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Photo-realism: which renderer, where get 3d-staffage from


josh

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Hey guys!

 

I am trying to get renderings of my best project ever out of FormZ, but there are lots of problems with bad geometry (imported from 3dwarehouse..) and the endless possibilities of render-options, finalgather-options and so on.

 

What I need:

 

1. where can I get realistic and full-3d trees, cars and people from (with good geometry!)? Not that jpg-cutout-stuff. Doesn't matter if its not free, but I don't want to pay 50$ each tree (which then looses its materials or so ), as I need a lot of different ones...

 

2. I need a user-friendly rendermachine. I would like to have all possibilities in one window and not search around for cryptic problems in the whole program. I only know Maxwell and Thea. Anyone with experience, if things there work as one expects?

 

Sorry to the Autodesys-staff, I really appreciate your support, but rendering with formZs onboard-tools for me is hell. Rendering-interface here, final gather stuff there, some checkboxes in layer-options and not one ready-to-render set for certain light-atmospheres.

I need something more like in archicad, push the button and it renders with all nice things AO, FG and so on - as one expects.

 

THANKS :)

 

And here is a rendering of the exterior - only problems with interiors...

post-20795-0-11641300-1476777640_thumb.jpg

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Hi Josh.

What a beautiful project! May I share it on my Pinterest board for geodesic houses?
 
Speaking trees: it is definitely Xfrog. If you are unlucky PC user there is an app for that. If you are happy Mac user there is not but you still can buy plants models from them. The only small tweak is to assign black to transparent in leafs materials. After that you will have pretty realistic plants. And they have a lot of free stuff.
In Thea forum you mignt also find good trees models in Thea model format for use  as proxies.
As for the cars: you can find good ones at Turbosquid and posiibly for less money at CGTrader. I myself found plenty of them at 3D Warehouse and converted them to FZ format. 
 
And definitely you will find lots of yseful models at my FormZ files repository formz.xyz where you can not only download them but also share your files with the others.  :)
 
When it comes to rendering engine there are even 3 decent options nowdays: Maxwell, Thea and V-Ray. Two last are in beta. However Thea is pretty mature. There is not a big deal to learn any of them as they are more or less similar in approach. Depending on what computing power you have and how deep is your pocket you may use anyone. Maxwell is most simple in setup IMHO while Thea is most flexible and requires less resources.
 
Best,
Anton
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Hi Josh,

 

With the Maxwell plugin, you can place these trees as Referenced MXS:

http://www.doschdesign.com/products/3d/Trees_Conifers_V3_for_Maxwell_Render.html

 

I purchased these for my client work and they work fine. I did change some settings on the MXMs they ship with - I thought the bark on the trees was a bit too colorful so I turned the saturation of the texture maps down a bit.

 

Here are two test renderings using those trees:

 

post-32-0-12559900-1476808434_thumb.jpg

post-32-0-75738800-1476808384_thumb.png

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I personally don't use 3D trees since I strive for photo realism and I have spent two decades photographing and masking trees and entourage.  When I did try to use 3D trees I experimented with a program called Onyx Tree.  The geometry of just a few trees bogged down the program way too much.  I haven't tried XFrog but I know it is becoming the new standard for most programs.  There is also a program called Vue from e-on  that is interesting for creating whole worlds with entourage.  I have imported my Form.z models into it and it worked fairly well.  It also has some great atmospheric render options. 

 

For things like cars and furniture the best source I have found is 3DSky.  Their models are great and considerably cheaper than TurboSquid and many are free.  They also come in OBJ format which I find is best for importing. 

 

As for render engines IMHO exteriors are still best done in Form.z and interiors in Maxwell or Thea.  I have not used Thea yet but I am about to buy it this week.  Maxwell gives great results but it comes at a steep cost in both software, hardware and time.  The greatest strength of Maxwell is the material editor along with the ability to adjust all lights post production.  So after a 7 hour render you can turn the interior scene from daylight to night in seconds.  My clients love this feature.

AW

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Wow, thanks a lot! Now I have some things to check out :)

Today I tried with Thea.. I am not very convinced so far, unstable and not that user-friendly I'd wish.

I will try Maxwell tomorrow..

 

And please don't share the rendering, it's a project I am developing for almost 2years, bundling 12years of experience, and it's planned to be published.

There will be 14 interior renderings, so when my problems are solved I will post the redults first here :)

 

For now only the support team knows the inside.. ;-))

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Hey guys!

 

I am trying to get renderings of my best project ever out of FormZ, but there are lots of problems with bad geometry (imported from 3dwarehouse..) and the endless possibilities of render-options, finalgather-options and so on.

 

What I need:

 

1. where can I get realistic and full-3d trees, cars and people from (with good geometry!)? Not that jpg-cutout-stuff. Doesn't matter if its not free, but I don't want to pay 50$ each tree (which then looses its materials or so ), as I need a lot of different ones...

 

2. I need a user-friendly rendermachine. I would like to have all possibilities in one window and not search around for cryptic problems in the whole program. I only know Maxwell and Thea. Anyone with experience, if things there work as one expects?

 

Sorry to the Autodesys-staff, I really appreciate your support, but rendering with formZs onboard-tools for me is hell. Rendering-interface here, final gather stuff there, some checkboxes in layer-options and not one ready-to-render set for certain light-atmospheres.

I need something more like in archicad, push the button and it renders with all nice things AO, FG and so on - as one expects.

 

THANKS :)

 

And here is a rendering of the exterior - only problems with interiors...

PLEASE DO NOT SHARE THE RENDERING thank you

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My experience with both Thea and Maxwell has me leaning more toward Maxwell, however, as other have noted has a steep cost in render time. We'll see how the GPU version plays out. Still too early to know how well it does. Hopefully VRay will be released before much longer, however the forum has been very quiet. Does anyone know if they continue in development? Lately, I've been using Cinema 4D for renderings after importing FormZ models.

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Just to weigh in. I use both Maxwell and Renderzone (more Maxwell these days).

Regarding trees in Maxwell, I have used the Dosch trees for use with maxwell (placed MXS reference files), they are good.

But since not too long ago, I have been using (placed MXS reference files) from http://www.vizpark.com. I find these to give excellent results. They need some pre-work on the mxs's, but once done, the detail is superior and realistic. They have a massive library for the money.

 

Regarding 3d assets, Anton's site for FormZ is growing, go there first before anywhere else. Otherwise I find Dosch models to be clean enough. Their maxwell cars (although limited) are really good.

 

Des

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Hi Josh,

 

With the Maxwell plugin, you can place these trees as Referenced MXS:

http://www.doschdesign.com/products/3d/Trees_Conifers_V3_for_Maxwell_Render.html

 

I purchased these for my client work and they work fine. I did change some settings on the MXMs they ship with - I thought the bark on the trees was a bit too colorful so I turned the saturation of the texture maps down a bit.

 

Here are two test renderings using those trees:

 

attachicon.giflakeshore_011-View-3-2.jpg

attachicon.giftree-test-sunset-04-noview-1.png

 

Hi,

 

do I need the Maxwell Studio, or is that really working with the plugin only, as you said?

 

THX, Josh

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As Pylon says, you don't *need* Studio as long as FormZ can read the geometry and correctly apply the UV's for the textures you should be fine. But depending on where you get the models from, I've found that Studio can be very helpful for making the MXS files. The libraries that Des is referring to offers FBX & OBJ models. It would be nice to know if they can be properly imported into FormZ and turned into MXS files without Studio, since FormZ now has the FBX importer and Studio is now a standalone purchase with v4 of Maxwell Render.

 

 

 

Hi Josh,

 

You do not need Studio to set up referenced scenes (in this case, MXS entourage). This functionality is available through the Maxwell for formZ plugin directly.

 

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Evan,

 

Re: Models commercially available as MXS files:

Studio is a useful application, but it shouldn't be necessary for use with commercially available entourage that is delivered as MXS files. When using referenced MXSs, the plugin does not read the geometry in the MXSs or apply UVs. The plugin passes a simple file reference to the MXS, which is merged in at render time in Maxwell. And you can modify any Maxwell materials (MXMs) included with the download with the Maxwell Material Editor, which is included with the Maxwell 4 for formZ plugin.

 

Re: Models commercially available in other formats:

If formZ's OBJ / FBX importers work perfectly (the model looks correct when imported into formZ), then you should be able to export an accurate MXS version from formZ using the 'Create MXS' tool, and later use these as Maxwell references.

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Yes, I agree with all of this. My advice is with the aforementioned content not being available in MXS format natively, so when relying on FBX/OBJ importers and things go weird in FormZ, Maxwell Studio is a nice/necessary tool to have.

 

 

Evan,

 

Re: Models commercially available as MXS files:

Studio is a useful application, but it shouldn't be necessary for use with commercially available entourage that is delivered as MXS files. When using referenced MXSs, the plugin does not read the geometry in the MXSs or apply UVs. The plugin passes a simple file reference to the MXS, which is merged in at render time in Maxwell. And you can modify any Maxwell materials (MXMs) included with the download with the Maxwell Material Editor, which is included with the Maxwell 4 for formZ plugin.

 

Re: Models commercially available in other formats:

If formZ's OBJ / FBX importers work perfectly (the model looks correct when imported into formZ), then you should be able to export an accurate MXS version from formZ using the 'Create MXS' tool, and later use these as Maxwell references.

 

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