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