Software:
3ds max 2019
The Lock/Bond Particle Flow test can be used to have particle movement restricted to a surface.
This example shows a simple setup in which the particle teapots have a Speed operator set to Random 3D mode that causes them to move in random directions,
While at the same time the Lock/Bond test forces them to ‘stick’ to the surface:
Software:
3ds max 2019
Iterating through a list of all of an object’s hierarchy or all of the objects in the scene is a very common requirement for scripted tools and utilities in 3D animation software.
Coming from a MaxScript background, I was used to just have to write the word ‘objects‘ to reference a list of all of the objects in the scene.
Unless I’m missing something obvious,
There isn’t a shortcut like this available in the 3ds max Python API.
In order to list all the objects in the scene you need to use a recursive function that will return a list of all of a node’s children, and children’s children, etc.
In the following example, the function ‘list_children()’ will return a list all of the objects in the supplied node’s hierarchy, and when given the scene’s root node via MaxPlus.Core.GetRootNode() it will return a list of all the objects in the scene.
Wrapping ‘list_children()’ within the ‘scene_objects()’ function, provides a convenient way get a list of all the objects in the scene just by calling ‘scene_objects()’.
def scene_objects():
def list_children(node):
list = []
for c in node.Children:
list.append(c)
list = list + list_children(c)
return list
return list_children(MaxPlus.Core.GetRootNode())
for o in scene_objects():
print o.Name
* note that when copying and pasting a script from this example, the indentation may not be pasted correctly.
Related:
Software:
3ds max 2019
This is an example of procedurally animating a mesh’s vertices via Python script.
Notes:
1. The model has to be converted to Editable Mesh before the script is run.
* unless the scrip will be extended to do it.
2. The model must be selected for the script to work.
import MaxPlus
import math
from MaxPlus import INode
from MaxPlus import TriObject
from MaxPlus import SelectionManager
from MaxPlus import Factory
from MaxPlus import Animation
from MaxPlus import Point3
from MaxPlus import Control
ticks_frame = 160
#Selection
sel = []
for n in SelectionManager.Nodes:
sel.append(n)
node = sel[0]
#Setup Controllers
obj = node.GetObject()
Tri = TriObject._CastFrom(obj)
mesh = Tri.GetMesh()
num_verts = mesh.GetNumVertices()
mesh_anim = obj.GetSubAnim(0)
pnt_ctrl = Factory.CreateDefaultMasterPointController()
node.AssignController(pnt_ctrl,1)
for i in range(num_verts):
bezp3 = Factory.CreateDefaultPoint3Controller()
bezp3.SetPoint3Value(mesh.GetVertex(i))
mesh_anim.AssignController(bezp3,i)
#Animation
Animation.SetAnimateButtonState(True)
for t in range(100):
time = t * ticks_frame
Animation.SetTime(time)
mesh_anim.AddNewKey(time,0)
for i in range(num_verts):
vert_anim = mesh_anim.GetSubAnim(i)
vert_ctrl = Control._CastFrom(vert_anim)
vert_val = mesh.GetVertex(i)
vert_val.SetZ(vert_val.GetZ() + math.sin(((Animation.GetTime()*0.5)/(ticks_frame))+i))
vert_ctrl.SetPoint3Value(vert_val)
Animation.SetAnimateButtonState(False)
* note that when copying and pasting a script from this example, the indentation may not be pasted correctly.
Software:
3ds Max 2019
from MaxPlus import ClassIds
from MaxPlus import Point3
import random
# Define Sphere geometry object:
sphere_obj = Factory.CreateGeomObject(ClassIds.Sphere)
sphere_obj.ParameterBlock.Radius.Value = 5
sphere_obj.ParameterBlock.Segs.Value = 64
# Create a list of 10 sphere instanced objects:
spheres = []
for i in range(10):
spheres.append(Factory.CreateNode(sphere_obj))
# Move spheres to random positions
for s in spheres:
s.SetLocalPosition(Point3( random.randint(-50,50),
random.randint(-50,50),
random.randint(-50,50)))
scale = 5.0 * (random.randint(30,100)/100.0)
s.SetLocalScale(Point3(scale,scale,scale))
* note that when copying and pasting a script from this example, the indentation may not be pasted correctly.
