It's all in the details

First off I can't believe it's been over a year since my last post. Since then I've changed jobs, moved house and now use Vray at work (which has taken some getting use), more on that in another post.

So to the purpose of this post. Well I was having a think about my job and how, with severe time restraints, we can get an image done to a high standard and on time. When I think back to when I first started working in 3d, I tried my best to make everything to the best of my ability. Things like clean meshes, nice textures all round, etc... Now I'm not saying just make shoddy models with horrible meshes, but sometimes you have to ask the question "do I really need to model this perfectly?" The thing is you can spend so long on parts of the image that just don't matter that you run out of time on the things that do.

If it's at the front of the shot or one of the main parts you are focusing on, then spend the time there, not on something that is almost out of shot. This goes the same with textures, if your not going to see the back of an object and its not going to be caught in a reflection etc... Then maybe just do the important parts and use the base colour for the back or sides.

Another thing I used to do (and I suppose still do to some extent) is try and get everything done in the render. What I mean by that is most of the time you can create a much better image using real photos of things such as plants/flowers, fabrics and such. Place something in the 3d scene as a place holder and also for things such as shadows (and possibly reflections) but hide from the camera (in object properties). Then place a real image over the top in Photoshop or something similar. Not only does it save you so much time and energy but it really does add the level of detail that helps sell the image. Just make sure you build up a large library of images and if you can, with varying lighting conditions to help you match the image your working in.

My next post will be on render elements and why if your not using them, then you really should!

Change Extrusion Direction of a Spline

So today I was working on quite a complex shape and decided it would be best to create this with a spline and then extrude it. So after spending close to an hour I finally created said spline and went to extrude it. To my horror it extruded along itself instead of from the center. Now after trying a couple of things with no joy I hit the web and came across this solution, and bugger me it works a treat:

"I found out another more silly solution to that problem. You could simply create a simple spline object like a circle or rectangle faced in the same direction as you original spline, convert this to an editable spline, attach the original spline you wanna extrude and then delete the simple spline obj. (circle/rectangle) in sub-object mode. then it should just extrude as expected. A kinda wicked way to solve this but sometime when I had complex splines I did it that way rather than redrawing the entire spline.Just my little trick, if it's not useful for you... never mind, forget about it.


Bye,
Leon"

So I thought I'd repost this in the hope that it helps someone else out, thank you Leon!

Check Your Default Settings

So you set everything up ready to render over the weekend (in my case multiple scenes using Backburner) and you head off home, happy in the knowledge that when you get back on Monday all is well and good! Well that was the plan and instead when I got in all I saw was lots errors instead of renders. The cause of the problem? Well it turned out that I had forgotten to change a small setting under the Edit Settings inside of the Backburner Queue Monitor. This setting was a time-out option set to 600 minutes, so as soon as 10 hours passed the render would cancel and start again. Frustrating considering the renders I had set up would take at least 20 hours each, so a default of 10 hours was not good. 

So I thought I'd write a small post to hopefully help / remind people to check all settings and especially the default ones, because you can be sure you'll forget at least one.

Quicker Test Renders with Mental Ray

So I thought I haven't posted in awhile so thought I'd best write something that has helped me save much time when carrying out test renders with Mental Ray.

If like me you do many test renders before doing your final render, you'll know how frustrating it can be wait for a test render to finish, only for it not to look like you hoped it would. So here are some tips to help you shade some time off those renders:

1) Size does matter, the larger you render the longer it will take. As a good rule of thumb, when you double the size, you quadruple the render time so what's the smallest size you can get away with.

2) If you do need to render out at a larger size, can you reduce the quality? This could be done either by lowering the quality of Final Gather or the amount of Photons shot into the scene as well as the Sampling Quality. So for example when I do a test render I normally drop the Samples per Pixel to 1/4 and 4 or 1 and 4, the Filter to Box and increase the Spatial Contrast to 0.09 on R, G, B and A (this makes Mental Ray more likely to use the Minimum Samples Per Pixel).

3) If your not making big changes, then save out the FG and GI maps and reuse them. You can also render out a smaller medium quality map and then use that for larger images. So for example save out the FG and/or GI maps at say 1000x1000 and then do your regular 2000x2000 render.

4) Talking of FG and GI, do you need the settings to be as high as they are for a test render, if not then lower them especially if your knocking down the Samples per Pixel.

5) If your materials are not important for your test renders, then use the Material Override function under the Processing tab and choose a nice simple material with very low gloss and reflectivity. Overly glossy and reflective materials can really slowdown the render process and can also be distracting whist sorting out the lighting of a set.

6) Also don't forget to use the Render Region or RAM Player options, great for comparing side by side previous renders and often overlooked.

Well I hope these ideas have helped a little and if anyone has anymore please let me know and I'll add them.

Thanks

Christmas Animation

Hi all,

Thought I'd quickly post up a link to an animated Christmas Card I did for my company. I did it in just over a week and spent most of the time getting the snow to fall how I wanted to.

Any ways I hope you like it and hope everyone has a great Christmas and prosperous New Year!!

Creating Holes While Keeping a Clean Mesh

Can't believe it's been over a month since my last post so thought I'd better put something up here. As I mentioned before I have been modelling some interesting props so thought I'd base a small tutorial on one of the aspects I come across multiple times, creating a hole within a mesh which is going to get a Turbosmooth modifier added so the need to keep the mesh clean is very important.

So we start off with a square box like this with 2 length and 2 width segments.

Next we add an Edit Poly modifier and select the center vertices in the middle (make sure you get both the top and bottom ones).

Then click on the Chamfer settings ensuring the Open Chamfer option is ticked and put in the value you wish to make the hole.

After this the mesh will be open on the sides of the hole so select the top 4 edges and shift click them down to create new faces and close the mesh.

If you now add the Turbosmooth modifier on and set iterations to 2 or 3 you can see the cut in the mesh which is nice and clean but the Turbosmooth has now smoothed the Box as well.

To get round this if you add another Edit Poly modifier before the Turbosmooth and chamfer the edges highlighted it will sharpen up the Box.

If you need the hole (in this case a circle) to be an exact size and perfect (the above will give a slightly square circle), then before you chamfer the edges and add the Turbosmooth modifier you need to make the below cuts in the mesh. I also use a circle with a step of 1. I then use this as the template where to move the newly cut vertices to (circle is scaled slightly smaller to show in illustration).

Now this technique can be used on a larger scale, multiple times and with different shapes as these below images of a drip grid show.

Helpful Bits and Bobs

So I have been modelling some interesting props at work, well interesting in the sense of the geometry and challenges they have presented to me, after all how interesting is a Coffee Maker or Toaster ;o) What got me thinking is that when I first started out, these kind of tasks massively intimidated me. Lots of curves with holes cut  into them, strange shaped parts, lots of components, basically many challenges. So I thought I'd share some general tips that will hopefully help you through these sorts of models. I also hope to do some more detailed examples in the near future.

1: When faced with what seems to be a daunting item to work on, stop, look at the item and you'll see it's made out of lots of parts, so instead of trying to build the whole model from one mesh, break it into it's component pieces. This not only helps you focus on small, manageable chunks but also allows you to keep your workspace fast and clean instead of a huge mesh.

2: This is linked to number 1 but again when I first start out I block out the model using basic primitives to the correct dimensions and then clone these to work on the detailed work.

3: When modelling try to work out how many segments you will need at the start especially for shapes like cylinders as this can be a pain adding more further down the process.

4: If you're modelling things that have symmetry then the Symmetry modifier is your friend and will save you plenty of time. Once your all done and are happy you can the collapse the stack (although only do this once your completely happy as this can't be undone).

5: If part of the model is at an awkward angle and extruding etc is a pain due to this, then do an instanced clone of this. Then rotate it so it's at a much more manageable angle, and work on this instead whilst the other model gets updated with your changes.

6: Keep the mesh as clean as possible (stick to quads) this way it'll cause you fewer problems, especially when making changes and using modifiers such as Turbosmooth. I also try to avoid using Boolean or ProBoolean unless I really need to and normally only at the end of the modelling process.

7: When I'm working on meshes that have lots of curves, I find that using a circle spline as a guide with a very low step interpolation (normally 1 or 2) to snap my extruded mesh to very helpful and allows you to keep the correct shape.

Hopefully these will help someone out and make modelling a little less stressful.