1MS

3dsmax dopesheet is slow and halt?

2012-01-10T20:08:00.002+08:00

If you ever experience a halt screen when trying to move/select the key in the dopesheet, disable the Option > Modify Subtree Keys. It should work like a charm after that.

I was mumbling and grumbling about it when I first encountered this but well.. it just I don't understand 3dsmax thoroughly... so let's don't blame 3dsmax and enjoy creative creation again! ^^

How to get maxscript info of Vray Object Properties?

2011-11-10T21:14:00.003+08:00

It's very easy, simply pick any object from your scene, and run this:

getUserPropBuffer $

And now you have got the maxscript tag, how you gonna use it? Here's the example:

setuserprop obj "VRay_Matte_Enable" true
setuserprop obj "VRay_Matte_Alpha" -1
setuserprop obj "VRay_GI_VisibleToGI" true
setuserprop obj "VRay_GI_Generate" true
setuserprop obj "VRay_GI_Receive" true

Done!

Easy way to do tree animation

2011-10-31T21:49:00.004+08:00

Settings below should give a general soft nice looking tree receiving wind:

Noise Modifier
X-Y-Z: 5-5-5
Frequency: 0.25
Phase = Your animation length, e.g. there is 250 frames, the phase = 250.

Easy, isn't it?

If you want to do a strong wind, you can accomplish it by manipulating FFD box control point to bend the tree beside doing just Noise.

Have fun~!

Freaking slow render time?

2011-10-06T21:09:00.002+08:00

Tired of waiting for render? Want a faster render to save your day when doing animation? Try these:

Disable shadow of IES lights for those barely visible within the view. You still maintain the nice light spot while your render will fly now.
Use less Vray Plane Light for exterior scene, no matter it is sky portal or normal plane light.
Disable Generate GI for all plants & trees
Make sure opacity maps are configured correctly and try use lesser of it.
Despite losing some photo-realism, using Direct Light with sharp VrayShadow will drastically reduce render time.
Choose the right Sampling - however bear in mind that different sampling mode demand higher setting of Noise Threshold & Material/Light subdivision. Don't end up fooling around and get similar render time.
Instead of Irr + LC combination, drop out LC if you're fighting tight schedule. The quality is good enough that your client may not have spotted the different.

Cheers~

Bloody slow dope sheet?

2011-09-17T18:11:00.002+08:00

Yes, dope sheet in default is bloody slow and I almost wanted to whack him until I found turning off "Modify Subtree" on the top toolbar would definitely gain back its speed and work normally.

Haiz... who the heck enabled that by default? Well.. it doesn't matter now.

3dsmax never start and what firewall does to it?

2011-09-12T09:57:00.002+08:00

Have you ever open a 3dsmax that never get into the main interface? You probably have the raysat_server blocked by your newly installed firewall (yeah, especially ZoneAlarm!).

Simply enable it access to your trusted network (no, you don't need internet access for it) and voila! You have got your 3dsmax alive again!

For those who still can't access, halt & crash at loading mentalray.dlz, check whether you have block port 7000 or 7700. Try it, and you could save your life especially during crunch hours.

The evil hair&fur

2011-06-10T21:16:00.003+08:00

Working on a simple vray scene, 80% proxies, 38mb filesize, some trees from Evermotion Vol 85. When you press render, DANG!!

Either it halt at the beginning of render or max crashed at the end of it, you scene probably haunted by the evil hair&fur!

After I removed the hair&fur (don't forget remove in the Effects panel as well), the RAM consumption goes down from 6GB to 2GB. Yes, 4GB, it is 4GB!!

The hair&fur when use improperly with Vray, it's really gonna kill. However, it doesn't mean you can't use it at all. Check this solution out, it may save you some time from hunting down the hair&fur in your scene:

Rendering Hair&Fur modifier with Vray

Another cool website up! - New iRay Website

2011-05-25T01:49:00.004+08:00

http://irayrender.com/

It's something to embrace next! Though it might not be as useful dealing with complicated interior scene, its ability in visualizing products and simple scene are real damn cool! What's more 1 Quadro = 10 PCs!

So frustrated not to have time to compare with latest VrayRT, as it looks much more promising than the latter.

Hope the time to dig into it will come to me soon!

Ironman Helmet Turntable

2009-11-14T04:36:00.005+08:00

My little 14yrs old brother, Ensun has done a very good job in modeling the Ironman helmet, so I created this as a reward for him, hope he likes it and I'm so proud to share his work with everybody. Also, thanks Lwa for mentoring my bro when I'm not free and thanks Xue Hong for the cool music!

