Final Project: 3D Max using VRAY

Final Rendering of Interior View in Perspective edited with Photoshop to appear to be in the city


Top View in Perspective

Final Rendering of Side Perspective

Chrome tutorial reflecing a environment map




Tutorial results of metal reflections


Experimenting and barely adding furniture



Modeling in the program from 4 different views


Before VRay lights and VRay materials had been added

Light from the right overexposed with material overwrite of clay

Black wall due to overlap of planes and confusion on program part of which to render so it's an inconsistency

Light settings from the chair tutorial

1 light from the right and some play on materials

1st light shown and experimenting with frosted red glass

2nd light added as shown with blue.

Lighting testing changed and play on materials

Perspective View with lighting

Materials changed to render quicker and for aestetics




Top View in Perspective with over exposed lighting from above.


VRay light that is darker and not as exposed as the previous one.
Top View in Perspective

How It Came About...

This project began roughly two to three weeks ago when I decided based off my last ideas of wanting to render a room and wanting to build on my knowledge of 3D visualizations. I felt it was an important aspect to explore as most things are going from pencil and paper to the laptop and programs. The programs while some may decrease the amount of time, that's not the reason I chose to use them. Quiet frankly, I think it took more time than doing by hand just because of the lack of skills in using the programs, but the results are uncomparable. Not only can you get several shots and several of a room that looks photographic but it can be changed by simply adding and changing components such as lights to change the whole of a room which by hand would be unconceivable to show that many views. The program is simply amazing in how it works because if you want to learn the functions it's a lot of trial and error but the user interface is relatively simple and looks very much like Autodesk Viz. The reason for not using Viz is it falls right behind this program because it's renders are still downsized by it's lack of realism. The only real downside to the program is that of two which are both related: the amount of time for renders and that it can be expected for the program to crash often, so much so you'll spend about 1/8 of the time restarting the program than actually working. Keeping that in mind, as I said the project came about roughly 3 weeks ago when I explained to my professor, David Morris, what I wanted to do and he helped point in the right direction to this program. In regards to learning the program tutorials were very helpful (listed below) and basically I'm self taught, but professor Morris was very helpful in showing me further tips and tricks. If you want to learn the program it's a lot of give and take as I've come to realize in using different tutorials in that the 3D Viz community is very interactive and while it can intimdating if you don't get everything at first it helps a lot to have someone who some idea of it. Regardless of that, if you start off with basic tutorials you start to get the hang of it and a lot of is repetitious especially if you do it 3 times over due to the computer crashing. A tip for that is to change the save mode to do it manually otherwise the program does it for you and will crash about every 5 minutes or preset time of save.

Tips for getting started:

-Have enough memory on your hard drive. I had a limited amount and it slowed the program a lot as well as crashed a lot too. Have at least 25% of your drive clear.

-Don't run other programs at the same time due to it makes the program run slower. If you're watching tutorials stop and play them to go step by step but use another computer.

-You will need a mouse with a wheel in the middle.

-A desktop may be better to use simply becuase laptops in general have slightly more sensitivity issues and thus may be more prone to crashing.

-Change the render settings to low to allow quicker renders and then change to a higher setting for the final. In the tutorial at the bottom it shows you how to change the test settings.

-Don't render the whole scene if you don't have to but changefrom ta view scene to select to pick just what you need to render to save time.

-Finally, have another project at hand because each full render even on low settings will take roughly anywhere from 7 to 15 minutes depending on how many VRay lights you have.

The Approach

Having just a crude background with Viz I chose to do several tutorials to prep me to learn a few features of the program and play with the materials. What makes VRay so unique is the that the materials rendered can produce quality work with the proper lighting similar to photographs. The links for a very basic approach with results within a few hours is shown below. Needless to say when I started to see results it was graditifing becuase I made that and it actually looks like something. Tutorials listed in below.

After completing the tutorials I began to think about how I would go about planning my room. I wanted a medium size bedroom/ living space with a reflective surface to make the room appear larger than it actually was and play with lights. I added planes and box shapes to model the walls and floor. I added a window to allow light to shine in and downloaded free furniture from the site below.