Software:
3ds max 2019 | V-Ray Next
I decided to do some test renders for an underwater swimming pool scene with 3ds max and V-Ray,
And happily found out that my initial geeky academic approach to the subject was actually outdated and unnecessary.
> look down at the bottom for the correct sample renders.
In this example there is a VRaySun & VRaySky for the daylight render setup and a Caustics calculation to create the light lensing effects on the under water surfaces.
The wrong way:
Having ancient habits in the subject,
I first flipped the water\air surface’s normals so they’ll point down into the water (towards the camera), And set the water material’s IOR to 0.75 ( 1 / 1.333 ) so instead of being an “air to water” material, it will become a “water to air” material.
This produced a non realistic result.
Viewed from underwater, the air surface should have a very dominant mirror reflection at most angles.
The Correct Way:
It seems that in V-Ray nothing special should be setup in terms of the water material.
You don’t have to create a special water-to-air material like I thought at first.
Its a regular water material, and the water surface is facing upwards like it should,
And when the camera is underwater it renders the water surface correctly as an air surface from withing the water.
The pool water material setup:
Note that Affect Shadows is turned off so the surface will generate caustics and not fake transparent shadows, and that Reflect on back side is turned on to produce more detailed reflections.
This produced the following result in which the reflection/refraction look correct but the water is still too simple:
Improved wave deformation for the water surface, added detail using a Noise bump in the water material and a sense of depth with Volumetric Fog:
Finally remembered to activate Reflect on back side at the water material to add more realistic reflection detail, some basic contrast in the V-Ray VFB,
And a shark because I couldn’t help it…. 😀
Related:
> Understanding Transparency Render Settings
> Island / Sea-shore tip
Software:
3ds max 2019
I’ve been operating 3ds max for 20 years and this always gets me by surprise again and again, especially when working with students 🙁
In the past, the option to hide/show the Transform Gizmo had a hot key X, and curiously, even though that way it would happen more frequently that the Gizmo would disappear by mistake, when it was X I actually remembered it, and remembered to tell my students to just press X.
The menu command:
VIews > Show Transform Gizmo
I never remember it,
And also, I can’t logically except that it’s a system setting that is kept even when resetting the scene or opening a new file.
Software:
3ds max 2019 | V-Ray Next
A quick test of V-Ray Next‘s PBR* workflow,
Namely designing materials while previewing them using V-Ray,
Defining the material properties using the new (to V-Ray) Metalness attribute, and using Roughness rather than Glossiness, shows good results IMO.
* It should be noted that although we got used to referring to the base-color / metallness / Specular material interface as “PBR”, it is actually a principled material interface developed by Disney animations studios.
Results are generally consistent through Blender & Cycles, Maya & Arnold, and UE4.
Related Posts:
Software:
3ds max 2019 | V-Ray Next | V-Ray next GPU
In V-Ray Next (4) for 3ds max, a new Metalness parameter has been added to the Reflect parameters of the VRayMtl material.
This allows for easy creation of realistic metal materials and also effectively enables a PBR workflow with V-Ray.
When the Metalness parameter is set to 1.0, the material becomes completely reflective, the Diffuse color controls the general reflection color, and the Reflect color (which should generally be set to white) controls the reflection color at grazing incidence angle.
The IOR parameter still controls how fast will the main reflection color (set by the Diffuse color) blend into the Reflection color, and I don’t know whether some form of complex Fresnel has been implemented or if it’s just a dielectric simple Fresnel blended over a reflective surface.
An excellent article on the new Feature from the Chaos Group blog:
https://www.chaosgroup.com/blog/understanding-metalness
Related:
Thinking we must “cheat” about the real-world lighting conditions of an architectural interior in order to render an aesthetically pleasing image of it is a common misconception in the field of Architectural Visualization.