If you can't see, please use the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=211630995829&ref=mf

Tyson Ibele's Building Generator Script

2009-11-08T13:52:00.002+08:00

While browsing online just now, I read about a very impressive and sophisticated building generator script from Tyson Ibele, a very young and talented artist. The results is so beautiful which you can view from here, and from v0.4 above it even have the ability to generate textures on the fly. Check out the script creator website for more info!

Website: http://tysonibele.com/

Stubborn Spline won't smooth?

2009-10-15T17:29:00.002+08:00

Have you ever tried Create Spline from Selection, and got a spline with stubborn vertices which just don't go smooth no matter in Smooth/Bezier/Bezier corner? I had been troubled by this since long ago but never really find a solution till today....

yeah, it's pretty simple to solve it:
1) select the spline, goto Segment
2) right-click, choose the "Curve" from the quad-menu.

Voila, the spline is now smooth! ^^

The Lobby

2009-08-08T23:04:00.004+08:00

Has been laid back for quite long time, finally have the motivation to dig out an old work and did some modification to it. Nothing really special, just trying to play with the color and change the way I do post-editing. Not very satisfy with the end result, still look kinda similar to my previous style. Gotta try harder~

Create Falling Leaves using 3dsmax Particle Part 1

2009-07-23T21:51:00.010+08:00

This simple tutorial will contain two parts. In Part 1 here we will setup a particle event to simulate the leaves fall and stop on the ground. The next part will show you how to use a pre-modeled tree and make its leaves blow off by wind and fall onto the ground.

Concept
Let's talk about the concept first. We will have leaves (Particle) falling from a tree (PF Source 01) and stop on the ground (deflector) once the leaves hit (Collision event) the ground. So we will end up having:

1 x Particle Flow Source (Particle, PF Source 01)
1 x SpaceWarps (Deflector)
1 x Particle Event (Collision)

Alright, we should be clear at this point, let's start to do it!

Creating Particle

Open Particle View by hitting "6" key on your keyboard or Graph Editors > Particle View
Drag a Standard Flow from the Depot, into Event Display. A PF Source 01 will be created on the origin.
Now try to slide your time slider back and forth, you will see in the viewport the particles generated from PF Source 01 are moving down at Z-axis.
Ok, it works pretty fine but we should move the PF Source 01 higher so that we can create a Ground object in the next step.
Close Particle View.

Ground

Now, create a Deflector (Create > SpaceWarps > Deflectors > Deflector) to use as ground, where we will make the leaves stop falling once they collides with the ground.
Name it Ground_01.
Place this Deflector right beneath the PF Source 01, its size to be set to cover all particle.

Setting up Particle Event

Open Particle View.
Drag a Collision from the Depot into our Event 01 (see image below), you can place it anywhere, its position makes no difference.
Now under Collision parameter, click Add and pick our Ground_01 (see image below).
Try to slide our time slider again, you will now notice the particle being bounced off at the point they hit Ground_01. This is not something we wanted, but we're almost there.
Next, while we still have Collision event selected, go to Test True if Particle > Collides > Speed > Stop (see image below).
Now run the time slider again.
Voila! Our particle now stop when they hit Ground_01.

To be continue... Part 2.

Vray lightcache troubleshoot

2009-03-16T15:17:00.006+08:00

Have you ever experienced vray lightcache halt or slowdown during rendering? From what I have encountered so far, it could be caused by:

Scenario 1: When lightcache halt at about 85.99% (0.99% is my estimation XD)

One or more of the materials have bump amount set too high. I had this problem in one of my scene with 800 in bump. Reduce the bump to a lower value.

Scenario 2: Vray keep unloading geometry during lightcache calculation

Possibly too many geometryin your scene or simply you have too many displacement in your scene. Convert your geometry into Vraymesh to solve this problem.

Scenario 3: Lightcache run extremely slow

Too many light in your scene, especially IES light. Remove unnecessary light will definitely speed up the progress.

Scenario 4: 3dsmax crashed during lightcache

You may have set the Scale to World which is not necessary for still image render (or sometimes even for animation you don't need it). Change it back to Screen.

Scenario 5: lightcache render slower/equally with quad cores processor compare to dual cores

Change the number of passes to match your processor cores. If you have quads, make it 4. Increase this amount regardless your CPU cores do not speed up the progress, so no cheat here. :P

If the scenario you encountered has not been discussed above, feel free to share yours here. I would definitely love to learn from you guys.

Happy rendering~!

Create you own Rename Tools with MAXScript

2009-02-16T22:31:00.008+08:00

Are you tired of renaming object in your scene? Based on Maxscript reference > How To ... Quickly Rename Selected Objects, I've created here a little tutorial that help novice user to create a personalized rename tool.