I downloaded in zip files the furniture then after unzipping merged them into the current view where they were scaled down to fit the scene. They merge large so you have to scale them down or it throws everything off. After the furniture was added I started experimenting with lights. The lights I added were Omni since I thought that was what I was supposed to use as I was used to Viz but in fact for everything from this point on had to be VRay including the lights and materials. If you search for VRay material settings and click on the link below and register you have almost unlimited materials being constantly added. It's like the Napster of the VRay materials, a little give and take in feedback and uploading and borrowing files but it's a community and not illegal. They are made by users of the program that are willing to share given you input feedback which takes two seconds, believe me it's worth it. The lights in fact I had to add were VRAY lights. Following the tutorial for the chair as shown below I used those settings but really for this scene it depends on each person and what they're using it for. It's a lot of trial and error. I added 4 lights, 3 exterior and 1 interior all of different colors-blue,red, yellow, and green interior. I changed the materials I downloaded. The way you go about that is to save and unzip the file and then bring up the material settings by pressing m. Click on the first icon with an arrow pointing towards the circle and click on Library and then open and upload your material. Simply drag it to the balls and rename. It's as simple as that. I have several materials in the scene from several different websites and from the tutorials including-chrome, black leather, brick, glass reflective, plastic, cloth, and frosted glass. I wanted to take advantage of the colors in the scene to bounce around the light. Each time as shown in the above pictures were a change in the lighting and materials and of course trial and errors. I also started experimenting with the different lighting and furniture arrangments as well as the views. Slowly the project has evolved with the different lights and knowledge development and research. I'm very satisfied with the results for being a first time I'm glad with the results with being able to see the process and have a final product show worthy for portfolio. Not to mention I have a better understanding of the program that I can use for future projects and a better understanding of the need for programs in the field of architecture. It's an invaluable tool that I can use in my future career and with the knowledge I got from it I can continue to learn programs similar and evolve with the field and not be crippled to simply knowing one type of craft of pen and paper but rather be dynamic to the field and have other possibilies inconceivable before. The final renders are shown above.

Tutorials are as follows:

VRAY tutorials:

http://vray.info/

http://www.vrayelite.com/mytutorials.php
http://freecg.blogspot.com/search/label/vray%20tutorials?max-results=20
http://tirad.com/tutorials/max.htm

http://www.evermotion.org/(talking (talking videos)

http://216.109.125.130/search/cache?p=video+tutorials+vray&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&x=wrt&u=www.vray.info/links.asp&w=video+tutorials+tutorial+vray&d=a0WVZvmdOtnd&icp=1&.intl=us

VRAY Light Setting and Low Settings:

http://cg-india.com/Tutorials/V-Ray/3dsMax_tutorial_SL_01.html (look at page 2 and 3)

VRAY materials: http://www.vray-materials.de/all_materials.php (must register but is free)

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150R1/

http://www.evermotion.org/index.php?unfold=download&showdownload=yes
http://www.mr-cad.com/Free-3D-Models-c-19-1.html (free furniture furniture)

3d MAX NURBS

Real Picture of a Spider Web


Rendered Image of a Spider Web

Preperation to make above rendering

The program used to make the above rendering was 3D Max with a VRAY rendering plug-in. Nurbs were used in the form of point line in which 3 clicks were made to ensure that the line would be concave instead of convex. The outline was made and the form closed. The form was then duplicated several times and scaled down to the make the layers. The forms wholistically were modified and using the U Loft tool each layer was selected. The form was created and a smooth surface applied. Two modifiers were added, latice to make the web-like structured surface with the connections removed and the thickness and number of faces changed. The second modifier added was shell to give very slight thickness to the form. The VRAY renderer was chosen and the materials were changed following the Advanced Material website tutorial listed below to create a Chrome reflective surface. A bitmap was added to the background to reflect on the web. The ideal shot for the web was zoomed in to create the appearance of looking through the web to the background. The image was sent to be rendered and then saved as a .jpg.

I chose to do a web mainly because after sitting through class the u loft tool peeked my interest the most as opposed to the rail functions because personally I feel the rail function is too predictable and limiting. The U-Loft function is a little bit more unpredictable and you can work with several layers at once instead of one or two as in rails. Also, I like webs. I wanted to see what kind of a form I could create and and was inspired to design a web to model how the material can work as well as playing with light. I chose to use 3D MAX and VRAy instead of Viz because it's part of my final project and the more practice I can get the better. Also, personally I think VRAy renders more realistically than the video game style appearance of Viz. The only downside I can say is that the program crashes a lot and if you don't set the right angles the image will look unrealistic. Overall, I'm satisfied with the project, if I had more time I'd like to tweek it further, but for now I'll continue to work on my final project which is coming along and is still a work in progress.

