Thanks mate!

Yeah having trouble matching my laptop screen to my desktop monitor! Then there is the problem that if you raise your eyeline a inch all changes. HP laptops GRRRRR!

Ooops - updated the image!

@sepo said:

Richard I think your screen is wee dark . I was looking your very nice Maxwell render in the forum but to me looks brightness is bit too strong and not enough contrast. Saying that you are in sunny Ozz and I am in UK.

Mate I think in part you are a bit right! I edited that on my Laptop and just cant seem to get the brightness to match my desktop monitor! Well I can get part of it to match but as soon as you lift or lower your eyeline it is either over or under exposed! Dam HP crap screens!!!

Hope you keep us posted with updates mate!

BTW can you get a bit more light out of the images straight from rendering?

A new render for a standard project home (non site specific) using SU / Maxwell / PS.

Updated

The final.

Mate nice job on these!

Though one thing that really jumped out for me was the tiles rarely lining up - and the grout lines varying! Not sure even a bad tiler wouldn't attempt to space and align them better!

@dzinetech said:

@thomthom said:

@dzinetech said:

I may be wrong but there seems to be some geometry differences between the 2 raw images; in the bottom there is a white cylinder at the rear end of the ridge and a concrete chimney at the front end, yet they dont appear in the top image, or have I misread the building?

The final images have been updated once since the original post.

@unknownuser said:

yes i generally use the same settings, and the raw and finals are back to front, the top final image is the bottom raw image, sorry about that initially i had liked the back view more so i arranged them like i did with the raw images, but then after updating the front view i placed it on top and didnt do so with the raw renders... still the same renders none the less

I think you both misunderstand me...
I'm refering to what I see on the roof in one image and not in the other whether it be RAW renders or the photoshopped images on the front page.

I think they are obviously two different buidlings - as mentioned he has a few to do!

Mate this really is stunning stuff! The chop in of the photo is great! I'm not a lover of thatched roofs but really do like the style of the arch too!

The gabion mesh looks a bit tight, though may well be what they aim to use though would prefer a bit less metal.

Mate these are the first of your renders I've seen - so I will be looking at your other stuff for sure!

I seen a lot of renders myself and mate trust when I say these are some of the best!

I've just recently been using photo environmenats and forgrounds but nowhere near to the level you have here, I just don't have either the PS knowhow or more so lazy relying to heavily on what comes out of the render!

I know we all like to learn from others and I'm looking to learn from you! So i'll throw in a comment to repay early - your level of realism and detail is outstanding, would love to see now just a little bit more touch of mood! Something I know myself I need to improve too!!! I've been looking more and more at arch photography and how well a mood or liveability can be captured.

Again stunning stuff!!!!

Nice work Jason.

What a nice quaint little market, those types of alternative healthy food joints are becoming very popular here, though expensive!

Dam I hope you don't have to render this one! Finding or making maps for product after product to make it look right would be a biggy!

Woe!!!

Mate the fry pulls out the fact you have been a bit sloppy on the mapping of the roof trusses! Not like you to not take the minute to clean that up!

Hmmmm? Great tip I'll check that out mate, thanks for the eyes up!!!!

At the moment I use PS to do much the same thing and very accurately.

1. Create your low poly model,
2. Create a rectangular box stretched clear of and surrounding the model,
3. Paint the box with 100% transparent material,
4. Export parallel projection images of all faces,
5. Edit images in PS > use magic wand to select white outside bounding box > invert selection and crop, any other edits then save!
6. Make texture of saved images > paint to correct faces > adjust texture in free pin mode and drag to each corner > set as projected > sample and paint to model!

This positions your texture 100% accurate!!!!!

@gaieus said:

Oh, and the texturing tools! Making textures applied unique and then edit them (like in PS) real time! Adding all sorts of dirt and individual irregularities while they update on save in PS. That's really cool.

Dam - you know I'd never really tested that feature much! I just gave it a go and note that even if you use a small texture tile then select a face, make texture unique and then open for external edit it actually has created the texture for the whole face, that is DARN cool!!!!! I always thought that would just open the original texture! Dumb is me!

This is a darn cool feature for creating weight maps and the like for rendering and sort of overcomes my suggesting regarding export back from LO (though I still think that handy for creating a texture for the whole model!).

