nwiz24
14-06-2006, 10:40 PM
<P>Well people, here it is ... my project that was dragged for months is finally complete! <IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>Actually, my pal vivek ( vivudude ) gave me that 'push' to finish it at any cost! followed by my other pal atul ( aadravid ) who joined the bandwagon, hehehehe...<IMG src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0"><BR></P>
<P>both of them already know how lazy i am when it comes to finishing projects like these, most of my other works are all incomplete! ... so i thought, come what may, i must finish this ... <IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P align=center><strong>.....The Final Image....</strong></P>
<P align=left><IMG src="http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/4707/3dsmax8fordfocusconcept2zj.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P align=center><strong>.....The Wireframes.....</strong></P>
<P align=left><IMG src="http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/4130/wirescreenshot3as.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P><BR>Heres the overview of my work ... <IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P><BR>[ please don't fall asleep ]<IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P><BR><strong><EM>>> The What ...</EM></strong></P>
<P>Ford focus WRC concept, not much of a high tech design, but, i added a few extras here and there to make more appealing. I had to gather a couple of reference photos to see what it actually looks like in reality, the blueprint is kind of an old one, but that helped a lot to get the basic design. </P>
<P>The new 2004 model looks real cool, so i had to make this one a combination of both the old and the new...followed by the crazy color strips...which of course is certainly not there on any of the models till date...</P>
<P>reason ... </P>
<P>i wanted to make this model look absolutely different from the rest.</P>
<P><BR><strong><EM>>> The How ...</EM> </strong></P>
<P align=center><strong>< Modeling ></strong></P>
<P>It took at least 8 - 14 months to finish this model, mainly due to my laziness... plus, at one point i completely stopped everything, so after a gap of 4 months, i continued with the modeling process again...<IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>I used subdivision polymodeling ... no nurbs at all! ... <IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>lots of edge extrusions, chamfering, outlining, insets, subdividing etc ... </P>
<P>It was tough, but worth the effort! i was really scared when it came to detaching the different parts of the car, i had to maintain the design 'flow' , i didn't want any blocky sections.</P>
<P>As you can see at the bottom of the pic, the polygon count is a freaked out 2236691 !<BR>My graphic card took a good beating when it came to 505 objects, which is mainly because of the tyres; the nuts, bolts, caliper, disk brakes ( too bad they are not seen much )</P>
<P>The main shell cover of the car has a meshsmooth iteration of 3 ! <IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>There were a lot of problems during the modeling process, once the objects started to increase, so did the polygon count, then memory, then viewport display was slowing down, which of course my graphic card wouldnt be able to handle it all, so there was one life saving option... select the group of components that had a higher polygon count and check mark the<BR>[ display as box ] option in the properties dialog...</P>
<P>I also started to 'categorize' the objects using layers ... this helped a great deal while modeling, i can hide completed components whenever i wanted to thereby saving a lot of memory while working on the new sections of the car.... very cool indeed! its just like using layers in photoshop and illustrator ... <BR>you can see the screenshot below :</P>
<P> </P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/layersscreenshot.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P align=center><strong>< Materials ></strong></P>
<P>The materials used here comprise of standard max shaders and mental ray.<BR>for the outer shell of the model, rubber parts, tyres etc. standard shaders were used, but, for the glass objects like headlights, bulb, rearlights etc. mental ray glass physics phen was used.<BR>As for the texturing, which is obviously the trickiest, painstaking task of all... i used good ol' texporter! very helpful plugin for max!</P>
<P>Now to mask all the decals ( sponsors, numbers, paint strips etc. ) i had to use the blend material. The map channel option was used extensively as well! <BR>Below is a link giving a full description of how to use the blend material and channels to the maximum level! <BR>A plus, even the modeling process is shown here... a Nissan R390 GT ... </P>
<P><A href="http://www.enriconencini.com/tutorials.htm" target="_blank">http://www.enriconencini.com/tutorials.htm</A></P>
<P>very informative, but take time to understand it carefully, its worth it!<BR>Another addition to the group is the ' composite map ' ... this too is equally important ... </P>
<P>> i'll update this post soon once i find the link...<IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"><BR></P><strong></strong>
<P align=center><strong>< lighting ></strong></P>
<P>The lighting setup used in this project is slightly different :</P>
<P>> Skylight : this light provided the overall Gi</P>
