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Showing posts from January, 2009

CG-Source.com - high quality textures and maxscripts

Thomas Suurland, better known as the guy who renderers über photo realistic cars ( http://www.suurland.com/ ), has launched a new site called cg-source.com . If you look at his car renderings at http://www.suurland.com/ , you can see that he definitely knows what he is doing when it comes to 3D and V-Ray. His new site sells high-res textures and he also has some great, free maxscripts. This image shows the process on how to use the FloorGenerator, MultiTexture Map, and a MultiTexture of floorboards to create a dynamic floor that can be any size, it will never tile and it can still be seen up close: An rendered example of the products in use:

Autodesk share price...a rant

I recently read an interesting article about Autodesk's plummeting share price at cgenie.com. The original article is here: ( http://www.cgenie.com/articles/95-autodesk-wheres-the-money-going.html ) The article points out some interesting things: in the 2007/8 fiscal year, Autodesk reaped $599 million in sales, yet a year on they have estimated a drop of $99-124 million. Autodesk have laid off 10% of their staff they have a plummeting share price they have lost their CEO to Yahoo So, essentially, things are not looking good for Autodesk. Somehow, though, I am not surprised. I'm fed up with Autodesk. I am tired of updates that are not worthwhile. The Autodesk Hype Machine promises the world, but rarely delivers on the promise. What's more, the support isn't great either. The thing that really fucked me off though was the early release of Max 2009, in February of 2008. The company I work for had just bought Max 2008, (It was after all, still the beginning of

How to create a mirror with 3ds max and V-Ray

Creating a mirror with 3ds Max and V-Ray In this tutorial we will create a simple, framed mirror with 3ds Max. We will then create the V-Ray materials for this mirror, and finally we will render out a simple 3d scene, showing reflections in the mirror. I am assuming that you have a basic knowledge of 3ds Max, so I won't explain absolutely everything, but it should still be easy enough for beginners to figure out what is going on in this tutorial. Step 1 Creating the mirror surface. Create a box in the front viewport that is approximately 70cm x 40cm x 0.4cm (Note, it doesn't have to be exactly this size and if you would prefer to work in inches or other units, that's also okay, I'm just used to working in cm.) Step 2 Create the actual V-Ray mirror material. Open up the material editor and change the first material in the material editor to a VrayMtl. Rename this material "mirror surface" and make it totally reflective, by making the reflect col

V-Ray render of the year......so far.......

This is one of the most impressive renders I've seen for a long time. It's done by a guy called Peter Guthrie ( link ) Apparently there are 20 000 clumps of grass and 1000 flowers in the scene! Uses VrayProxy and some sort of scattering...The good news is that he is going to make a tutorial on this ( link )

Puppetshop for free

You can now get Puppetshop for free here Puppetshop is a rigging and animating plugin for 3ds Max. You can use it for all kinds of characters with any amount of limbs: humans(bipeds), horses(quadrupeds) , spiders, etc.

Free Beer

you can get free 3d beer and other booze at http://www.digitalxmodels.com/

STOP

3D stop signs, rendered with V-Ray. Part of a campaign/appeal for everyone involved in Gaza to stop their shit. My wish for the region is that Israel, America and Palestine, stop the violence and think of a new way to resolve the situation. Of, course, I am idealistic to believe that that could ever happen, but then again, if it happened in South Africa, perhaps in can happen in the Middle East. You can get the 3ds max scene here if you like.

V-Ray Gallery

The V-Ray gallery is now open on the Chaosgroup website here Many unbelievably beautiful 3D renderings...

Rendering moving objects with V-Ray

Welcome to this tutorial on rendering moving objects with V-Ray. To complete this tutorial you will need 3DS Max with V-Ray 1.5 SP2 or newer, and a little patience! When rendering animations with V-Ray, there are two basic approaches: 1. Rendering an animation where something is moving, like a car, a character running, or as in my tutorial, the pages of a booking flipping. 2. Rendering an animation where only the camera is moving, like an architectural fly-through. (for a tutorial on this go here: http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/tutorials_imap2.htm ) We are animating something moving (book pages) in this tutorial. If you have ever had to animate the pages of a book turning, you will know that it's a real pain in the arse. Luckily I found this cool maxscript that does it for you , (Bookrigger V2.21 from http://www.ardakutlu.com/scripts.html ). Many thanks to Arda for the use of his script! Check out his other scripts, and if you find them useful, give him the respect and tha

Free advanced procedural maps for 3ds max

BerconMaps 1.2 Some Finnish guy Jerry Ylilammi has created a procedural maps plug-in for 3ds Max. You can get it at his site, along with some other cool things. : http://www.niksula.cs.hut.fi/~jylilamm/tools.shtml If you find the plugins useful, Why not give him props and donate some cash into his paypal account by the way, did you know that the word props comes from a song: Props , short for Propers : the entire word "propers" is used in the song "Respect", written by Otis Redding and most famously recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1967. ("all I'm askin' in return honey is to give me my propers when I get home") from http://www.urbandictionary.com

Free 3d car models

Chrysler is giving away some 3d car models here The cars available are: CHRYSLER: 2008 Sebring Convertible Limited JEEP: 2007 Wrangler Rubicon 4x4 two-door DODGE: 2008 Viper Coupe SRT10 Each data set includes 3D geometry, reference materials (photos, charts, graphics, etc.) HDRI domes, and photographic backplates for each vehicle, sheesh! Very cool of them to give this stuff away! Be warned though, it's a lot of data, like a couple of Gigabytes worth! Also, most of the meshes are in Maya format, so you will need to convert them in something like Okino PolyTrans if you want to use them in Max. here is a screenshot of one of the cars - i'll post up a render when I have time...

High quality 3d model site

There is a new resource for 3D furniture models on the web, it's called design connected . They are partners with chaosgroup (the makers of the V-Ray renderer), so you know these models are going to work well with V-Ray. The models are fully textured and are available in the following formats: sketchup, Autodesk 3ds max, obj, fbz and Abvent Artlantis. There is also a native file format, that works with their free download manager software, which enables you to drag and drop render-ready objects straight into your max scene - pretty sweet! To get the products though, you first have to load up your account with credits, it's a kind of pay-as-you-go system. the models seem to be of an extremely high quality (Currently offering 1603 models from 301 manufacturers and 557 designers), and they are organised according products/manufacturerer/designers/themes. They even have links to the official manufacturers of the real-life products. All in all the service looks very professional, ve

V-Ray help

If you've ever wondered where the V-Ray help files are, you can find them here: http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/ They are pretty darn thorough and include some useful tutorials.