[eric nixon]

Theyre not a problem anymore because MW3 seems to know how to compensate for the additive layers. However with transparent materials additive layers still appear to be generating noise, which makes sense really.

Effectively you can now make laquered opaque materials render brighter.

volumetric test, rough transparent particles, sl27... Motion blur, animated camera..

[prodviz]

Hi Eric,

really nice images.

Do you have a carpaint flake on the car?

cheers,

Steve

[eric nixon]

I used a normal map which was just pure noise, It seems to render better + quicker than using roughness on its own. There are no individual flakes, the effect is even across the surface.

I used 3 paint bsdfs, with the most sparkly bsdf, having roughness 3.

[prodviz]

Cool, cheers for the info.

Works really well.

[eric nixon]

Close up carpaint render, (simball lit with hdri - not the regular simball lighting)



It looks very metallic at this scale and on that shape, but on the car it looks right.

[hatts]

Yeah at that scale the flake is very weird. But you can tell that the saturation falloff is perfect.

[eric nixon]

Hi all/anyone, I was just thinking again about creating full-cg environments and stumbled upon this showreel when googling "digital set extension"

http://www.senatevfx.com/showreel/environment

I was thinking about a high-dynamic-range photomodelling workflow, to create distant environment elements (i.e. taking the 'comp' side of things; parallax 2d cutouts and low-poly models, but using HDR photomapped textures)

I want to bring that into the 3D scene, (into maxwell) to capture the real light in the scene upon moving subjects (some cars). So you get parallax in the reflections, not just reflecting a static infinite sphere as per normal hdri.

Actually just realizing the render speed may be too slow with so many emitters, I think it would need duplicate emitters (one sharp for ref, one blurred for gi) to speed it up.

Is this gonna work? Is it a naively impractical idea? Has it been done? Does it have a name? Paul Debevec did that cathedral animation using that principle, must be some more examples somewhere?

[photomg1]

Hi Eric,
take a look at this http://www.fxguide.com/fxguidetv/fxguid ... o-on-rise/ click watch on the video below.
There was also a lengthy discussion on how it was done with scott here http://community.thefoundry.co.uk/discu ... =4&t=80181 .
Dont laugh at me not understanding how it was done till the very end of that thread .
In the end I found the best way to visualise it in my own head was as a 3d transparency as in 35mm transparency film . So its all just back lit images in 3d. I thought the results were gobsmacking.

[eric nixon]

Thanks, was interesting to watch, and provides a fairly universal solution for set-recreation, but its still labour intensive though.. (17hour sittings?).

I Really like that mari soft brush for blending views into the uv'd textures, but like Scott I hate using UV's.
I would try to shoot orthogonal hdr and model the space, and map it orthogonally, but it all depends on the space and the use of the model, also agi-photoscan might help for detailed elements.

Also this hdr texturing approach only works for background stuff (ie. the surfaces cant recieve new light/shadow, they are baked) so the foreground of the set needs extra geo (with regular materials) that blends-in over the top.

[eric nixon]

This image has a spherical hdr mapped to the walls and roof, the texture on the floor got distorted, and a few other things are wrong. I want to try mapping flat HDR next to speed up the render (would require less polys to get clean mapping, therefore faster emitters)

No UVmapping used on this model and no changes required to render this MW2 file in MW3, thnx N.L. Awesome software...

ah just realised I should update the carpaint at least, to get better additive fresnel reflections.

EDIT; I deleted this image. I realised it had rendered in a slightly weird way, because of a slip-up I made with the emitter geo having duplicate faces, updated image below.

[Tea_Bag]

Wow Eric! Great Job all round!

[eric nixon]

Thanks, this model/rig has been revisited many times, it has evolved slowly.. mostly dynamic performance revisions and different body shells. But this is the final iteration, I think. Note that the texture mapping is quite random with only manual adjustments where it looked wrong, the texturing side of it was only about six hours work, because all the mxm's were presets or embedded combos of presets.

updated image; I think i overdid the paint , it looks kind of flourescent now, was too impatient to get the render going before bed.

[arkviz]

Hello guys,
my small problem with Maxwellrender is not the best shadow pass layer. What's wrong?

[Mihai]

You will have to use the knocked out shadow pass technique described in the docs (they are down at the moment but when they are back up, just search for shadow to bring up the shadow channel page). Basically it can't work otherwise in these cases because of how antialiasing works and it will be impossible to get a precise match, so you will have to do a "knocked out" shadow pass, as described in the docs page.

http://support.nextlimit.com/category/maxwell

[acrighton]

Arkviz,

A method to avoid the white outline you're getting is (1) In Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, combine the shadow channel output with the backplate image, with no alpha. Use the multiply option to combine both images. (2) Take the render channel output and create a transparent background using the alpha mask, leaving just the vehicle. (3) Now select the vehicle from this image and copy it as a new layer into the backplate+shadow image you just created. (4) Position the vehicle to match the backplate+shadow.

This method completely avoids the annoying white outline you're getting. This is the method I used to create the images of the BMW z8, here:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/forum/view ... 48&t=41701

Personally, I use Paint Shop Pro, but Photoshop will do the same job. I'm in process of writing a simple guide how to do this in Paint Shop Pro that I can email you if it's of any help.

PS. Nice model