Multi-Platform Clay Wip Renders

[ragupasta]

Ok, this thread is due to an on-going heated discussions in the speed modeling forum, about clay style images. The main concern is that, not every-one knows how to create a clay environment for their renders. Hopefully this thread will broaden the horizons for those people who have not been in the game long enough to know the process of how to achieve it.

So I will make a start on the 3ds Max version of the tutorial. First I will show you a non-clay wip render.......



Clay....




Notice on the "Clay" image, the subtle shadows surrounding the areas of detail. This is why "Clay" renders are good for seeing the work and effort put into your models. In 3ds Max, the methodology is very, very simple, and as you have seen, it holds a good end product.

So.......

Open a fresh 3ds Max scene, and add a plane, 200x200, with 1x1 segments.



Enable Autogrid, and add a; Box
Sphere
Torus



Next Press 8 on the keyboard, or go Menu--->Rendering--->Environment, then change the background colour from black, to a dark grey. RGB:107, 107, 107 will do fine.



Add a standard grey shader to the box, sphere and torus.

Next, under the light tab on the create menu, add a skylight to the scene......



Next, bring up the render dialog (F10, or Menu--->Rendering--->Renderer), and choose the Advanced lighting tab. Inside this tab, select Light-tracer from the drop-down menu, and the default setting are good enough. However if your computer is chugging along, then lower the "Rays/samples" down to about 100.
NOTE: The lower the samples, the more blotchy the render will be.



Next, on the Renderer tab, choose Catmul-rom from the drop-down Anti-alias box, (Area is the default setting)...



Next choose a new material, and hit standard, then choose a "Matte/Shadow" material, and apply this to the ground plane.



Next Hit render...........



Notice the "Matte/Shadow" material renders the plane the same as the background, but catching the subtle shadows. Thats all there is to a nice clay render in Max.
Any questions you may have, please ask, and I/other Game-art users will happily help

Maya GI_Joe

First go this site, and download the GI_Joe script. http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downlo...misc/1321.html

You will end up with 2 files. A mel script GI_Joe file, and a GI_Joe light file. You need to navigate into Maya folder inside my documents. Your Explorer URL should be like this...
C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USERNAME\My Documents\maya\YOUR VERSION OF MAYA\scripts
Once this is done, we need to alter the mel file, to let Maya know exactly where the script can be found. So we need to open the GI_Joe.mel file in notepad. Once opened, look down a little way, until you see, where it tells you to add the information on line 57. Then we add the Explorer URL from the previous stage. (See Piccy)



Save the file, but DON'T change the name/extension. Seems silly, but some people change things and don't know why it doesn't work. .

Open Maya.........

Create a scene, I have a plane, torus, 3xspheres, 2xboxes, and a cone. I have beveled the edges of the boxes to catch the light, (Hopefully ).



Ok, now we will call the GI script, by clicking on the white script bar at the bottom, and typing "GI_Joe" in it, (Exactly like that, but without the "")



Next we get a pre-load screen. As a rule of thumb, the more complex the geometry/scene, the higher you choose, but for this scene, im going to choose 64, and 64. Then hit create.



Next, minimise the GI_Joe settings box, and you will see a scary looking spiky sphere. Just select the sphere, and keep hitting the up arrow key, until you get to the top of the stack, then create a layer, and turn it's visibility off.



Next, View--->Camera settings--->Resolution Gate, and centralize your scene. Open up the GI Joe settings window, if you canceled it instead of minimizing it, then type "GI_Joe" in the script bar again.
Ok in the settings we are intersted in the skyattributes and shadow attributes, and the ground attributes, and shadow attributes as well.



Sky attribs: Colour, and Intensity, are what you will need to play around with, as everytime it will be different.
Shadow Dmap resolution. Treat this as you would a texture map. 128, 256, 512, 1024 ect, ect. If you shadows are too big, then change the bias setting.

The ground attribs. Means light coming from the bottom of the sphere upwards, where skylight means its from the top coming downwards.

Its cool being able to have a separate colour coming upwards, to what is coming down.

Change your render globals, Maya software, to production quality.
Here is the render, and settings screenie.

I have my settings on production quality. The intensity I have increased to 0.3 for the sky, and 0.15 for the ground, and changed the colour to a off-white.



Final render.....



Have fun playing with GI_Joe!!!!







****RESERVED FOR XSI****

[glynnsmith]

I tend to use Mental Ray and GI to achieve my soft shadow renders. I've known about light tracer for some time but haven't ever used it since I feel MR + GI does pretty much the same kind of thing.

What differences are there between the 2 rendering techniques, and is there much of a speed difference between them, do you know?

Nice tutorial. I think I might have a go with Light Tracer from the quality of your render.

Cheers!

G

[TychoCelchuuu]

You don't really have to bother doing one for Maya; Game Artist already has a Maya tutorial that give syou clay renders. Of course, if you want to write it up to show people how to do it with true GI and stuff instead of ambient occlusion, you'd probably get some props

[StefanH]

this might be a dumb question, because i did already quite some renders. But most of the time i use simple spotlights and ambient occlusion to do the job.
What exactly is the job of the light tracer?
Skylight seems to work just fine without it. only on normal mapped objects it's fcked up. Is that because i never used light tracer?

[weasel.acuh5o]

Originally Posted by StefanH

this might be a dumb question, because i did already quite some renders. But most of the time i use simple spotlights and ambient occlusion to do the job.
What exactly is the job of the light tracer?
Skylight seems to work just fine without it. only on normal mapped objects it's fcked up. Is that because i never used light tracer?

If I got it right the light tracer is basically a somewhat cheaper radiosity render (I think it's just not trying to do everything a 100% pshysically correct, but I don't know for sure). you get the GI look and color bleed if you want it and a bunch more settings to play with. I usually get the rendering time down quite a bit without loosing much image quality compared to a standard skylight by just tweaking the values. definitely worth a look in the reference files.

[ragupasta]

Originally Posted by glynnsmith

What differences are there between the 2 rendering techniques, and is there much of a speed difference between them, do you know?

I think the speed is very similar as each other, and as for the differences, I think it's really its purely preference, as they both hold good results.

Originally Posted by TychoCelchuuu

You don't really have to bother doing one for Maya;

Thats a ambient tutorial. Im thinking about GIJoe, from downloading, installing, and finished render.

Originally Posted by StefanH

What exactly is the job of the light tracer?

I think that weasel.acuh5o pretty much said it all.

[benclark]

an indepth GIJoe tutorial would be great. I used to use it alot in Maya 6+7 but I never eally experimented much with it, I always just used defaults. I've also never been able to get it to work in Maya8, anyway I'm looking forward to the tutorial

[artmonkey92]

wow! this tutorial is pretty great, thanks a lot! love images for clarification :P

[ragupasta]

***UPDATED FIRST POST TO INCLUDE MAYA TUTE***

[Dennispls]

Is it me or is the 3dmax quality way better than the maya renders?
anyway good tuts man will be very helpfull