studioGPU

Hi ChadW,

These look really good! I would like to include them in our industry showcase, if that’s ok?

One note… A perfect a example of what the AO over-scan field can do in MSP… on the beam in the first image the AO is clipping against the edge of the shot. Increasing the over-scan value will clean that up. Try a a value between 100 and 400 pixels.

Thanks.  Of course you may add them to the Showcase.  I have 3 more I am finishing and will follow that up with an animation.  But for the time being feel free to add these.

Yeah… the depth peeling in this scene was doing some funny things.  So I turned it off….  there are some quirks with the geometry in this scene that had to be worked around.

http://randomcontrol.com/arion-tech-specs
Here’s something to look out for - the long promised ‘real time’ raytracing with physical lighting.
Hopefully some of these absent features can occur in MSP some time.

I’d also like to see a faster interface between 3DSMax and MSP - scenes can take a lot of time to manually export.
There should be a better way to handle a scene and send it out so that its components are understood by the software rather than assigned, one by one, by the artist.
There could be some kind of provided scripts at least for “select all objects in a scene layer and assign them to #lowres=1 all at once by right clicking a quad button”, and similar mass operations.

MSP should be able to know what is a camera by itself (I shouldn’t have to choose export CAM).  It should know if an object is animated or static based on the timeline or modifiers on it.  It should be able to create a point cache on its own at export time.  Texture transfer should be complete, in terms of map channels it includes, not partial.  Lights from 3DSMax, especially the Daylight, should be exportable to MSP at least in terms of position, target, intensity, color, and casting shadows.  It is a lot easier to place and adjust lights in 3DSMax viewports than in MSP viewports because MSPs widgets and numerical entry is not as user friendly.  I’m sure this also goes for other 3D applications where scenes are generated.

Given the price point of MSP, I’d say those are reasonable expectations of quality in software design for this field.

Just having a play with Sponza Atrium model by Marco Dabrovic.  I had to reassign the textures (boring).
Then exported it and the camera to MSP.
First I rendered a comparison in Maxwell - it took over two hours and still wasn’t finished during the time I set up the MSP scene, rendered it, and edited the footage into a clip to put here
The Machstudo Pro render took from 1.06pm to 1.09pm.

Below, the render in maxwell has automatic DOF off the 3DSMax camera.  Also, the lighting model is great with just an HDR map in the image based lighting illumination channel.
Then we have the same camera is it shows up in MSP, with three projected spotlights and one omni.  I am not good at setting up lights, so there’s no tricks or clever things in this scene.  One projected light is the brightest for the sun, and the others are fills (a little random I have to point out).  The third frame is one from the final AVI file you can get from the link above.

Nobody who is a really great lighter who is looking for physically based lighting would like my render, but I wanted to have a play with the scene and see what I could mash out really fast.

Tom

Yes, the Max exporting workflow is a little cumbersome at the moment.  However, we are in the process of building out the scripts and plugins that will put the final finishing touches on that whole process.  I don’t know if you are also a Maya user as well, but we have already finished that system for Maya.  Take a look at it if you have a chance as the Max system will be similar. 

You mentioned light exports as well.  This isn’t currently supported, but there has been talk of that internally here at StudioGPU.  With that said, I do not think your assessment of placing lights in MSP is fair.  We all have our preferences, yes, but as a veteran CG artist and someone who has used the UIs and lighting systems in all the major applications, I feel that the lighting workflow was designed specifically with the artist in mind.

That’s not really so.
There are some big drawbacks when moving lights around (and this is what most users will be doing most of the time) and how lights are visualised.

I did notice that compared to the first version I used where it was quite difficult to select the widget arrow in a wide view (zoomed out) that seems to work better now, or maybe I just got used to it. 

Still, here’s some things to consider:
1.  When I try to push the widget in Z in the editor view it seems to be locked.  The attached image shows this condition.

2.  You can only move in one axis at a time.  Note the nice XY squares in the 3DSMax widget.

3.  You can’t move the widget beyond the borders of the current view.  In 3DSMax you can move right to the screen border.  This is important because if I have a light in a zoomed in viewport I can’t move it broadly, and have to zoom out, which can lead to disorientation in a complex scene.

4.  The frustrum/texture toggles, even if turned off for every light before the scene is saved, will all turn back on again after reloading.  These are nice to toggle off to get a clear view of the scene, and when they’re jumping back on it sometimes looks like the light values in the scene have gone whacky (especially if the light’s head is near the camera or flush with scene geometry).

5. It would be nice to have a select lights only filter for selection, because where lights overlap geometry we’re forced to select lights in the object list rather than directly in the view.  Maybe this exists and I didn’t spot it ... a natural place to expect it might be under Edit/Pick Mode (with a hotkey assignable).

6. The numerical spinners in MSP have no user friendly assists at all.  In 3DSMax, and most other 3D software, you can do things such as Right click spinners to zero out a value.  You can CTL slide on the spinner for larger movements and ALT slide on the spinner for finer movements.  You can roll the spinner with the mouse (MSP only lets me click one by one, which is extremely tedious).

7. There seems to be no snap or align tools in MSP.  Given it’s mostly an assembly environment, this seems a big oversight.  It would be nice to align a light or target to a surface, not to mention snapping objects together.

Tom

Tom,

I decided to take 40 min and see were I could get with this scene.  I have enclosed a few stills of my work thus far.  I am a little confused regarding your comments on reassign the texture in machstudio….  the textures came over fine, I did have to manipulate shaders.  However, this would be true if I were to render this scene in Max, as all of the shaders are standard, and I would be rendering with Vray, with Vray Materials.  I am in agreement with you on a lot of your comments regarding UI and how one interacts with lights, I have been giving the guys at MSP the benifit of the dought the they will work on this further in future releases.  I think however you might be missing the point by focusing only on stills, I think the real benefit of MSP is producing animations and offering a quick method of visualization.  I think comparing it to Maxwell, while be it a constructive comparison when trying to maintain a specific quality level, is selling MSP short. I rendered my frames in about 1 min each and while the quality could definately be pushed there is a lot to be said for being able to create an animation out of this.  Not what everyone is looking for though.  Just my two cent anyhow.  I am glad to see other are pushing these guys to develop more and faster.

PS.. I would create an animation, however my wife is telling me I must go to bed….  If anyone cares I would be happy to spit one out tomorrow.

Hi, about texture re-assignment.  I prepared the scene in Maxwell first, so all those textures don’t port out to MSP.  So I had to do another pass to get them back to standard type, and also I’d moved the folder with the files in it.  Nothing to do with MSP, but boring.  But anyway - the bump textures off a standard material don’t come across (at least not with normal maps).  As I recall, neither do opacity, spec or any other map except diffuse.

I would like to see animations of this!

Hope I’m not stepping on any toes… But since we’re all playing with the same file (:)) Thought I’ll throw a quick animation up. This represents about an hour + of lighting work, not much Material work. I let the key light and HDR exposures do most of the work for me. Can tweak a little longer with the 6 hours left in the day (;))

rendered at 852x480 low-medium AA samples. 480 frames, render time =25 minutes.

On this topic, I think this is really interesting:

http://www.crytek.com/technology/presentations/

It is about realtime indirect illumination.  I noticed that are using something similar to sponza for it.
I think they added banners to it.

Tom