Click here to download files created in this tutorial.
For chinese version, please visit here.

The Interface

First of everything we will create an interface for our rename tool using Menu > MAXScript > Visual MAXScript Editor.
Complete the interface as shown below, remember each elements in the interface must have unique name so that we can assigned each of them with their own controller/action and prevent them from conflicting each others.
When you're done, save it as Interface.vms as a backup, in case we need to edit the interface we still have the option.
Afterwards, save as QuickRename.ms (don't forget the extension is now .ms)

Note:

We will be using on entered event on the editBox (i.e. pressing Enter will excute the rename). Since clicking mouse button outside the editBox will triggered the on entered event, so to prevent the rename to be excuted twice, we will first set this button as enabled:false.
editBox default to leave blank. If you want to have a preset message, simply key in something for yourself.
Height of editBox must be lower than 18pixel to enable on entered event. So here we give it a height of 16px.

The Maxscript

Go to Menu > MAXScript > Maxscript Editor and open your saved QuickRename.ms. You will see the same maxscript as below. We will be adding our own maxscript to complete this tool.
Let's complete the script as below:

rollout quickRename "Quick Rename" width:250 height:120
(
editText txt_name "" pos:[24,56] width:200 height:16
button btn_rename "RENAME!" pos:[48,80] width:75 height:25 enabled:false
button btn_cancel "CANCEL" pos:[136,80] width:75 height:25
button btn_head "Head" pos:[8,16] width:75 height:25
button btn_body "Body" pos:[88,16] width:75 height:25
button btn_leg "Leg" pos:[168,16] width:75 height:25


-- DEFINE 'RENAME' FUNCTION
---------------------------------------------------
fn renameIt objName = ( -- function "rename"
global objName
for i in selection do i.name = uniquename objName
)-- end


-- ACTION
---------------------------------------------------
on btn_head pressed do renameIt "Head_"
on btn_body pressed do renameIt "Body_"
on btn_leg pressed do renameIt "Leg_"
on txt_name entered txt do (renameIt (txt + "_"; btn_rename.enabled=true)
on btn_cancel pressed do destroyDialog quickRename

)

createDialog quickRename
setFocus quickRename.txt_name

Explanation

fn renameIt objName = ( -- function "rename"

      for i in selection do i.name = uniquename objName
)-- end

define a function renameIt() with variable objName
for...i enable rename to be excuted onto every selected objects. uniquename is used to assigned unique suffix on every object e.g. Head_01, Head_02, etc.

on btn_head pressed do renameIt "Head_"
Excute renameIt() and assigned string "Head_" into objName variable when btn_head is pressed.

on txt_name entered txt do (renameIt (txt + "_"; btn_rename.enabled=true)
Press "Enter" upon completion of name in txt_name will excute renameIt(). In the mean time also activate btn_rename

on btn_cancel pressed do destroyDialog quickRename
When btn_cancel is pressed, close the rename tool.

createDialog quickRename
Create a floating dialog to hold our rename tool, to be same name as "rollout".

setFocus quickRename.txt_name
Focus on the editBox(txt_name) when the dialog being created and opened.

Macroscript

In this section we will convert our script into macroscript, which will be loaded into Customize User Interface (CUI) , so that we can put it onto Toolbar or assigned Shortcut Key.

macroScript QuickRename category:"Tutorial" tooltip:"Quick Rename" Icon:#("AtmosApp",1)
(
-- "rollout" is to be put in here
)

QuickRename = name of macroscript
category = which category our tool is belong to under CUI
tooltip = name that appear when mouse over, also the name in CUI
Icon = see section below.

Creating Icon

We can make our own icon as well by adding the tag below onto the same line as our macroscript():

Icon:#("AtmosApp",1)

AtmosApp = icon file name (.bmp as standard), file to be placed in"3dsmax root\ui\Icons"
In this tutorial, we used "ui\Icons\AtmosApp*.bmp" as sample.
For more information, please read the maxscript reference.

Run Script...

We're almost done here, now go to "MAXScript > Run Script..." and run your QuickRename.ms. Afterward, go to "Customize User Interface > Toolbar > Category > Tutorial" and you will spot our lovely tool。
Drag it onto your toolbar (if you don't have one, it's time for you do make your own one) and Voila! You can also assigned a shortcut key to it if you love to do so.

Note:
When you run the script, it will automatically create a ".mcr" into your 3dsmax "usermacro" folder, which located at "DRIVE:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\2009 - 32bit\enu\UI\usermacros".

That mean if you do not like to run it as maxscript, you can actually save the script as .mcr, and put it under the mentioned folder, then restart your 3dsmax.

