.

:thumb:

Wiz

Nicer indeed much better colour correction.

With re: the Stormtrooper materials, are you using Arch&Design? As they get well overblown reflections in iRay, you should download the iRay material plugin if you haven't already much better results (http://blog.irayrender.com/post/83815598089/iray-material-plugin-updated-for-3dsmax-2015

With re: the Stormtrooper armour, for me the helmet still reflects too cleanly, I have done a quick test render below to show you what I mean, as Stormtrooper armour tends to be dulled down with only the strongest lights being reflected back (see below). I used a high spec dirt map (black and white), in the roughness map for the reflections to help achieve this.

An example of also seen here.

http://screencaps.us/197/7-starwars4/full/star-wars4-movie-screencaps.com-524.jpg

JMoney

TALON_UK wrote: »

Nice, loving that new floor you put in. One crit I would add to what has already been mentioned is that the blaster the Stormtrooper is carrying looks a little too big, you might need to scale that down a touch. Other than that? Looks excellent.

Loving the reflections in the Stormtrooper's armour revealing the details of the hangar behind the viewer.

:thumb:

Thank you! I agree, the gun does look a tad on the larger side. That's the way it came as I didn't adjust anything. The Stormtrooper has a lot of issues. If I ever intend to do some real high quality or close up animations with it, I will have to re-skin the model as well. The envelopes are a mess, especially with the fingers, but you can't see (luckily) in the render. I had to adjust a lot just to get the grip, but the trigger finger still bothers me. I'll use the BonesPro plug-in on it eventually. One of the best plug-ins ever created for 3dsmax in my opinion!

Wiz wrote: »

Nicer indeed much better colour correction.

With re: the Stormtrooper materials, are you using Arch&Design? As they get well overblown reflections in iRay, you should download the iRay material plugin if you haven't already much better results (http://blog.irayrender.com/post/83815598089/iray-material-plugin-updated-for-3dsmax-2015

With re: the Stormtrooper armour, for me the helmet still reflects too cleanly, I have done a quick test render below to show you what I mean, as Stormtrooper armour tends to be dulled down with only the strongest lights being reflected back (see below). I used a high spec dirt map (black and white), in the roughness map for the reflections to help achieve this.

An example of also seen here.

http://screencaps.us/197/7-starwars4/full/star-wars4-movie-screencaps.com-524.jpg

The Stormtrooper is Arch&Design. I use iRay materials for a lot of stuff too, just not this. I had v1.3 installed for the longest time and recently upgraded to the v1.5 materials. I also love using the iRay "matte environment" for a lot of renders.

I see exactly what you mean though from the trooper picture. I think my reflections are strong enough now, but need to be broken up a bit, or actually dulled in certain areas like you mentioned. I'll test out the iRay material and roughness slot as you suggested and see how it comes out. I have a nice collection of B&W grunge maps from DVGarage I purchased way back in the day that always seem to come in handy!

Based on what you said about the iRay material, do you think the hangar floor would benefit from that as well? Right now I'm using your method of A&D material with the same dirt map in glossiness and reflection slot.

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

It looks perfect now. :thumb: In fact, I had to put it on my desktop.

Wiz

For the floor in my hangar I stuck with the MR material also (as it did the job ) so you are good to go (but just be careful not to go to far as to turn it into a wet looking effect on the floor).

The trooper reflections should be dulled in general, with only the brighter light sources coming through.
You can change the strength of the influence of the roughness map through the RGB level in the 'output' rollout so experiment with that

Tralfaz

WOW! I am totally blown away by how great these images are. And I am loving all of the Star Wars threads there are now.

JMoney

Wiz wrote: »

For the floor in my hangar I stuck with the MR material also (as it did the job ) so you are good to go (but just be careful not to go to far as to turn it into a wet looking effect on the floor).

