Maya Users

twocik23

twocik23

Veteran
Does anyone here know of any site that might have a tutorial on making a city come to life. What I mean by life is, texture, bump, lighting, etc.. I'm using maya 8.0 and can't seem to tackle how they do it exactly.


Or if someone here might have a scene I could check out ?? :laugh:
 
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Yes that kind of helped, but I'm still having trouble with it. Here's a quick sample of a room that I put together, the problem is everything is very hard/harsh looking.


1198035998.jpg







I want it to look more like this :laugh:



10.jpg
 
I actually own that video, still pretty harsh lighting. They didn't really go into detail on lighting, rendering, etc.. Now just a guess that the clip looks like its from 3D max or C4D. I know that Max & CD4 are more of a preset node system, but is there anything that I can do in Maya that might resemble this ?
 
You need to enable shadows in your light's attributes. Either depth map shadows or ray traced shadows. To simulate more realistic shadows and bounce light, you can use global illumination.
 
Try to render using Mental Ray(not Maya Software Render) with global illumination (and maybe, add some bump to textures, so it wouldn't look flat). It will looks more realistic, but takes a lot of time.
 
This was render in mental ray production motion draft. There's texture, but the bump isn't really high. I guess I could bring those up a little, and maybe not render it with a motion draft.

What I think I really need to learn is how and what every

Volumetric

Displacement

Env Textures

Other Textures

General Utilities

Color Utilities

Switch Utilities



Then not to mention the mental ray nodes, etc.. :)

I own the digital tutorials DVD set (older bundle), which in the set has a dvd that explains the hyper shade and it's uses. It doesn't really go into detail with the other, mainly just the surfaces and how they're used. I've got the modeling part done, I guess I need a DVD or tutorial on the other properties in the hyper shade, know of any ?





I own the
 
Wow, like my first impression of maya, it sounds complicated.
Someday I'll take another crack at it but in the meantime if I stumble across good maya tutes I'll give a shout back.
 
I've bought a bunch of dvds that helped, but maya is a massive program that has multiply screens/tabs/options that you can't put all in one training dvd set. It's a really complex program that seems to get a little easier as I go (well at least the molding part). I really wanted to switch programs, but thought about the money & time I spent on this that I'd try it for another year and see where I am. I never really buckled down on learning it, just kind of an inspired time to time modeler.


As for Vray isn't that a render plugin ?

If so how would that link us together for viewing purposes ? :)
 
basically yes, Vray is a seperate render plugin, it should be abvailable for Maya, I'm pretty sure of it!

as for the viewing purpose, (the K2K is a joke, it means Knowledge 2 Knowledge transfer) kinda like P2P, hence the name :)
 
Oh ha lol, jokes on me !! :)


Well I found a tut on how to fake global illumination a scene and it has helped dramatically. Now I need to figure out how to get my images to look more realistic instead of the distorted cartoon look. The models are pretty good (mainly my chair, haven't gotten around to the tables). I'll take a few pics of what I'm working on.
 
I think, lighting is very important, and understanding/learning to get the most out of your render is also important.

Also one thing that adds a lot to realism is scale, this sounds silly at first, but if things are modelled to the right scale, it affects two things:

(2) Light calculations are closer to real world, since objects have the same relative sizes to each other

(3) The correct sense of proportation

Of course you can break this rule when it comes to human faces and characters where you might want to make things bigger or "larger than life" for artistic reasons.

But yes, keep on playing around you will be surprised how you learn new stuff just by not "giving up"
 
What the best surface material to use that will replicate glass ? I've moved the transparency down, but it just looks like a see thru object not glass. Should I use something like a ramp and play with that?


Used a Phone E on the leather seat, looks pretty damn good. Now I need to figure out how to make an object look chrome and the glass thing.
 
twocik23 said:
What the best surface material to use that will replicate glass ? I've moved the transparency down, but it just looks like a see thru object not glass. Should I use something like a ramp and play with that?
Click to expand...


I think the Refraction Index is what you're looking for.

Glass is generally around 1.5 but I've seen it down to 1.3 for wavy glass.

Some values can be found here...
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Refraction+index

I'm going to put that link in the Links To 3D Sites sticky. That's handy info.

Also multiple specular settings can help but are less important than above.

//If you find the scene looks distorted, it's probably the camera lens. Try changing the lens settings.
I'm not sure if you're using a default or not.

//More on refraction:
A more complete list...
http://www.robinwood.com/Catalog/Technical/Gen3DTuts/Gen3DPages/RefractionIndexList.html

And I read for maya - you have to turn it on in your shader AND in the render globals.
 
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Here are a few SGs of my scene, still trying to figure out why I'm getting lines across some of my objects. Both rendered in mental ray at production quality, with the default light off and the ray tracing on.



Without chrome shader

SeatCushionwithLight3.jpg





These are the last two I fixed and rendered.

SeatCushionwithLight1.jpg



SeatCushionwithLight5.jpg
 
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Really improving.

The values are set in the refraction index in the shader properties from what I understand. Not having used maya, I can't point you to it directly.

The shadow under the table in the first shot looks a bit wierd. Maybe due to multiple light sources?
But there should be some blending if that's the case.
The second shot looks fine.
The third looks like there are no shadows on the chair and table. Maybe that was intentional.
 
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