Industrial Rendering

commander riker

I'm working on an industrial rendering. These are metal parts in a box with white foam spacers. I'm using 3ds Max and just starting to figure out Mental Ray. I have 4 Kicker spots focused on the box as well as a Key spot with a shadow map. The Key spot excludes the environment because it is too harsh and white out my floor. The Kicker lights do affects the floor however and I have an omni that only affects the floor. The floor has a diamond treadplate bump that I made in illustrator. I'm using mostly the Arch&Design material for Mental Ray. I'm considering getting rid of the omni. I want the floor to look more reflective.

I need some suggestions especially for texturing and lighting.

Here is my reference:




And here is a render:




Thanks ahead!

Mark Dygert

- The box, has zero flaps. If you have flaps show them. You can see that the box in the photo has flaps. I leave you to figure out what is defining them and how they are being presented.

- A cardboard box texture isn't one solid color. Take a look at the bottom part of the photo, you'll see lines. This comes from the way the box was constructed, two pieces of thin cardboard sandwiching a wavy layer. You can see the wavy layer on the open ends where the box has been cut. You should recreate the cut ends, and the wavy variation.

- I think the floor is kind of distracting, making it darker might help. It's stealing focus from the focal point, in a bad way.

- I didn't know that was diamond plating until I read it. I think the box should cast a shadow on the floor. Remember you can have a light set to cast a shadow, but not illuminate the surface. Without a shadow the box is floating and it looks fake.

- The lights effecting the floor don't appear to be casting shadows which is killing the bump effect.

commander riker

Thanks for the crits.

I added some bump and spec to the box and worked with the floor and lighting a bit. I think the treadplate had too many lights from too many angles to show enough contrast on the bump. I also added a spec map and raised the bump levels on the treadplate.



Still a WIP. Its a little dark but I've taken off some of the lights for now. The box is going to be semitransparent for viewing purposes from other angles.

I'm not so sure Arch&Design is the best texture for the metal parts in this case. Any ideas?

Not so excited about the harshness of the RayTraced Shadows...But the shadow map will not render correctly around the edges even with a bias of 0.0. Mental Ray Shadow Maps don't seem to useful at the moment.

I'm not sure how to show the corrugated ends. I'll have to make a map I guess.

Thanks again.

renderhjs

aside from the technical aspect the composition and theme couldb´t be any more boring imo.- so some more interesting placement of the objects, camera angle or perhaps object would improve alot already.

lighting: to grey shaded right now (dead and boring),- try using photometric lights with Kelvin based color settings, because even the photo has some yellow/ornage alike light color on the box surface.

materials:
perhaps some specular maps on the riffles of the box might give it a more plastic look

Mark Dygert

Looking a lot better already.
If you're after softer shadows, go back to shadow map and adjust the sample range not the bias. The bias just moves the shadow around. Sample range blurs the edge making it softer. Area shadows will also give you a softer shadow and they dissipate the farther away they get. You'll never be able to get a soft shadow edge with Ray Trace, unless you switch it to Advanced Ray Trace, then it just eats up render time.

Don't fall into the trap of Arch/Design and Ray Tracing are newer so they are the best. They are newer because they fills unique rolls, that doesn't mean they are to be used for everything.

I'm not sure I would jump to using the Arch/Design material for this project unless you have a specific need to use it. I think you could get by perfectly well with the standard material type maybe switch it to Phong or Metal for some bits.

The floor needs reflection. The Arch/Design material makes this kind of complicated, but for the standard material just drop either "Ray Trace" or "reflect/refract" into the reflection slot. Or fake it with specularity.

You might also want to play around with Global Illumination. I personally like to fake this with a light dome or a sky light, because it gives me faster results which means I can make more changes and tweaks.

commander riker

My latest render is below.

renderhjs-

Unfortunately I am doing this for a client and thus do not have any say over the placement of anything inside the box. I have limited control over camera angles as well.

I'll give photometrics a try. The box is double-think corrugated cardboard so I'm trying to avoid it looking like plastic.

Thanks for the crits.

Vig-

I put a red arrow in my latest render. This is what I hasd mentioned about a Bias of 0.0 earlier. I get these light edges where there should be shadow when I use a Shadow Map. The geometry is all connected and I have turned of all of the other lights (in another render not posted) and the glow remains. Is there another setting that would adjust this? I created the box by shelling a Poly and collapsing the stack. I then chamfered the edges but they are all connected.

Okay. I am now using a standard for the Treadplate. Still messing with the Raytrace in the Reflection Map.

I took down some of my spots and attempted some GI in this latest render its taking 50 minutes to render this at this point.

Thanks again.

I circled an area that seems like a rendering error. There's one on the bottom too. What is this?

commander riker

Worked a bit on the box. It has 3 layers of corrugation.

Reference:





Render:





Detail:

Adam Curtis

The seams running down the side's of the box does not line up with the corrigation on the top.

I hope the client is paying well, this must be mega boring to work on :P