Making 3dsMax Xref Scene objects Invisible to the camera

ground_Mattesurfacematte_surface_shadow

Its useful to hide objects in the scene from the camera yet still have them contribute to the lighting. This means that other objects in the scene will still receive shadows and reflections from the hidden objects. This especially important for compositing . Here are a few useful tricks to help manage xReferences in 3dsMax

Continue reading

VFX of Poldark Mines

Poldark Breakdowns: The Mines

Here is a breakdown of the work I did for Lexhag creating the mines in Poldark. Shot on location in Cornwall my job was to digitally extend the existing ruins,to rebuild the Grambler and Poldark Mines

Continue reading

VrayShadowBanner

Compositing shadows and mattes from V-Ray

Shadows help place the CG elements in the world. Literally grounding it in reality. Rendering them is easy, but for more control we need to separate the shadow layer for compositing. Creating them in 3dsMax isn’t hard and here’s how to setup V-Ray to separate the necessary passes.

Continue reading

VrayNormalMap in 3dsMax

Setting up the VrayNormalMap in 3dsMax

The correct setup for the using the VrayNormalMap in 3dsMax, isn’t hard but there are a couple of things to watch out for.

Set Maps to 100

VrayNormalMap

Green is up and Red is right

So when baking out normals for Vray textures I use the scan line renderer with the following settings.
vrayNormals_render2Texture_1vrayNormals_render2Texture_2

Note for substance designer

I believe that Green Up is OpenGL style while Green down is DirectX

Gamma is 1.0

If you’re using the recommended linear workflow using by enabling Gamma/LUT Correction in the max preferences you’ll need to make sure the Normal map loads with the correct linear Gamma.

To stop 3dsmax applying a reverse 2.2 gamma to your normal map go into the image file dialog and set the gamma to: override 1.0

The image looks wrong in the preview but will be correct in the render.

vrayNormals_gamma_Linear

People are also using a 3dsmax composite node to fix gamma issue. But the composite node is not supported in VRay RT.