The link for the tutorial on how to change the materials settings is:
http://alzhem.brinkster.net/sub1/tutorials/tutorial6_en.htm

TED Talks

TED Talks are different lectures from inventors, architects, engineers, basically the innovators of tomorrow that are trying to get out their ideas and inform the world through these lectures to help educate them and disprove preconceived notions about architecture, health, and world economy to name a few. I chose to watch two different lectures. The first being by Cameron Sinclair who's main message was about open-source architecture to house the world. He was an architect in his twenties that basically started off with 700 dollars and a couple of laptops and a website. He basically started to research and ask network with architects, engineers, designers, anyone that wanted to help and was interested in designing not just for the sake of designing but to add to a community and environment not take or ruin it. He believes much so in sustainable architecture and no -quick fix solutions or superimposed design upon other cultures but rather respects the land and people enough to be able to design where necessary but involve the people and culture. He does so not only out of respect but also to engage the community since their ones that live there. He wants to open source architecture because the people living in the area know best about the problems there so the designer and people should have a say so since they would know more than he would. There are some quick fix solutions in time of natural disaster but need to be open sourced to allow for testing and make sure they do work and not for profit. The same goes for the projects in the third world countries where education and knowledge was needed more so than the building and structure itself. In combination with building and working with the communities the two merged as in the case where a community center was a vehicle for HIV education and a clinic. One person alone can't change the world and one person saying something isn't going to get anything done but it's a matter of going out there and making those connections to help build the world and the community. It's not about building a gem of an architectural building but another piece of society and culture. It's about the opportunity not responsibility as Sinclair said to be able to help put forth the effort to help others and make a difference. It's not just about architects or design but holistically whoever wants to help should be able to and make a change not wait for change to happen because who knows when that would be. It was a very inspiring talk and absolutely amazing in thinking it changes how you perceive things and makes me want to push myself to study harder and think not just about myself but society and the world around me.

The second TED Talk I watched was by Hans Rosling in which he debunks third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen. His talk basically was about the lack of education in society even in the most academically inclined individuals they were compared to having a knowledge of the statistics of the world to those of chimpanzees. The statistics aren't just facts and his talk wasn't just throwing out statistics one after another to flaunt education but rather to show the need to know those statistics to further society as a whole, income, death rate, and in those statistics knowledge can be found of the basic way the world works around us from those aspects. The talk shows many statistics ranging from income to birth rate to population and it shows the evolution of in the past big families high death and low wealth but in today's world it's shifting to have the gap of wealth slowly close and middle class rise, funds being used properly for education and health which leads to higher rates of living longer. These stastistics have endless possibilities because they can be used to project how the world will be later in life and help us prepare and evolve to build for them, economically, and grow with them. The only downside really as mentioned in the talk was the lack of getting those statistics out but it's our job to find them and not shy away from them because they are facts and will affect us tomorrow because we're apart of it as your ancestors were and your future loved ones will be.

Below are the links for the talks:
Open Source Architecture
http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=c_sinclair

Debunk third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92

Update on Projects

Currently, I am working on two assignments in preparation of the ending of my first year here at Texas A and M university but also closure to my ENDS 170 class. I am focusing on my final project which I am currently trying to download the programs and shortly after that will begin working on the project through use of tutorials which I will be posting later with screen shots to show development as well as the final project. For the time being though I am working on a different project using the program Revit and learning from it using a tutorial. That project is due Thursday and I am roughly half way done so I want to finish that one as soon as possible and start to turn my focus to my final. The Revit tutorial is going really good right now as it's very easy to understand and follow. I'm learning a lot and could see myself using that program again. It is really interesting and user friendly and what's more is I don't see any programming involved, which is always of course a plus for me! I'll be posting screen shots in my next blog of the total process of the tutorial from screen shots on my computer. I'm saving them in a word document to transfer to jpg's for the blog of the tutorial. Next blog I'll post all them and give another update on how things are coming along.