<P>> Free Area light : i specifically used 2 of these lights for ' speculars ' on the model with the diffuse option turned off, this helps when you only want to show that gloss or shine and you don't want the colours to be affected, in other words, washed out!<BR>You will have to play around with the multiplier to check up on the gloss intensity, so... test renderings galore!<BR>I even excluded the ground plane from illumination and shadow casting, plus i turned off cast shadows for headlights, bulbs and rearlights in the properties dialog.</P>
<P><BR>> Lightplanes : these planes were used for the additional illumination and most importantly, reflections. <BR>For this the glow lume shader fit the bill!</P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/glowlumeshaderscreenshot.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P>Since these planes illuminated the scene in a specific way, placing them is something to think about as well, its all hit and trial, you can get lots of results as far as reflection and illumination is concerned.</P>
<P><BR><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/lightingsetupscreenshot.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P><BR>A third lightplane was placed on top of the car as well, again, just for the reflections.</P>
<P><BR>Another tip, in case you don't want these planes to be visible while rendering, but at the same time, you want to show them in reflections, turn off ' visible to camera ' and keep ' visible to reflection/refraction ' on. <BR>Also, turn off ' receive shadows ' if u plan to keep them visible to camera but, don't want other objects to cast shadows on them.</P>
<P align=center><BR><strong>< Rendering ></strong></P>
<P>All of you know, i'm a crazy person when it comes to mental ray! <IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"> love the renderer to the core! maxwell comes a close second!, then V - ray ... <BR>actually, this is just my personal opinion, in the end it all depends on how well you manipulate the renderer to the fullest.<IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>As for the rendering of all the scenes, it was a major disaster! it took at least a week to finish it off! <IMG src="http://www.cgtantra.com/forum/smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0"><BR>Since my graphic card konked out... i had to bring my work to the institute and render the images...not to mention regular power cuts from 3:00pm - 6:00pm. But, somehow i managed ... correct me if i'm wrong, but, i think its best to collapse the entire modifier stack to improve rendering speed...</P>
<P><BR>At 800 x 480 for each of the views, it took 4 - 6 hrs ... even more, depending on the camera angle and the materials used.</P>
<P>Also, without the settings for BSP, Map manager and memory limit , max would shut down immediately after hitting the render button! thanks to the high polygon count!</P>
<P>These options were very new to me in the initial stage, so i had to look it up in the reference file to see how i can render scenes with high polygon count.</P>
<P>Check out the list of options below with their description, these were taken from the max reference file :</P>
<P><strong>> BSP method :</strong> </P>
<P>Size?Sets the maximum number of faces (triangles) in the leaf of a BSP tree. Increasing the Size value reduces memory consumption but increases rendering time. Default=10. </P>
<P>Depth?Sets the maximum number of levels in the BSP tree. Increasing the Depth value reduces rendering time, but increases memory consumption and preprocessing time. Default=40. </P>
<P>Tip: For large scenes, increasing the Depth value to 50 or more can greatly improve rendering time. </P>
<P><strong>> BSP method, raytrace acceleration :</strong><BR>The mental ray renderer provides three different ray-tracing methods of accelerating the process of ray tracing. The methods are: </P>
<P>BSP (Binary Space Partitioning). This method (the default) performs best for most purposes. </P>
<P>Grid. This method can perform better on multiprocessor systems. </P>
<P>Large BSP. This method can perform better with large scenes and with distributed bucket rendering. </P>
<P><strong>> Memory Limit :</strong> [ for this option click the processing tab, you will find it under the translator options rollout ]<BR>The mental ray renderer keeps a count of the memory it uses at render time. If it reaches the memory limit and Use Placeholder Objects is on, the geometry for some objects will be discarded in order to allocate memory for other objects. If Use Placeholder Objects is off, or if after deleting geometry more memory is still needed, the renderer releases texture-map memory as well. Default=1024 MB. </P>
<P>For the final rendering, i had to crank it up to maximum value : 3072 MB</P>
<P><strong>> Map Manager :</strong> [ for this option click the processing tab, you will find it under the translator options rollout ]<BR>When on, maps are read from the disk and if necessary, translated to a format that the mental ray renderer can read. When off, maps are accessed directly from memory, and translation is unnecessary. Default=off. </P>
<P>Following is a complete list of differences between turning this option on and off: </P>
<P>[ When on: ]</P>
<P>mental ray reads textures directly from disk (mental ray is able to flush textures out of memory when memory is low). Also, textures are loaded only if needed. </P>