Conclusion

Technique apply here could be further more developed into assigning renderer preset, controlling material so on and so forth. So I hope you enjoy this tutorial. Feel free to let me know what you think about this tutorial, and thing that I can improve here.

Lastly, here is my version, Cheer~

The Making of Demoreel Part 1

2008-11-04T22:42:00.005+08:00

今天我要跟大家分享一下我的demoreel的第一个场景的制作过程，希望大家喜欢。

构思

看了Transformer the movie后，就决定了怎样也要做个类似的场景所以就做了这个。一开始设定concept的时候，很贪心地想做整个机器人：

最初构思：

有了大概的构思后，便从Transformer Movie内抓了一些参考图：

但很可惜的是后来发现时间不足，所以就变成最后只剩下一只手臂（竟然很多人说看起来像黄色的车）。

2D Work

在还没有开始3D的工作之前，我先用Photoshop对背景进行修改，包括去除路人、extend footage、加入破坏的元素等等。多使用Clone Stamp完成大部分的工作，然后上cgtextures.com找了很多不懂的材质，使用masking + layer blending + hand painting完成整个破坏的场景。

前后比较：

Photoshop Layers:

合成使用的图片：

Scene Matching

完成2D的工作过后，我便把图设成max的background，然后进行matching的工作。我用简单的box和plane重建了整个场景，然后使用camera projection进行texturing，以取得reflection。而左边的reflection则随便使用了街道的照片来完成。中间的白色车也大概做了基本形状出来，好让fiat500可以反射到它。

Modeling work

然后便是一系列的modeling工作：

最让我高兴的是，我三年前做得Fiat 500终于派上用场了！Model全部在3dsmax内完成，均使用polymodeling方式建模。玻璃碎等等使用了mbFracture scripts来建模，而distribution则是用了max的particle。

Texturing & Material

Texture方面也是大量使用了真实的照片，然后用photoshop进行edit，合成等等。

3d material方面没有特别的设置，基本上每个材质均用了diffuse, specular和bump而已，然后调整合适的reflection amount和glosiness。而考虑到不需要很细腻的material关系，所以我没有采用自己paint的mapping，就随便用了blend material来混过去。效果还挺满意的。

Lighting

灯光方面也没有太复杂的设定，就一盏domelight和一盏vray spherelight。而为了增加视觉效果，机械手臂的reflection使用了hdri图。

一开始选择Vray没有特别的理由，就因为习惯。但后来发现vray在制作这类的作品其实挺浪费时间，因为关了GI过后，它的渲染时间竟然长过开启GI的时候。但是因为material已经设定好了，所以就将错就错了。

Compositing

由于这次是第一次制作这类型的作品，为了让自己熟悉整个过程，所以我对每个单一的model都分pass render出来。

to be continue...

谢谢大家！迟点我将继续发布post-production的工作。
Post Production
- composition of live footage
- color correction
- etc...

Hiring - Mid-level / Senior 3D Visualizer and Modeler WANTED!!

2008-11-04T22:06:00.005+08:00

I'm currently seeking enthusiastic and talented artists from within Malaysia to join my team to create high-end interior/exterior rendering. Above are some of the professional works that I done for clients.

If this opportunity interest you, please email to tecsun.y@gmail.com (please read the submission guideline below)

Together we create better works!

Valid period: Always
Location: Johor Bahru
Other: Accommodation provided

Requirements:
- proficient in 3d modeling using any 3d software (3dsmax translation training provided)
- proficient in CG lighting & rendering technique (Vray training provided)
- proficient in using Photoshop or equivalent.
- work experiences in Architecture/ID field or CG industry is preferred
- good communication skill in spoken/written English and Chinese

Submission guideline:
- resume (personal background, education/work experience, salary expectation)
- portfolio (please provide wireframe and time taken for modeling wok)

* Only shortlisted candidates will be notified.

Demoreel 2008, finally!!!!

2008-07-12T03:24:00.006+08:00

Download @ http://tecsun.co.nr

Hurray!!!! After 4 months of on&off and sleepless night, finally completed my first ever demoreel, featuring lighting & compositing!

Despite it is really tiring, it really worths the whole world to me. Learnt a lot of thing from this and finally I get to know how to use After Effects, thanks Patrik for sharing his AE knowledges with me. Also, thanks Jax Lee for motivating me throughout the time and gave me a lot of invaluable inputs. Not to forget, big thanks to Adam as he is the one whom brought me into this industry and taught me countless techniques during training period.

Finally, thanks my family for support me no matter what decision I made and of course all of my friends that forgive me, I don't mean to fly you guys kite when you guys date me out and now you know I'm not, right? hehe~