3d rendering- Phoenix Arizona
I have a formula for a good 3d rendering. I use it over and over. After a while, I start to wonder, should I be experimenting more? I am a firm believer of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. At the same time with all the new technology, should I be trying new settings or new materials, lighting etc.
Here’s a little bit of background on my soup Du jour, Right now I am working with the new 3dsmax 2009 coupled with V-ray 1.50 SP2. Compositing is done with Adobe Photoshop CS3 extended. My hardware is new also. I purchased the Alienware M15x with 4g ram and the Intel Core2 Extreme x9000 and the NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX. I will get into that bad boy a little later.
It’s good to have a template scene set up in 3dsmax. In my template named templatesun.max, I have a camera, a sun and compass and one ground asphalt plane. I also have my environment and V-ray setting up. Basically, I import the 3d geometry into the scene and pull my camera, sun and ground plane over to my model. This way, if I need to import more geometry, I can bring it into the scene and it will be in the proper x,y and z coordinates.
I find the most important element to be your V-ray materials library. If you are starting a materials library, check out http://www.vray-materials.de/ . This site has some really great materials that are free. Just make sure you have the proper plug-ins and the materials you select are in the correct max version. You may also have to check the paths on the maps. I haven’t gotten one yet that I didn’t have to change the paths.
I have a library called, you guessed it, Vraymaterials.mat. I keep getting this request from clients. Can I have your model, which would include materials. Anyone who spends an inordinately amount of time in Max and Vray knows that materials are top secret entities. Hours go into creating a good material, so next time people, just don’t ask 🙂
My basic materials are, asphalt, stucco, concrete walk, concrete curb, dg (or decomposed granite for those of you not from Arizona or Nevada), grass, glass, stone, roof tile and metal. I can basically drag and drop, do a little color adjust and voila, the rendering is ready….. If only it were that simple. But if you are doing a lot of renderings, this makes it pretty easy to keep your renderings consistent and shorten you time on the project.
Our website is: http://www.endisine3d.com
3D Architectural Illustration 