<P>mental ray uses its built-in pyramid filtering system. These pyramid lookup tables can be flushed out of memory when memory is low. </P>
<P>Texture formats not supported directly by mental ray are read by 3ds Max and sent, before rendering begins, as binary data to mental ray. </P>
<P>[ When off: ]</P>
<P>3ds Max reads the textures from disk, and then sends individual pixel colors to mental ray as they are needed. </P>
<P>Note: 3ds Max reads the textures from disk and keeps them stored in memory between renders. This can make renders faster, because the bitmaps don?t need to be reloaded every time. 3ds Max will not read the texture from disk if it was already loaded previously (for example, in a previous render, for a Material Editor preview, or for displaying the map in a viewport). </P>
<P>Rendering uses a pyramid filter shader that is identical to the standard 3ds Max pyramid filter system. </P>
<P>Turning this option on is useful for large scenes that take a lot of memory to render. Turning it off is quicker, because textures already loaded in memory don?t have to be reloaded by mental ray. But turning it off might use more memory and doesn?t allow for flushing when memory is low, unless you use the 3ds Max bitmap pager.</P>
<P><BR>Well, this is the technical side to it. Below you can check out the settings that i have used for rendering the final image, which will further explain the increase in rendering time :</P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/renderingsetupscreenshotA.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/renderingsetupscreenshotB.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/renderingsetupscreenshotC.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P><strong><EM>>> The end ...</EM></strong> </P>
<P>Even after experimenting with the settings, still the rendering would take very long. Which left me no other alternative but to render the entire scene in 'regions'</P>
<P><IMG src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>Yup! region rendering it is! </P>
<P>dividing the scene into 2 parts or 2 regions ... i finally got the rendering started!</P>
<P>Thats that!<IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>The rest was the assembly of all the images and few corrections in photoshop...</P>
<P><BR>phew!!</P>
<P><BR>I hope i provided you all with the necessary information... It was both fun and frustrating at the same time...but, worth it all the way!</P>
<P>Till then,</P>
<P><EM><FONT size=5>Cheers!!<IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"></FONT></EM><BR></P><edited><editID>nwiz24</editID><editDate>38882.5351157407</editDate></edited>
<P>Actually, my pal vivek ( vivudude ) gave me that 'push' to finish it at any cost! followed by my other pal atul ( aadravid ) who joined the bandwagon, hehehehe...<IMG src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0"><BR></P>
<P>both of them already know how lazy i am when it comes to finishing projects like these, most of my other works are all incomplete! ... so i thought, come what may, i must finish this ... <IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P align=center><strong>.....The Final Image....</strong></P>
<P align=left><IMG src="http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/4707/3dsmax8fordfocusconcept2zj.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P align=center><strong>.....The Wireframes.....</strong></P>
<P align=left><IMG src="http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/4130/wirescreenshot3as.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P><BR>Heres the overview of my work ... <IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P><BR>[ please don't fall asleep ]<IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P><BR><strong><EM>>> The What ...</EM></strong></P>
<P>Ford focus WRC concept, not much of a high tech design, but, i added a few extras here and there to make more appealing. I had to gather a couple of reference photos to see what it actually looks like in reality, the blueprint is kind of an old one, but that helped a lot to get the basic design. </P>
<P>The new 2004 model looks real cool, so i had to make this one a combination of both the old and the new...followed by the crazy color strips...which of course is certainly not there on any of the models till date...</P>
<P>reason ... </P>
<P>i wanted to make this model look absolutely different from the rest.</P>
<P><BR><strong><EM>>> The How ...</EM> </strong></P>
<P align=center><strong>< Modeling ></strong></P>
<P>It took at least 8 - 14 months to finish this model, mainly due to my laziness... plus, at one point i completely stopped everything, so after a gap of 4 months, i continued with the modeling process again...<IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>I used subdivision polymodeling ... no nurbs at all! ... <IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>lots of edge extrusions, chamfering, outlining, insets, subdividing etc ... </P>
<P>It was tough, but worth the effort! i was really scared when it came to detaching the different parts of the car, i had to maintain the design 'flow' , i didn't want any blocky sections.</P>
<P>As you can see at the bottom of the pic, the polygon count is a freaked out 2236691 !<BR>My graphic card took a good beating when it came to 505 objects, which is mainly because of the tyres; the nuts, bolts, caliper, disk brakes ( too bad they are not seen much )</P>
