A comparable maxwell multilight function

[stevesideas]

I was looking at this today:

http://www.maxwellrender.com/mw2_multilight.php

Looks like a real timesaver...

[duke2]

This has been gone over quite a few times - the conclusion being VRay doesn't work the same was as Maxwell/Fry/etc. and thus can't replicate the function. There is, however, a script that does something similar by rendering multiple images.

[stevesideas]

Apologies, I didnt realise this had been brought up before. Shame..looks like a cool function !

[vlado]

You can try this one:
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/mu...l-rio-and-vray

Best regards,
Vlado

[GatesB]

I checked today (12/8/09) and there's no download option at the moment for this script.

Can someone explain the optimal settings to do this manually? Not how to composite them, but the best way to capture the lighting data.

* For each light group pass, should I render each light at full intensity and white (255,255,255) color?
* How does GI fit into all this?
* I assume noise refinement stacks, so can I divide the noise threshold by the number of passes?

Thanks you guys.

[rmejia]

I checked today (12/8/09) and there's no download option at the moment for this script.

It's available in his website for $30
http://www.evvisual.com/maxscript/script_multilight.htm

[GatesB]

But, what would be the best method to do this manually?

[vlado]

Just render each light separately (or group them as you wish), then you can add all of the images together with different weights to get the combined result.

Best regards,
Vlado

[plastic_]

Just render each light separately (or group them as you wish), then you can add all of the images together with different weights to get the combined result.

Best regards,
Vlado

It's easy to script, and it's easy to blend images with something like imageMagick, but interactively in a max dialog? I'm not sure how this would work. Maybe there is some dotNet interface for bitmap opacity?

[MasterBercon]

I don't really see the problem with maxscript because you can use it to read and write bitmaps too. I'm not sure exactly how fast it would be but the formula to compute blended image is very simple: Img1 * mult1 + Img2 * mult2 + ... + imgN * multN = Final image.

If using maxscript to write/read bitmaps is too slow then it would be really easy to port the blending to SDK. Writing maxscript function that takes array of bitmaps and returns a bitmap is pretty much straight from the tutorials.

With the image blending done it should not be hard to some spinners to adjust multiplier and thats pretty much it.

[simmsimaging]

It's easy to script, and it's easy to blend images with something like imageMagick, but interactively in a max dialog? I'm not sure how this would work. Maybe there is some dotNet interface for bitmap opacity?

Why would you not just do it in Photoshop or a compositor? Is there an advantage to doing this in Max?

[plastic_]

Why would you not just do it in Photoshop or a compositor? Is there an advantage to doing this in Max?

Well it would be nice if you could just do it in the VFB, with a docking dialog, realtime sliders, etc.
Might be possible with maxscript, using the new bitmap functions, as MasterBercon suggested. I'm not sure if it's fast enough for realtime.

The problem I have with Photoshop is that it takes so much time to load images, alpha masks, etc.
Maybe I'm clueless, but I don't know a way to quickly (re)load images into layers.
When I work on a comp and want to exchange a layer or mask with an updated rendered version, I have to load the whole image in a new window, select mask, copy & paste, etc.

I wish there was something like maxscript for Photoshop...The actions and "automate" stuff is close to useless IMO.
I know that it's possible to do something with javascript in PS, but it doesn't seem very accessible.

[instinct]

you can javascript PS as well as com-automate it using python or any other COM capable language.

REgards,
Thorsten

[simmsimaging]

Well it would be nice if you could just do it in the VFB, with a docking dialog, realtime sliders, etc.
Might be possible with maxscript, using the new bitmap functions, as MasterBercon suggested. I'm not sure if it's fast enough for realtime.

The problem I have with Photoshop is that it takes so much time to load images, alpha masks, etc.
Maybe I'm clueless, but I don't know a way to quickly (re)load images into layers.
When I work on a comp and want to exchange a layer or mask with an updated rendered version, I have to load the whole image in a new window, select mask, copy & paste, etc.

I wish there was something like maxscript for Photoshop...The actions and "automate" stuff is close to useless IMO.
I know that it's possible to do something with javascript in PS, but it doesn't seem very accessible.

I see, thanks.

I'm not a maxscript/programming kinda guy so I'm probably happier with the automate/action tools in Pshop than you would be, but using automate/load files into stack will get you up and running with a composite file pretty quickly, and if you use smart objects you can also quickly replace layers (an action to convert your layers to smart objects, and then use "replace contents" to update to a new base image for any given pass/layer).

It might be a bit clunky, but I am not really sure it would be much faster in Max as you will always have the save/load dialog process to go through to update images wouldn't you?

I'm sure there are ways it could be faster, but most of what you need is probably extant in Photoshop with smart objects and maybe a bit of action work, but maybe there are things you need I'm not really understanding.

b

[duke2]

Apparently the Hold/Fetch functionality is way faster than reloading or restoring a bunch of settings.