Final Project

My final project is going to be a rendering using Autodesk Viz with an installation of V Ray which is a program that makes 3-d realistic models on the computer. I don't believe it uses programming as far as I'm concerned which is great, but I have roughly 3 weeks to complete the project. I'm going to watch tutorials and begin working on a project while still continuing side projects and assignments assigned throughout these last few weeks. I'll post more later as my project develops, but I do want to do an interior perhaps living room or bedroom would be an interesting take. To be continued... --Erica Salinas

Gravity Study using Macromedia Flash Professional 8

Before Gravity





After Gravity













Printscreen of Macromedia Flash

I decided to give programming another try since my freshman high school days when I first learned Java and was it an eye opener trying to remember what I had learned. I did remember how fustrating it can be to program because honestly unless you can think like a programmer step-by-step multi-tasking several thoughts to stream it into simple commands, you may not like it.

I first started to download the Processing Beta program but for those of you that want to, don't because it is a corrupt file and will freeze your computer for several minutes and still will not load correctly.


I then researched the programming behing Google Sketchup who's programming console is called Ruby. Ruby is located under the tab window as the last button. I searched for tutorials but as many as you would think would show up not as many were because most people didn't know there was programming even available to use and bundled up in the program. Inclusive of the program are plug-ins and different coding for different functions. I tried programming it a couple of times and I was unsuccessful in many attempts since I wasn't used it and quiet frankly it seemed to be easier to just do it using drawing instead of specifing line by line and so forth.
Sketchup though, is a great program and for someone knowledgeable of how to program it is very simple to use but personally I didn't care much for it. As far as tutorials go, simply click on the Help button and type in your search where you can find basic tutorials on how Ruby works.


Here are a couple of tutorials if you are interested in learning Ruby:
"Programming Ruby" online at http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/
The "Ruby user's guide" online at http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/UsersGuide/rg/
"Introduction to Ruby" online at http://www.ruby-doc.org/docs/Tutorial/
"Learn to Program - A Tutorial for the Future Programmer" on line at http://hellotree.gotdns.com/LearnToProgram/

I then turned my attentention to Macromedia flash and searched for tutorials. The tutorials I found to be most interesting were those of how gravity worked because from understanding the basic concepts behind how the program works it can be translated for use in video games as many tutorials based on that showed up. I started with a circle and drew it in the stage area where I modified it to become a symbol and later an action clip with a designated name. I then added the code under the layer of that circle and changed the components of the gravity and acceleration in order to regulate how fast and slow and how far the circle would fall. The program script had a built in way of controlling the circle by using the arrow keys to make it shift left and right. The reason for experimenting with the code is because really the only way you're going to learn is from trial and error and experience. Honestly, you can read a thousand tutorials but it's not until you start to try and work it out for yourself that you start to get a better understanding of it. You could change the up and down motion based on the principles of math and acceleration in relation to gravity. At the same time the more you changed the variables they were affected to the background coordinates or plane of x and y axis which would cause the ball to speed up or slow down in certain areas as well as speed up to the point of flashing as is shown in the second picture above where the green ball goes missing. In fact it is not missing but is caught in motion flashing. If you didn't put constraints on the balls they would simply run off the page and start over again in a loop. The little creature icon with a smiley faced nicknamed Skeeter was a face that was based directly on the principles of gravity and slid down slowly leaving behind his standing face. Skeeter and each of the balls were on different layers were the code was added. The program when executed showed the balls and skeeter in motion. Using the side left and right toolbars the balls would move accordingly but still up and down.


Using the program, animation could be done but buttons and non-moving objects could be made as well using the basic paint tools. The main thing is designating each object in motion to declare it's name for use in it's program under it's layer.

Tutorials in both programs were helpful as were the help toolbars, but in regards to programming it is not something you can learn overnight or even over a series of years because as you start to grasp the concept another program is created and yours has already become obsolete. The basic ideas are there which can be used later and the mindset discussed earlier is what will make you a programmer. It is based on experience and learning and reading others codes and practicing with much trial and error. Personally, I do not care for programming many the mindset of breaking down things, perhaps I overanalyze and I know for sure I overthink things sometimes to the point of overcomplicating things that are basic, but I do have a great respect for those that do program. Most of the world we function in is based on programs everything from handheld devices such as Gameboys to computers to television channels. It is how the world is organized of one event affecting another to cause an effect.

Here are a couple of websites I used to find tutorials:
http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorials/Flash/Games/1

These are the two tutorials used from the website above to cross refernce the code including the help feature from the Macromedia Flash program.
Gravity in Games http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Create-Gravity-in-Games/22963
Steering a Falling Ball http://www.tutorialized.com/tutorial/Steer-A-Falling-Ball/22810