<P>The main shell cover of the car has a meshsmooth iteration of 3 ! <IMG src="smileys/smiley5.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>There were a lot of problems during the modeling process, once the objects started to increase, so did the polygon count, then memory, then viewport display was slowing down, which of course my graphic card wouldnt be able to handle it all, so there was one life saving option... select the group of components that had a higher polygon count and check mark the<BR>[ display as box ] option in the properties dialog...</P>
<P>I also started to 'categorize' the objects using layers ... this helped a great deal while modeling, i can hide completed components whenever i wanted to thereby saving a lot of memory while working on the new sections of the car.... very cool indeed! its just like using layers in photoshop and illustrator ... <BR>you can see the screenshot below :</P>
<P> </P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/layersscreenshot.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P align=center><strong>< Materials ></strong></P>
<P>The materials used here comprise of standard max shaders and mental ray.<BR>for the outer shell of the model, rubber parts, tyres etc. standard shaders were used, but, for the glass objects like headlights, bulb, rearlights etc. mental ray glass physics phen was used.<BR>As for the texturing, which is obviously the trickiest, painstaking task of all... i used good ol' texporter! very helpful plugin for max!</P>
<P>Now to mask all the decals ( sponsors, numbers, paint strips etc. ) i had to use the blend material. The map channel option was used extensively as well! <BR>Below is a link giving a full description of how to use the blend material and channels to the maximum level! <BR>A plus, even the modeling process is shown here... a Nissan R390 GT ... </P>
<P><A href="http://www.enriconencini.com/tutorials.htm" target="_blank">http://www.enriconencini.com/tutorials.htm</A></P>
<P>very informative, but take time to understand it carefully, its worth it!<BR>Another addition to the group is the ' composite map ' ... this too is equally important ... </P>
<P>> i'll update this post soon once i find the link...<IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"><BR></P><strong></strong>
<P align=center><strong>< lighting ></strong></P>
<P>The lighting setup used in this project is slightly different :</P>
<P>> Skylight : this light provided the overall Gi</P>
<P>> Free Area light : i specifically used 2 of these lights for ' speculars ' on the model with the diffuse option turned off, this helps when you only want to show that gloss or shine and you don't want the colours to be affected, in other words, washed out!<BR>You will have to play around with the multiplier to check up on the gloss intensity, so... test renderings galore!<BR>I even excluded the ground plane from illumination and shadow casting, plus i turned off cast shadows for headlights, bulbs and rearlights in the properties dialog.</P>
<P><BR>> Lightplanes : these planes were used for the additional illumination and most importantly, reflections. <BR>For this the glow lume shader fit the bill!</P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/glowlumeshaderscreenshot.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P>Since these planes illuminated the scene in a specific way, placing them is something to think about as well, its all hit and trial, you can get lots of results as far as reflection and illumination is concerned.</P>
<P><BR><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/lightingsetupscreenshot.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P><BR>A third lightplane was placed on top of the car as well, again, just for the reflections.</P>
<P><BR>Another tip, in case you don't want these planes to be visible while rendering, but at the same time, you want to show them in reflections, turn off ' visible to camera ' and keep ' visible to reflection/refraction ' on. <BR>Also, turn off ' receive shadows ' if u plan to keep them visible to camera but, don't want other objects to cast shadows on them.</P>
<P align=center><BR><strong>< Rendering ></strong></P>
<P>All of you know, i'm a crazy person when it comes to mental ray! <IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"> love the renderer to the core! maxwell comes a close second!, then V - ray ... <BR>actually, this is just my personal opinion, in the end it all depends on how well you manipulate the renderer to the fullest.<IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>As for the rendering of all the scenes, it was a major disaster! it took at least a week to finish it off! <IMG src="http://www.cgtantra.com/forum/smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0"><BR>Since my graphic card konked out... i had to bring my work to the institute and render the images...not to mention regular power cuts from 3:00pm - 6:00pm. But, somehow i managed ... correct me if i'm wrong, but, i think its best to collapse the entire modifier stack to improve rendering speed...</P>
<P><BR>At 800 x 480 for each of the views, it took 4 - 6 hrs ... even more, depending on the camera angle and the materials used.</P>