I have been a professional in the field of digital 3D Visualization and Animation for the past 17 years, and the technologies we use to create synthetic imagery have developed dramatically during this period. The profession that is traditionally named “Computer Graphics”, can today rightfully be named “Virtual Photography”.
At the beginning of my career, photo-realistic rendering was impossible to perform on a reasonably priced desktop PC workstation. Today things are very different. In the early years, the process of digital 3D rendering produced images of a completely graphic nature. No one back than would mistake a synthetic 3D rendering for being a real-world photograph.
About 12 years ago, the development of desktop CPU performance and the advent of 3D rendering software that use Ray-Tracing* processes have made possible a revolution in the ability to render photo-realistic images on desktop PC’s. The term “photo-realistic” simply means that an uninformed viewer might mistake the synthetically generated image for a real-world photo, but it doesn’t mean the image is an accurate representation of the way a photograph of the subject would look if it were really existing in the world. For a computer generated image to faithfully represent how a real-world photo would look, it’s not enough for the rendering to be photo-realistic, it also needs to be physically correct and photo-metric.
“Physically correct” rendering means the rendered image was produced using an accurate virtual simulation of physical light behavior, and “Photo-Metric” rendering means that the virtual light sources in the 3D model have been defined using real-world physical units and and the rendered raw output is processed in a way that faithfully predicts the image that would result from a real-world camera exposure.
Most contemporary rendering software packages, have the features I described above, and therefore are capable of generating photo-realistic images that are also physically correct and photo-metric, and so faithfully predict how a real world photo of the architectural structure would look.
So what’s the problem?
The problem is that when we virtually simulate the optics of a scene using real world physical light intensities, we come across the challenges that exist in real world photography, mainly the challenge of contrast management, or in more geeky terms, handling the huge dynamic range of real-world physical lighting, simply put, we encounter the common photography artifacts like unpleasing “blown out” or “burnt” highlights, light fixtures and windows.
Trying to solve the problem by lowering the camera exposure simply reveals more details in bright areas at the expense of darkening the more important areas of the image. traditional photo editing manipulations don’t do the trick, they might serve as a blunt instrument to darken areas of the image selectively but the result looks unnatural and fake and the traditional approach in interior rendering is to simply give up the realism of the visualization by drastically reducing the intensities of visible light sources and adding invisible light sources, a solution that might produce an aesthetic image but not one that faithfully reflects how a real photograph of the place would look and can be said to be physically correct.
Fortunately today we have tools and processes, that allow for a much more effective development of physically accurate renders, somewhat similar in approach technologies incorporated into professional digital photography. these techniques involve processing the rendered images using specialized file formats that contain a very high degree of color accuracy and can store the full dynamic range of the “virtual photograph”, a process called “Tone mapping” designed to display an image in a way that mimics the the way are eyes naturally see the world, optically simulated lens effects that mimic the way a real lens woulds react to contrast and high intensities of light.
Incorporating this workflow requires taking a completely different approach to creating and processing 3D rendered images than the traditional methods used in the past decades. we give up some of the direct control we’re used to in computer graphics, but in return we are able to produce physically correct visualization that are both aesthetically pleasing and have a naturally feeling lighting.
In conclusion, with effective usage of today’s imaging technologies, it’s possible to produce 3D visualization that will serve both as a faithful representation of a possible real world photograph of the architectural design, thus aiding the creative design and planning process, and at the same time provide a photo-realistic basis for producing highly aesthetic marketing media.
Thank you for reading! I would love to hear your opinion, discuss the subjects in the article and answer any questions that you may have about it.
* “Ray-Tracing” is a process that simulates the physical behavior of light by tracing the directions it travels as it hits surfaces, reflects of them and refract though them. Ray-Tracing calculations are a key ingredient in photo-realistic rendering.
The author is Oded Erell, photo-realistic rendering specialist and instructor, the 3D visualizations displayed in this article have all been produced CG LION Studio.
Your’e welcome to visit our portfolio website and see more examples of our work.
Related Posts:
Software:
3ds max 2017
To move clear the material in multiple objects:
