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For what it's worth here's the .mxm for what I've been using for most of my glass lately. It's basically just a revision of one of the standard metal materials but it's been working out pretty well and gives some nice reflections. I typically don't model interiors so there's no transparency to it. It's blue on account of the glass color that we did in our last project but of course you can change the color to whatever.
https://dl.getdropbox.com/u/384281/Glass%20Primary.mxm
-Brodie
When I'm figuring out what to show for context I also like to check out the area on maps.live.com. You can do a Bird's Eye view that will let you see the sides of buildings and stuff which comes in pretty handy. If I'm not sure about the terrain sometimes I'll go to google earth as well to see if it's pretty flat or if it's more hilly.
-Brodie
That is a tough one then. You might at least try an HDRI with clouds. There's one that comes with Maxwell that I really like, I think it's called radsky-017.hdr or something like that. Your camera looks like it's low enough that that might at least give you something to reflect. It's a pretty low res hdr though so it's usually fine for reflections but you can't use it as a background or it looks really pixelated - I just photoshop an image in later for that.
-Brodie
Looking very good so far! With all that glass you might think about using an HDR image for your reflections. Keep us posted on how it comes out.
-Brodie
ditto on what Remus said. The ATI card would probably be fine for everything except SU, where many many people have issues with them. 6Gb Ram is a good amount but you probably wouldn't be sorry if you bumped it up to 8, although that's something you could always do down the road.
Everything else looks high class to me.
-Brodie
Dittos Pixero! Good design doesn't mean that something just looks cool on day 1. It'd better come with a lifetime supply of canned air. Overall, A for aesthetics, D for design.
-Brodie
@notareal said:
@honoluludesktop said:
Keep in mind that this is a review of software that cost less then half of SU. While others would consider it, I do not think it elegant to spend more on render software, then the modeler.
That is a matter of taste... some sell raw diamonds, some cut diamonds and some ideally cut diamonds. "Same stuff" in different package, production cost do vary, so do render programs and the value they give to your work.
I think there is a flaw in your logic, sorry. If some render program do have a crucial feature that you need in your work and there is no work around for that - would you still care the cost, knowing that with investing to a proper tool, the value of your work is higher. I am not suggesting that expensive render package is necessary any better than a low cost or a free one, but it might be, if it has a feature in need or in some cases you might pay from nothing.
I'd have to agree with this. It all depends on what your doing. It would be silly for a photographer to have a rule that he won't spend more on the set design, lighting, and camera than for the model he's shooting. However, if you don't need a refined photograph of the model or you're willing to put in a lot of time in photoshop, then maybe a $29.99 Sponge Bob camera from Walmart would be fine.
-Brodie
Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz Processor
8.0 G RAM
nVidia Quadro FX 3700 512Mb
Windows Vista 64-bit
SU 7.0.8657
5800x3093 (AA on/Shadows on)
-Brodie
Looks pretty good. What kind of building is it? Reminds be a bit of the AEG building by Behrens in Berlin.
-Brodie
I'm glad to hear that at least the basis for many of my frustrations seems to be a known issue (lack of reliable feedback ie. integrated progress bar), at least among the community.
I'd also be interested in finding out what the SU team's position/thoughts are on this.
-Brodie
I suspect it depends on the rendering program. The solution in Maxwell is to to to Tools -> Edge Smoothing (I think that's what it's called) and crank the value up to 90 degrees or higher. Might be worth a shot.
-Brodie
I'll take your advice on the outliner. I typically don't use the outliner anyway but I often have the layers pallete open. The flip side though is that sometimes the only "progress bar" you have is the blinking layer menu.
-Brodie
Been dealing with this for awhile because it doesn't really hurt anything but I'm wondering if it's normal or if it's a driver issue. When I save a good sized model 30+ Mb the screen will go white while it saves. After it's done it goes back to normal.