As Gai suggested I gave a fair bit of feedback during testing, stacks of new feature requests! One being the option to export images back to SU from LO, projected to the model relevant to the model window in LO. I could see this as a great way to create detailed very low poly models.

A low poly model could be created in SU, imported into LO and textures, window images etc be complied for each elevation and then exported back to SU and automatically projected to selected faces.

I do though think a few things where broken in 7!

1. Inferences for me are fairly doggy now, sometimes I just cant get one!
2. The scaling of objects then explode to correct texture scaling now requires texture resetting, which isn't great if you had manually resized the texture before scaling.
3. I finding certain situations now where I just cant get a face to create even if I make a triangle.

Hope fully an update may fix the layout multi page issue! I know the googies addressed the issue by disabling the opening of corrupted files in the final release. I think to hopefully rely on the backup though if an autosave occurs after the corruption I find that file is also corrupted.

@thomthom said:

@richard said:

But and there is always a but! Take care! With multi page docs there is a dreadful bug that will delete pages and then permanently corrupt the file and backup! Now I'm tending not to work in multi page docs after I lost 30 designed floor plan layouts!

What triggers the bug?

GOD?

Google obselete developers!

Don't know mate - no particular workflow, but it is usually just when clicking through pages! The googies are well aware of it!

Mate I've become a bit of a devotee to LO with the new version. Page and layer management is better high res JPG and PNG output is great!

But and there is always a but! Take care! With multi page docs there is a dreadful bug that will delete pages and then permanently corrupt the file and backup! Now I'm tending not to work in multi page docs after I lost 30 designed floor plan layouts!

Hopefully the next version will host a few more of the features requested through testing!

Personally I think it's a great tool - though still limited a bit!

@jackson said:

Hi Richard,

Just a quick update to say I was wrong about VRay not supporting weight mapping- it's done via a blend map and two diffuse layers/materials, probably in just the same way as Maxwell.

Dying to see the fruits of your labours- that Audi pic is still a real teaser.

Hey thanks for the reply Jackson!

I'm not sure blending (vray) and weight mapping (maxwell/fry) might be the same thing?

In maxwell weight maps either blend materials by the grey weight (50% grey = 50% blend) or can exclude / include just like clipping.

For example with the car (audi) posted the the glass layer of the material will have a weight map that is white (255) for the glass areas and black (0) for all others. The other areas will be white with black for the window areas, though a specularity map will gloss or matt the paint / trim / tyres. However what I was working on was the grey areas of the weight maps where some layers may or may not blend.

I'm trying to get the whole car as one material so it is just dropped in scene and rendered without too much user fuss! If every part of the car assigned a separate material as commonly done now and opened in say maxwell studio the material list will saturate with so many meaningless materials: car glass, trim, alloys, tyres, car paint red, car paint yellow, number plate etc etc. It just becomes confusing in a large scene and one has to dig to find any important materials to be adjusted.

I'm thinking that if the car can be done in one material then the material list can be Audi silver, mazda red, nissan gold etc. Simple!

I've been working on even setting up the low poly interiors I use for exterior renders this way so that the materials for the exterior (the ones I want to edit) are easily found and the rest shows as Interior 1, interior 2 etc - at present even a low poly interior for this use may have 10-20 materials, more than the rest of the scene!

Stunning work mate as we have obviously come to expect from you - anything less and we would think you got sloppy!

BTW I couldn't find that question mark!

@gaieus said:

Nay, that suck***s. How can one tell if i's good then? At least they should give a chance to save at a lower resolution (say 512 pixels could already give you some clue).

Sigh... I guess I'll have to try anyway as I do need something and although you can never make it sure, it still looks promising.

See you in the gallery!

Mate have you tried Nvidia's plugin for PS CS3? It's free and does a pretty good job!

@gaieus said:

What' the difference between the Pro and the Pro-Demo versions of ShaderMap? I haven't downloaded/installed it yet. It says there's some limitation but does it mean I won't be able to se the whole/full capabilities of the licensed Pro version?

If it works, I'd gladly pay the price but certainly it would be nice to try out first.

Ya got to read the whole thread mate! Cant save from it so you cant test results! If you know how to tell a good normal map from bad just by looking at it, you're good! I've got to test them!

Just linked this to another thread and thought I'd quickly post to say sorry no updates - though something that bought to mind that I should get in and do this stuff!