update 1-oct-2009/ thanks to Peter, I’ve learned that Multimatte workd by default with object IDs. The topic has then be corrected/completed

update 27-oct-2009/ added some info on the “Affect channel : All channels” option of a material

When it come to archviz rendering, one of the first thing to learn is to create good masks to retouch materials or objects individually in photoshop. If the most popular alpha mask allows you to cut out the entire rendering from his background, other type of masks (based on elements or objects) became essential for an efficient workflow in archviz.

I remember times where I did a second rendering with the same point of view, where every material was replaced by a self-illumated conterpart in order to save one or several DIY “masking pass” …a time consuming method, either on material editing or rendering. I even remember cutting out glass masks for buildings directly in Photoshop. Brrrrr :)

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Posted: September 28th, 2009 under 3dsmax, cg, photoshop, tutorial.
Comments: 8

Update 08-2009 : Sorry but this one seems to be offline now :(

Nice tutorial from Nir Sullam about making hedges with particle leaves…

Posted: September 23rd, 2008 under 3dsmax, tutorial.
Comments: 2

I did notice this new parameter  since the 1.5 Service Pack 1, and decided to make some test. Actually, this parameter does exactly what I need… but it’s quite hard to explain and an image will be clearer than thousands of word :

Let’s say that it quickens the darkening of the fog inside the material, like if it become exponential when the bias is set below 0. If you lower the bias too much, it’ll darken too fast and you’ll have to lower the multiplier accordingly.

The good point of the test is that it doesn’t involve any glossiness nor transluency, the rendering times were relatively low and the shadows of the object just perfect ;)

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Posted: September 14th, 2008 under 3dsmax, material, tutorial, vray - 3dsmax.
Comments: 8

I had some request on how this tower image was done so here is a small making of this particular project. Even if VRay is not really required for this tutorial, it will be explained with some of this wonderful render engine functions.

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Posted: March 9th, 2008 under 3dsmax, tutorial, vray - 3dsmax.
Comments: 30

Zip file with illustrations & max 7.0 files can be downloaded here.

This simple 3dsmax technique is quite useful when you have to trigger the visibility of numerous objects. Instead of deleting “randomly” some elements, you apply randomly materials that are visible… or not. This is a very simple flexible method, and it works normally with any rendering engine inside 3dsmax. It doesn’t involve any script (although I think it can be improved with scripts) Read more »

Posted: October 16th, 2007 under 3dsmax, tutorial, vray - 3dsmax.
Comments: 12