Wednesday, May 2, 2007

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:
VRAY Light Setting and Low Settings:
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