Drilling Platform - WIP

[flavrsaver]

That helps. Here's my latest test:



What I did was place a plane behind my ocean plane like you suggested mcvltd and while that works, it really slowed down my render times. I think changing the color of the bkgd would work better and speed up my render times again. Right now I'm using a VRay sky and I'm not sure how I would be able to make the ground part a different color. I want to use a different map for the final, something with clouds, and I think I'm going to try a DS sky or make my own. I also think when I add in the foam around the legs it's really going to look good.

joconnell, any thoughts on how to make the bump sharper? All I can seem to get are those small round bumps that come with a standard noise map.

[mcvltd]

Ah, that's it! Lookin real good now.

Can't wait to see the next update...

[Joost Ink]

All I can seem to get are those small round bumps that come with a standard noise map.

Did you try an inverted smoke map for your bump? That might give you some sharper edges.

About the fog multiplyer: I had some scene where I really had to increase the multiplyer to 5 or 10 or something to get some results, its about scale and how thick the geometry is, but how exactly it is related is a bit of a mistery for me.

[flavrsaver]

Joost Ink- great tip on the inverted smoke map. I played around with that (actually creating 2 and doing a mix between them) and applied it with a VRayDisplacement modifier and this is my result:



It's looking better. I still want to play with the map and displacement amount to get it looking just right.

I created a sky panorama from DS but I'm having trouble applying it to my scene. When I apply it as my background it renders out really dark. I've tried adjusting the gamma when importing the image, but that doesn't do anything. What I'm wanting to do is use a DS sky as my background with a greenish-blue color as my ground, but I don't really know the best way of adding that in. I might need to post my scene because whenever I try changing out the background, things don't look quite right. I have to admit that I'm using some settings that I got from one of Vlado's files and while it renders this nicely, I'm kind of clueless on what to change and really what kind of setup I have. I wanted to use that as reference and to help me figure out how to set this up the best, but I'm still in the dark about what I'm doing.

Edit: Removed link to old scene. More recent scene posted on second page.

[Da_elf]

latest looks cool. stretch the procedurals a bit though

[mcvltd]

Took a quick look at your scene in max9 (it kept on crashing for some reason). I think your DS problem boils down to using the vray physical cam. Try an ordinary cam - that should solve the darkness issue. Also, delete the vray sun and add in a ds sun but make sure that 'illuminate scene' is unchecked.

[mcvltd]

Actually, second thoughts, keep the vray cam and reduce your f-number to something between 2.8 and 1.4, make your film speed 100 or 200 and then play with your shutter speed (if your render is too dark then reduce the shutter speed value).

[Joost Ink]

I also looked at your scene.
seems you are using LWF, and a 2.2 gamma in your colorcorrect, I would use linear and values to default. Uncheck default lights.

For your vraycam I would use, like mcvltd said, an ISO 100, but I would leave f-stop at 8 default, and play with the shutter speed (start at 125 or so and go up from there). You can test the lightning if you use and override mat. mid grey (colorcorected) and check the pixels in the vfb, tweak the shutter speed till you have the same RGB values as your override mat.

Also, saw that your water has no depth, that way the fog would never work, put a shell modifier over it and give it depth.

[mcvltd]

that way the fog would never work

Are you sure?

[flavrsaver]

Da_elf - I stretched the procedurals and I think that made an improvement. I'll post some results a little later. I'm trying to knock out this sky/lighting thing and then I'm going to play around with the ocean more.

mcvltd - The file keeps crashing for me too. Not sure why it's doing that. I've kept the vray cam and now I'm playing around with it's values to adjust the exposure.

Joost Ink - Thanks for the tips on the color mapping and cam settings. I'm playing with those now. I also added the shell modifier to my water, so I'll see how that ends up looking.

Thanks for the help!

[mcvltd]

I'm interested to know how the shell thing and fog turns out. Keep us posted.

[Joost Ink]

that way the fog would never work

Are you sure?

yeah, if I am right the pricipe is that it is letting light trough the water. The fog multiplier is related to the thickness ans scale of your scene.

[flavrsaver]

I'm going to post my latest results in a moment. One thing that's driving me crazy is my file keeps crashing. I just tried merging each item into a new scene to see if that fixed it, but it's still crashing.

[flavrsaver]

This is crazy, it's crashing now all the time. I'm posting my scene to see if any of you can help me figure out what could be causing it.

Max Scene

[posterus]

well i can render it just fine but it did crash on me. "an error has occured and the application will now close"
it happened when i tried to switch from the camera view to user view.
[edit] wierd. i re-opened it and it crashed again...this time when trying to select the sun. something is wacky...not sure what though. maybe try the old merge everything into a new scene trick??

xp64 max64 vray64