<P>Also, without the settings for BSP, Map manager and memory limit , max would shut down immediately after hitting the render button! thanks to the high polygon count!</P>
<P>These options were very new to me in the initial stage, so i had to look it up in the reference file to see how i can render scenes with high polygon count.</P>
<P>Check out the list of options below with their description, these were taken from the max reference file :</P>
<P><strong>> BSP method :</strong> </P>
<P>Size?Sets the maximum number of faces (triangles) in the leaf of a BSP tree. Increasing the Size value reduces memory consumption but increases rendering time. Default=10. </P>
<P>Depth?Sets the maximum number of levels in the BSP tree. Increasing the Depth value reduces rendering time, but increases memory consumption and preprocessing time. Default=40. </P>
<P>Tip: For large scenes, increasing the Depth value to 50 or more can greatly improve rendering time. </P>
<P><strong>> BSP method, raytrace acceleration :</strong><BR>The mental ray renderer provides three different ray-tracing methods of accelerating the process of ray tracing. The methods are: </P>
<P>BSP (Binary Space Partitioning). This method (the default) performs best for most purposes. </P>
<P>Grid. This method can perform better on multiprocessor systems. </P>
<P>Large BSP. This method can perform better with large scenes and with distributed bucket rendering. </P>
<P><strong>> Memory Limit :</strong> [ for this option click the processing tab, you will find it under the translator options rollout ]<BR>The mental ray renderer keeps a count of the memory it uses at render time. If it reaches the memory limit and Use Placeholder Objects is on, the geometry for some objects will be discarded in order to allocate memory for other objects. If Use Placeholder Objects is off, or if after deleting geometry more memory is still needed, the renderer releases texture-map memory as well. Default=1024 MB. </P>
<P>For the final rendering, i had to crank it up to maximum value : 3072 MB</P>
<P><strong>> Map Manager :</strong> [ for this option click the processing tab, you will find it under the translator options rollout ]<BR>When on, maps are read from the disk and if necessary, translated to a format that the mental ray renderer can read. When off, maps are accessed directly from memory, and translation is unnecessary. Default=off. </P>
<P>Following is a complete list of differences between turning this option on and off: </P>
<P>[ When on: ]</P>
<P>mental ray reads textures directly from disk (mental ray is able to flush textures out of memory when memory is low). Also, textures are loaded only if needed. </P>
<P>mental ray uses its built-in pyramid filtering system. These pyramid lookup tables can be flushed out of memory when memory is low. </P>
<P>Texture formats not supported directly by mental ray are read by 3ds Max and sent, before rendering begins, as binary data to mental ray. </P>
<P>[ When off: ]</P>
<P>3ds Max reads the textures from disk, and then sends individual pixel colors to mental ray as they are needed. </P>
<P>Note: 3ds Max reads the textures from disk and keeps them stored in memory between renders. This can make renders faster, because the bitmaps don?t need to be reloaded every time. 3ds Max will not read the texture from disk if it was already loaded previously (for example, in a previous render, for a Material Editor preview, or for displaying the map in a viewport). </P>
<P>Rendering uses a pyramid filter shader that is identical to the standard 3ds Max pyramid filter system. </P>
<P>Turning this option on is useful for large scenes that take a lot of memory to render. Turning it off is quicker, because textures already loaded in memory don?t have to be reloaded by mental ray. But turning it off might use more memory and doesn?t allow for flushing when memory is low, unless you use the 3ds Max bitmap pager.</P>
<P><BR>Well, this is the technical side to it. Below you can check out the settings that i have used for rendering the final image, which will further explain the increase in rendering time :</P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/renderingsetupscreenshotA.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/renderingsetupscreenshotB.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P><IMG src="http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e265/nwiz24/renderingsetupscreenshotC.jpg" border="0"></P>
<P> </P>
<P><strong><EM>>> The end ...</EM></strong> </P>
<P>Even after experimenting with the settings, still the rendering would take very long. Which left me no other alternative but to render the entire scene in 'regions'</P>
<P><IMG src="smileys/smiley11.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>Yup! region rendering it is! </P>
<P>dividing the scene into 2 parts or 2 regions ... i finally got the rendering started!</P>
<P>Thats that!<IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley2.gif" border="0"></P>
<P>The rest was the assembly of all the images and few corrections in photoshop...</P>
<P><BR>phew!!</P>
<P><BR>I hope i provided you all with the necessary information... It was both fun and frustrating at the same time...but, worth it all the way!</P>
<P>Till then,</P>
<P><EM><FONT size=5>Cheers!!<IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"><IMG src="smileys/smiley17.gif" border="0"></FONT></EM><BR></P><edited><editID>nwiz24</editID><editDate>38882.5351157407</editDate></edited>