The trooper reflections should be dulled in general, with only the brighter light sources coming through.
You can change the strength of the influence of the roughness map through the RGB level in the 'output' rollout so experiment with that

Looking at several reference (including the one you posted), it looks like the reflections are almost mirror. You can see the different light bulb types reflected in their helmets in many scenes. The light reflections are sharp in most, not blurry. I think my reflections in the main picture may be correct. What I think could be throwing it off is the reflection of the bay entrance with the force field ring and void of space. In the studio something like that would never be reflected. Also the fact that it's reflecting the entire hangar bay and every single light within. I think you had mentioned that the chest and shoulder armor were correct. They had the same material as the helmet, but were just angled differently. I did a few tests with an iRay material adjusting roughness values, and adjusting glossy settings in A&D, but everything just softened up the reflections. The current Stormtrooper material I am using is based off a glossy plastic preset. I'm assuming the wore plastic or fiberglass outfits?

Check out these two new renders. You really only see the reflection of light in their helmets, just like the photos from on set Stormtroopers. Very sharp light reflections, but you don't really see the hallway at all. My color correction may need to boost the reflections more.

I could be way off. I'll post a pic of my experiment with the iRay material next so you can see what I am talking about. My settings could be wrong. What do you think?

02.jpg
03.jpg

EDIT: Iray material test
iRay_Materials.jpg
Better or worse?

Chris2005

One expression:
:eek!:

TALON_UK

That last test looks really good with the reflections in the armour looking subtler. The corridor scenes look cool too, but look like they need to be a touch darker or something, perhaps the reflection level in the wall material needs toning down some? All of the images are looking great though. Good to see this Hangar asset getting some action at last.

JMoney

Chris2005 wrote: »

One expression:
:eek!:

TALON_UK wrote: »

That last test looks really good with the reflections in the armour looking subtler. The corridor scenes look cool too, but look like they need to be a touch darker or something, perhaps the reflection level in the wall material needs toning down some? All of the images are looking great though. Good to see this Hangar asset getting some action at last.

Thank you both.

Looking at a picture like this, the light reflection looks very sharp and the armor looks high gloss. Not like the iRay material test I posted above, but more like the original picture or hallway picture. I will trust both of you in these matters (TALON_UK and Wiz), so if you tell me it is not correct I will make the adjustments. Here is the picture I am talking about:


In regards to the hallway, I may add dirt textures to the walls to break up the reflections, plus lower the reflectivity a little. When I switched it to gamma 2.2 I had to adjust the white glow output. I may have it set a tad too high as you mentioned.

EDIT: Talon_UK, looking at the picture above you were definitely right about that blaster size. The one that came with the model is huge!

Wiz

There is a base rough layer white (almost lambert) with a clearcloat gloss, so the reflections are bouncing back the high bright lights and very little of the surrounding details so your renders are pretty damn close add some imperfections in the clear coat (smudges etc.), and I think you are done

TALON_UK

It is a tricky one to get right the Stormtrooper armour reflectivity, it does seem from all the screenies I have across all the films that you just pick up light sources in the reflection and little else, you get some variation, but for the most part that is the finish you get, so I think that last image is pretty much there. Though it is weird that with Gentle Giant busts of Stormtroopers and Clonetroopers the finish they use is practically matte, which is strange.

And yeah, you can see from that above shot that the E-11 blaster should be much smaller it is not much bigger than a pistol really and not that big a gun at all. In fact it could very easily be half the scale of the weapon you currently have in there.

JMoney

Wiz wrote: »

There is a base rough layer white (almost lambert) with a clearcloat gloss, so the reflections are bouncing back the high bright lights and very little of the surrounding details so your renders are pretty damn close add some imperfections in the clear coat (smudges etc.), and I think you are done

I did a lot of tests today. I took all of your advice with the iRay materials and finally came up with what I believe is a perfect material thanks to your help. I put a black&white dirt map in the roughness slot of the reflective coating section, set the value to 1.0, and used the RGB level to .98 (just to soften it a touch). It really breaks up the reflections nicely. I also found that the maps I'm using look better inverted. Took me a bit to figure that out.

