Material Rendering tutorial

X-Convict

Not quite sure where to post this, figured it fits under pimping/previews better than anywhere else.

So due to the number of people interested in my rendering setup for my High Poly models I decided to just sit down and make a tutorial for it. I don't have much time so forgive me if there's not a pic for every step.

Hope this helps out those interested in presenting your models! Feel free to post any questions/comments/concerns or if you have trouble getting the result you can post your result.

Thanks!

Material Rendering Tutorial

Saidin311

Dunno where it should go but the tut is pimped out. Thanks man! I've been trying to recreate it based on some of the steps you've posted on. Been working on a big HP model I want to present nicely and this will do perfectly!

JohnnySix

One minor detail - just from the offset - is the black text on a medium to dark grey background.

I had to turn off CSS to read it - other than that - great stuff - will be trying it out soon.

Junkie_XL

You rendering thru the spotlight view? Where is your camera in relation to the spot?

Congrats on your new job.

Lee3dee

bookmarked thankyou

Microneezia

i quickly tried it out. Im not versed in rendering so at first my skylight "render" options panel was grey'd out, I was unable to follow the tutorial further until I figured out I had to be in Scanline not Mental ray... Your tutorial reads well and I was able to set everything up until that... maybe i missed the part where you specified the renderer? why is mental ray unable to have the render settings? something to do with raytracing?

Tumerboy

Lee3dee wrote: »

bookmarked thankyou

QFT!

sampson

thanks i've been looking for a one-render way of doing this

Ancient-Pig

Nice tut!

bounchfx

thanks, seems useful!

X-Convict

Thanks for the positive feedback guys!

-Changed the background color to be lighter, hopefully this will be easier on everyone's eyes!
-Updated to include using the default scanline renderer

Junkie_XL: Thanks! The spotlight is coming from above and to the right of the model, to the right and above the camera as well.

Microneezia: Yes I am using the Default Scanline renderer in Max. If you set that as your renderer and go back through the tutorial you should be fine. Thanks for the feedback!

Kovac

Totally gonna give this ago, thanks x!

sampson

just wondering - aren't skylights useless unless u turn light tracer on?

Bronco

excellent Artem, gonna give this ago right now, since ive got some old HP stuff I wanna render out for folio and not make it look shit .

John

X-Convict

Kovac - NP

sampson - Light tracer gives you a lot more GI options, but the skylight can be used without it on.

Haha, hope it helps John - post your stuff when you get it rendered out!

Havok

Wow, this is great. I have been looking for a good render setup and I think I found it!!! Thanks a lot dude. Here is my result:

EDIT: Yeah, apparently skylight just brightens up the scene entirely. When I deleted the skylight, the entire scene became a tad darker, which looks great aswell. Also without the skylight it renders a lot faster. By the way, I tried it on a low poly model to see how it looked. I like it a lot:

Oops, I forgot to set the skylight multiplier to 0.4, that's why it's so bright.

Bronco

Let me re-itterate....me likes this tutorial...alot!

heres my effort on one of my old HP peices.






Regards,

John

Medestruit

It's a pretty good setup, and if you mess with it some more you can get really nice results. I used a similar setup, but I like your intense glossiness. Before I was using a spec level around 60 and a glossiness of 10 or so. I tuned those to your levels without doing the ray trace material with my 2 point omni setup and it really gave some interesting effects. I use 1 orange tinted light, and 1 green tinted light(you can do this with blue and red also). Nice of someone to do a step by step with pictures on this though =]

Mark Dygert

Say that's nice! For a little boost you can do a second path, apply the MR AO material and overlay that onto your original render. You don't want to over do it, but some subtle AO adds a little extra awesome.

Racer445

Finally tried it out and with an orange rimlight it looks pretty sick imo

00Zero

couple of questions, i did the tutorial. got nice results.

but do we render with scanline or with mentaray render? i tried both, scanline looked better.

also, we have to enable light tracer, no?

Medestruit

Scanline.

oobersli

use scanline and don't use light tracer. just plain simple skylight.

c0ldhands

Banging my head for a maya translation...

MoP

Why use a skylight but no light tracer? Surely it'd be faster just to crank up the ambient light in the Environment properties... that has the same results.

Or did you forget to mention to turn the Light Tracer on in the Advanced Lighting settings? You won't get fancy GI shadows from the Skylight without turning that on, I'm pretty sure...

Nice tutorial anyway, I'm sure loads of people will suddenly start updating their portfolios with models rendered in this style, heheh

Tumerboy

you get decent shadows from a skylight even without Light Tracer.



