Dreamscape best thing since sliced bread

[Morne]

Helloooooo Everybody

From the little information I could find about dreamscape, it seems like a very good plugin for MAX. My problem is I can not find detailed information about it. Exactly what can the thing do and is it the best thing since sliced bread? With this Chaos Forum you can register and browse the forum without having to buy VRay. Only problem comes when you want to post a message.

Anycase if only Sitni Sati had the same type of thing going, I could see if it is the right software for me or not, see if the support is on par with Chaos support, and I can see exactly what the thing can do and who uses it for what.

Anybody here care to direct me to a link of some work they have done using Max, Vray and Dreamscape? Also, now that I'm on the Sitna Sati case, anybody have any images of major things they've done with FumeFX? (not just the average explotion or flame thrower) I geuss what I'm saying is that I want more information than what they provide on their website for non members.

I'm thinking of using max, vray, dreamscape combined with onyx trees for my landscaping (and "seascaping") instead of vue. What is your comments on this?

[Morne]

Daforce, Lele, Vlado, Glorybound, Bernhard, Maxxer and all you other clever people?
You alive out there?

[glorybound]

Dreamscape

Wow, I am listed with the brains of the group! I am honored . I checked the site out, but must have gotten side tracked. Maybe if I have time tonight Ill check it out again. I don't hear much about Dreamscape so I am not sure if it is used in our industry.

[vlado]

Well, I have not really dealt with Dreamscape a lot, so I can't really be of much help there. It has some nice functions (sea, terrain generators etc), but I've only played with the demo a long time ago.

Best regards,
Vlado

[glorybound]

Dreamscape

I just went to their site and things are not very clear and I don't see any architectural illustrations in the gallery, which is what I personally do. They also don't have a demo and the cost is steep. I thought it was used for skies and water....

[Da_elf]

dont get it if you only do arch viz

[percydaman]

I used it extensively recently for a arch animation, that included ocean water and 3d clouds that the camera fly's through. I wasn't included in the clever people though, so bugger off, you won't get anything from me.

[glorybound]

Percy

LOL . You are one of the best!

[dlparisi]

I wasn't included in the clever people though, so bugger off, you won't get anything from me.

That gave me a good laugh at the end of a very busy day.

[percydaman]

Actually, I'm not sure I can show anything at the moment, it was for a large development designed by Michael Graves. Maybe when we can release it...

[percydaman]

Alright a couple things I kinda learned using dreamscape the first time:

1. Linear workflow doesn't work real well, there isn't a way to gamma correct the dreamsky map.

2. Dreamscape sky uses a global scale spinner that changes ALOT of stuff and how they look. Want a camera that starts below the clouds and moves above? Good luck, as the dreamscape is based on real world physics. Move your camera a few thousand feet in the air, and it thinks your heading into space and the sky starts to get real dark, real quick. You can adjust this by raising the global scale spinner, but then everything else looks different. The sky color, cloud scale, haze scale. etc

3. Its difficult to do passes with it. If you want to use its exceptional haze, and if you don't your clouds look crappy, then it burns the haze into your alpha, which makes compositing clouds, sky and sun separately, difficult. Its also difficult to render out zdepth passes as vray doesn't work well with dreamscape in this regard.

4. The ocean is cool and all, but even though its procedural in nature, it still tiles, and it can become very obvious if your camera is high enough.

5. The support isn't nearly as nice as vray's. Maybe I'm just pampered. Turbosquid is always a bummer. They have webforums, but they don't get frequented alot. They DO have some excellent video tutorials and sample scenes though.

6. The default settings for the clouds sucks major. You really have to learn how to get them to do what you want. I couldn't get good looking results, so was going to use afterburn, but after figuring out a few different things, they improved. Play with the thickness setting LOL

7. The dreamscape sun is also based on real world physics, which means when you place your sun in your scene, the actual sun object is really a gazillion miles from earth, which makes it difficult to get the sun to physically show up in your render sometimes. You have to l ower the sun to get it to show, which then changes your time of day, which changes the look of your sky.

Here's a couple test renders:

[glorybound]

DreamScape

Can you use that DreamScape in MAX using V-Ray as your engine? The new Mentray(MR) seems to have something like the procedural clouds build in and I have used the procedural clouds for V-Ray (posted somewhere here) and it works great.

[percydaman]

Can you use that DreamScape in MAX using V-Ray as your engine? The new Mentray(MR) seems to have something like the procedural clouds build in and I have used the procedural clouds for V-Ray (posted somewhere here) and it works great.

Yes, those were rendered with vray. I'm not familiar with the MR cloud feature your referring to.

[Aldaryn]

Is dreamscape still outputting clamped values? I remember testing it for a few days, and left the whole thing because it was very frustrating to be forced to work with ldr again. Or is this a major limitation of how max handles athmospherics? Almost every volume rendering plugin suffers from poor clamped output, afterburn, fume, etc... Well, hope this changes, I'm a fan of full hdr workflow.

Best regards,
A.

[percydaman]

Is dreamscape still outputting clamped values? I remember testing it for a few days, and left the whole thing because it was very frustrating to be forced to work with ldr again. Or is this a major limitation of how max handles athmospherics? Almost every volume rendering plugin suffers from poor clamped output, afterburn, fume, etc... Well, hope this changes, I'm a fan of full hdr workflow.

Best regards,
A.

Hmmm...I can't really say. I rendered everything in multiple passes to a 32bit exr workflow. But then I didn't do ANY of the compositing. It didn't seem to be an issue though. I also didn't use any GI though.