The glossy color slot under base layer has the Stormtrooper maps, and the roughness there is set to .7 (no map).

Looks great and will post a test picture to show soon, but there is one thing that I do not understand and maybe you can answer. I had to switch from IOR (1.5 which looked the best and was correct), to Custom Curve to avoid the black/dark rim.

My custom curve settings are:
0 deg refl: 0.05 (matches 1.5 IOR curve)
90 deg refl: 0.35 (had to really lower this value to get rid of that harsh dark rim)
Curve: 5.0

IOR 1.5 should be correct, so why am I getting such a dark rim? My custom curve looks more realistic and ten times better, although technically I don't think that it should.

Do you know why that is?

Thanks WIZ!

JMoney

Material test:

FINAL.jpg

What do you think? Honest opinion? See my post above for more details. iRay material. I actually lowered the "90 deg refl" to 0.05

I'm still curious as to why the IOR was doing that so extreme.

Tralfaz

Personally, I think the material on the storm trooper looks great. The material looks like either injected or vacuum molded plastic with just the right amount of reflection, haze and surface texture.

Wiz

Honestly, that looks great looks more realistic now as it has that lived in look. Although just one last thing, I would be tempted to take it into PS and adjust the levels to bring in some more contrast to the image (to blacken the blacks and brighten up the stormtrooper armour very slightly) and add a smidgen (0.1) of Gaussian blur

Hmm, not sure about the ior issue, could you post an example; also have you ticked the Architectural Sampler tick box in render settings (this helps to get a more accurate light response - lessens noise)?

TALON_UK

Looks great, I'd say perhaps make the dirt layer a little subtler, looks just a touch heavy handed on the breast plate, but you could have many variants on the level of grime depending on the situation/environment they're in. I think making that layer a touch subtler would give you a perfect lived in looking Stormtrooper armour finish with just the right amount of variation to add realism without overdoing it.

homerpalooza67

JMoney wrote: »

Material test:

FINAL.jpg

What do you think? Honest opinion? See my post above for more details. iRay material. I actually lowered the "90 deg refl" to 0.05

I'm still curious as to why the IOR was doing that so extreme.

You forgot the coffee stains on his armor!

JMoney

Tralfaz wrote: »

Personally, I think the material on the storm trooper looks great. The material looks like either injected or vacuum molded plastic with just the right amount of reflection, haze and surface texture.

Thank you Tralfaz. I'm giving it my best! I'm also keeping an eye on that awesome falcon build of yours.

Wiz wrote: »

Honestly, that looks great looks more realistic now as it has that lived in look. Although just one last thing, I would be tempted to take it into PS and adjust the levels to bring in some more contrast to the image (to blacken the blacks and brighten up the stormtrooper armour very slightly) and add a smidgen (0.1) of Gaussian blur

Hmm, not sure about the ior issue, could you post an example; also have you ticked the Architectural Sampler tick box in render settings (this helps to get a more accurate light response - lessens noise)?

My next render I will play around with the color correction a little more and take those suggestions. Thanks again Wiz! You really helped me out with those material settings!

TALON_UK wrote: »

Looks great, I'd say perhaps make the dirt layer a little subtler, looks just a touch heavy handed on the breast plate, but you could have many variants on the level of grime depending on the situation/environment they're in. I think making that layer a touch subtler would give you a perfect lived in looking Stormtrooper armour finish with just the right amount of variation to add realism without overdoing it.

I will play around with the different dirt maps. The one I used on the chest plate had a very strong and distinct pattern. The surface toolkit I purchased from DVGarage many years ago has around 150 different B&W dirt maps to play with (before any modification), so the possibilities are endless! I can always switch that out for a map with less dirt (or adjust output).

Thanks again for building such an awesome model! This hangar is what got me into iRay in the first place, and I'm so glad I did!

homerpalooza67 wrote: »

You forgot the coffee stains on his armor!

That will be in version 2.0