3ds Max SkyBox

I have created a geosphere with a texture of space, made the material force 2-sided render, so that if inside the object the texture shows up.  Other wise it will just be black.

Below is the work space.  The perspective camera showing how it looks inside the geosphere.  The light create is an omni light, with it's decay type set as inverse square, this because it mirrors a realistic representation of the why the natural world's light acts.

Here is the final outcome of the texture being added to the geosphere.  The starts show up, but everything looks a bit flat without another object in the scene...


















The stars are quite hard to make out, but they are there, the lights needs more strength to it.  Having the TIE there helps show a bit of depth to the scene now

The project window shows the stars better, but at a lower quality (helps working in the program stay smooth by rendering a draft quality texture).

References:

Autodesk Knowledge Network, 2014. INTENSITY/COLOR/ATTENUATION ROLLOUT (STANDARD LIGHTS). [online] Available at: <https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-7C6D57E1-CE52-4806-BF11-5C9E88758F9E-htm.html> [Accessed 5 December 2015]

X-Wing Explosion

To create the X-Wing blowing up, I have used the meshbomb (Explained in a previous post).  To make the motion of the X-Wing's parts look more convincing I have also enabled motion blur on the camera in the render setup.  I have done this because the parts will be moving fast, and naturally things when moving quickly blur, rather than stay sharp.

I have increased the shutter duration so that the parts blur a bit more when moving, to simulate faster motion.

Looking at the youtube video, I learned that one can insert fire, which I have done, into a mesh bomb.  This helps gives a more realistic explosion, although, how would a space ship explode in space...? 

I set the gravity of my explosion to zero, so that after the explosion is detonated the objects will move in the direction of the force, otherwise it would imply that there is gravity, and we know that there is not in space




References:

c123hris CG and Photography Channel, 2009. 3ds Max Explosion Tutorial (without plugin). [video online] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRyFJ9kK1ko> [Accessed 10 December 2015]

Work Flow

The way I have been working might not be the same as other people's on the course.

What I have been doing is:

- Model work in 3ds Max
      - Render animation as an image sequence/still
              - Render animation as an image sequence/still with ambient occlusion (if necessary)
 - Import image sequence/still into After Effects
       - Edit compositions
               - Export from After Effects
 - Import in all After Effects exports to Premiere Pro to collate for final animation
       - Export final animation

A quick point on the exporting process, when I'm exporting from After Effects, I am using the Quicktime so that I can use the animation codec, as I am working with image sequences and images. It will help keep the quality up.  When I come to export the final animation from Premiere I will export a .AVI which we have to provide, and a Quicktime .MOV so that I can upload one to Youtube.

The only thing I think might degrade quality is changing from the .MOV codec to .AVI when exporting from Premiere.  I think (hope) it will negligible.

Explosion Test

A quick explosion animation!

This was a quick process using 2 objects and a link, done.

The 2 objects in the scene are, the sphere, and the meshbomb.  Found in Create>SpaceWarps>Geometric/Deformable - Bomb.  I had to link the two together, but not with the normal link tool, instead I had to use the 'Bind to Space Warp' tool.  As soon as I had done that, the timeline contained the animation.

It was a really simple technique and will come in very handy for my final animation, when I need to blow up the X-Wing.

It is worth noting, that wherever the bomb is in relation to your object, the forces are based on physics so that it has a realistic motion, so if I were to put the bomb inside the sphere it would explode outwards, as such:

Ambient Occulsion

So it turns out, when I made my first animation using ambient occlusion, it wasn't correct, I have since done it properly!

I have used ambient occlusion as it gives a music greater depth to objects, and makes them look more 3d to stop them looking so flat.

The first thing I had to do was make sure that the light accepts/creates shadows, but change the shadow map to the mental ray shadow map.  Change the map size up, to 2048, sample range to 1, and samples to 24.  The map size is how accurate the shadows will be, the higher the value the more time it will take to process.  The sample range controls how soft the shadows will be, the higher the value the softer they will become.  Finally, samples is the amount of samples removed from a shadow, this makes the shadow deeper, and softer.


I had to make a mental ray ambient occlusion texture, changing from standard to mental ray, and then an ambient occlusion material.  Once I had done that I then needed to change the surface





















The surfaces values then needed to be changed, samples to 128, more samples creates a smoother shadow.  Spread to 1.0, spread is like a cone object the object, values ranging between 0.0 and 1.0, 0.0 pointing in a single direction, and 1.0 effectively being open to the whole object, this generates the size of the shadow.  Max distance set to 20.0, this is the distance that the shadow is generated to.

Here is the render setup, now that I have created my ambient occlusion texture, I need to change the Material Override so that the ambient material I have created is put across all objects in the scene, as I have many different materials, this would be the same as changing every material but is much quicker.

Firstly I have to enable the material override, and then drag and drop the material onto the Material: box, this bring up a window asking for an instance, or a copy, I made an instance as when I tried copy it wanted to make another material.  This seemed unnecessary.

























The last thing I needed to do was to change the renderer.

Initially it is set to Filter > Type: Gauss, but in this instance I changed to Mitchell.   This is because after some research Mitchell gives the best overall results.

I changed the minimum samples to 4, and the maximum to 20, this improves the quality of the render without the big increase on rendering time as it does when changing the Quality.


























The final outcome!

This is the view of the TIE cockpit from the pilot.

References:

Devead. U, 2014. Three Ways to Generate Ambient Occlusion in 3ds Max. [online] Available at: <http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/three-ways-to-generate-ambient-occlusion-in-3ds-max--cms-21612> [Accessed 02 December 2015]

Knowledge.Autodesk, 2014. Mental Ray Shadow Map Rollout. [online] Available at: <https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-14B352AE-FBF2-416F-8170-93DACE23E4DF-htm.html> [Accessed on 03 December 2015]

Docs.Autodesk, 2014. Occlusion. [online] Available at: <http://docs.autodesk.com/MENTALRAY/2015/ENU/mental-ray-help//files/shaders/reference/occlusion.html> [Accessed 03 December 2015]

Knowledge.Autodesk, 2014. Sample Quality Rollout (Mental Ray Renderer) [online] Available at: <https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-DBFFF24F-5419-492B-8889-24E546029279-htm.html> [Accessed 03 December 2015]

Mental Ray Error

I have this message appear each time I render, I'm using Mental Ray:

After digging and looking around it turns out that you are supposed to render the glow effect using the Scanline renderer, it even says that you shouldn't use Mental Ray in the Autodesk help:

"Warning: This effect is not supported by the mental ray renderer"

Even though it says this, I have rendered images with the glow effect, using the mental ray renderer...but then again, that might have been why I've had some issues with it.


Autodesk, N.D. Glow Lens Effect. [online] Available at: <http://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2016/ENU//?guid=GUID-06811A64-CB89-4C0E-B217-0FA0A119F791> [Accessed 06 December 2015]

Shot 1 Test

Here is a brief video test I created today, there is audio too!

Using After Effects I took 2 rendered frames from 3ds Max, layered them

I need to render out the console again, without the glass panel, as it isn't transparent when it comes to layering in After Effects, then I could also lay a video on it, to simulate an altimeter.

I used a point of view shot, to give the audience an idea what it would look like in a TIE cockpit, but also so they can empathize with the character.  Also POV shots tend to be aligned with the protagonist of the story, so subtly foreshadowing that the TIE pilot will survive.