-Brodie
Linea,
I think the Vista vs. XP issue may be dependent on the ruby/scale of model/etc. I actually have 2 computers in adjacent cubicles and have seen similar issues on both. I don't really get a lot of Bugsplats, but usually when they happen it's at the most inopportune moments so they feel weightier.
My main problem may very well be that I'm inpatient. I'm unwilling to sit at my desk for 10 minutes HOPING that something will happen in less time than it would have taken me to do it without a ruby. If there's no progress bar then I get to just stare and hope something's going on. If there IS a progress bar I have to stay diligent, making sure to not click the mouse outside of the SU window else the progress bar goes away and never comes back - but I still have to move the mouse occasionally out of fear that my screen saver should kick on to similar affect. I think if there were a reliable progress bar that would give me a quasi-reliable time estimate (something like the typical Windows progress bar that pops up when you download files) that would probably solve 80% of my issues.
I know that's not something the the ruby programmers can control. I don't really think most of the issues I encounter have much to do with the programmers. It seems more like a SU issue. I'd like to see SU take the time to integrate some of the more used rubies into the program itself or find a way to get a good progress bar.
-Brodie
Thomthom,
I don't know where this fits in necessarily buy my latest issue is with groupbytexture.rb from Smustard. I've got a large building with about 13 textures that I run the script on. I see it make about 3 different groups (via the outliner) and then it just cranks away and thinks. After about 10 minutes I come to a fork in the road where I have to decide whether I should just let it run (the longer it runs the more time I have invested and the more I lose if I force close to the SU window), or I can close it and try again, or I can close it and try and change some stuff blindly (blindly, because there is no error message to say why it seemingly stopped working) hoping that it'll work better next time. The end result is that I often spend an hour + trying to get the ruby to work instead of just doing things the "hard" way.
That's just the latest example but it's pretty typical of my ruby usage. Mostly what I use now are the few simple ruby's that are useful to me and "just work." PurgeAll, MakeFaces, and JointPushPull are the main 3. I have a few others that I'll use if I'm doing something on a small scale (like flatten or some such thing).
-Brodie
Does anyone else tend to have a lot of issues with rubies? I find myself using less and less as time goes on except for a select few.
The majority of the rubies I've used I've had to drop, and there are some pretty common reasons...
performing the ruby takes longer than performing the action myself
performing the ruby takes less or an equal amount of time however there's no progress bar so I don't really know if it's working (current frustration with Group By Texture ruby from smustard).
same as above but there IS a progress bar, however if I click outside of the SU window to multitask the SU window goes white and the progress bar disappears and I'm back to not being sure it's working. (bomb, flatten, etc.)
bugsplat!
Are these common issues for everyone?
If I'm not mistaken the idea behind SU isn't to do everything but to do a lot of stuff and then allow ruby programmers to add a lot of customized features. If that's the case I feel rather cheated because there seems to be something inherent within the ruby scripting that makes using them (particularly on any sort of large scale project) a bit like rolling dice - except sometimes the dice roll around for 3 hours before finding out if you rolled a 7 or a 2.
-Brodie
I'm having a lot of trouble here. I can export from SU and it looks decent in Max except there are no textures, just various colors. I've played around and even after going through and redoing some of the materials in Max now the UV is funky. It looks ok on some faces and doesn't work at all on others.
any ideas?
-Brodie
I've got some advice for you. Stop using Sketchup. You're making us look bad.
Seriously though, really great stuff. You've obviously put a lot of time into every aspect of that project.
-Brodie
Aidus,
Wow! Those materials are looking great! I really love the tile roof. Your rendering really has a lot of depth to it which is one of my continuing struggles. I'm conflicted about the gutters. On one hand they seem to catch my eye a bit too much but on the other hand the detail that they add is fabulous! I think they good outweighs the bad there though. Doing great.
What sampling level was that at btw? The glass is still noisy but everything else is very nice, even for what I presume is a fairly low SL.
-Brodie
I actually read that wrong too. I was thinking of Color by Layer. How do you do color by material?
-Brodie