That was following the tutorial pretty closely. I just adjusted the light colors a little. (dimmer skylight, brighter spot.)

00Zero

yo tumer, are you using a catmull rom filter? looks kinda blurry. nice model though

Tumerboy

You're a Catmull Rom Filter!

oops! nope, forgot to put that on. Trying a new render w/it. I'll post in a few.

X-Convict

Havok, John, Racer, Tumerboy: Really good work guys! Thanks for posting, I'm really happy to see the material help bring out your hard work!

Vig: Yep, good idea! There's plenty of tweaks you can do to this process to help push the end result. Like I said this is a basic setup of the material and rendering steps so take it for what it's worth, and I definitely encourage everyone to take their own direction with it and make your own unique setups.

MoP: You can definitely get very similar results with the rendering setup in different ways, but the main idea I was pushing with this tutorial is the Material I created and how it helps highlight details. As I said above it's the basic setup for the renders and definitely tweak the settings and render setup to push what you like for the end result.

Thanks again for all the positive feedback guys and for posting your work!

Wiktor

Great tutorial!
Crossing my fingers there'll be a maya version some time soon.

Junkie_XL

Tumerboy

here's w/catmull. . . I can't really tell the difference, maybe someone else can?

Ajax

Good stuff man, bookmarked

Mark Dygert

Nick, the difference is that catmull blurs and sharpens and area just blurs. To really compare, render them both out and flip back and forth in photoshop.

bounchfx

yeah there's definitely a difference, even more noticeable thanks to vig pointing out what it actually does!

Tumerboy

Ya, to really see it I had to re-render it again with area (it was a different angle, and the model had been updated since that first render)

Anyway, here's the difference:

vend3r

Does anyone know how to achieve this effect in maya?

pior

Here is something else one can do on top.

-Grab the 3DSMax 'normalmap maker' shader from Ben Cloward's folio (or setup a scene with the RGB normalmap lights)
-Apply to the highpoly model
-Make a animation>preview of this (renders the viewport to a file) at full res
-Take that "normalmap" in crazybump or xnormal, convert it to AO
-Overlay that on top of the render.

BAM, instand dark pits and bright peaks on the render. It looks great, kindof like the recent Appleseed and Vexile movies. Will post examples later!

gamedev

Someone wanna write a quick maxsript that does all this mat setup and applies it to a selected mesh?

Tumerboy

lol why? "All This Mat Setup" takes about 30 seconds.

00Zero

lol, do it once and save it. way faster than writing a script for it. well...depends...

whats_true

It's one click less to do that's why!

patient09

need a little help if anyone has a moment.

i'm coming from a maya/modo background so i'm a little lost.

i'm ok with each step and can set up the scene. my only problem is with the material (it might be a maya/max lingo thing). am i making the changes to a single standard material ball?

4) Click on your first material and select Standard
5) Go back up one level and select your Second material
6) Go back up to the base level of the material

i can tell this is noob question while i'm typing this.

any help is appreciated.

HellMark

This tutorial is all kinds of awesome. Thanks. Played with the light color a bit.

Luke_Starkie

This is brilliant!
Thanks you !

Tumerboy

patient
You're doing all of this on 1 ball. At the root of your ball, you switch the setting to "Shellac"

Once you set that, you'll see under "Shellac Basic Properties" that there are 2 NEW material slots, "Base material" and "Shellac Material" However, those are both still contained within the original material on a single ball.

X-Convict

Patient - As Tumerboy said you need to set your material as a "Shellac" to blend the two together. Just click on any material ball in the material editor, hit the "Standard" button and in the pop up box just click "Shellac" - when it asks you to keep your existing material I usually just discard anything I have there. Once that is set up, make sure your blend mode is set or don't forget to set it after you're done setting up your materials. Both materials that are created by shellac are standard materials, for my material setup I hit standard on both and set them to "Raytrace"

Hope that helps!

I'm glad this has received such a positive response, it makes me want to do some of the others I've had planned for a while.

onionhead_o

X-Convict: thanks for sharing such a wonderful tutorial. it was very helpful.

Super

Someone do a Maya version and I'll love you longtime.

patient09

success! definite potential for some slick renders with these settings.

Tumerboy: thanks for taking the time and lending a hand.

X-Convict: thanks for sharing the tut and following up.

i'll give it a go on a few hi poly scenes and see what happens.

BradMyers82

Just figured I would post my results after trying a render X-Convict style. I'm really pleased with the turn out, your the man X-Convict!