3DS max help please with the RTT renderings

[Anakin Crystal]

Well, i must say i havent been around much and its been a while since i posted on the SL Forums. Recently i have started a project in 3DS max 2013 and i remember i had a problem before with the renderings in Second life, as i use the RTT alot.

 

As i have shown in my pictures as you can see theeres alot of shadows, of course i like that as some im sure they do to....but it has made my textures really blurry as you can see in some.  

 

So before you start telling me what to do or if youre offering advice..let me tell what i have done in my set up in 3ds max. 

- I use the default scanline, i have used MR, when i usd MR with raytraced shadows,  it seems to make my textures blurry just like in the pictures below. So, i put everything to default.. scanline is default with no light, just a simple RTT and it looks like what i posted in my pictures. 

I did try to set my Max layout setting and UI to default, and that didnt help either. So my question is do i nmeed to scratch this project and do all over again? 

 

Pictures below: 

 

[IMG]http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/Snapshot_003_zpsaaaf323f.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/Snapshot_002_zps5fd9aa47.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/Snapshot_005_zpsf41023c6.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/Snapshot_004_zps963259ff.png[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/Snapshot_001_zps80767303.png[/IMG]

As you can see..the buil;d has black lines around it as well... shadows ... thats not what i wanted either, but even with the deafult scanline it shouldnt even do that ... 

In the picture below is a SS of my settings in 3DS max. may not  able to see it all but i got what i could. 

[IMG]http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/3dsmax2013issue_zps140c5f5d.png[/IMG]

 

Thank you all for helping. 

 

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

If the AO comes out too dark with RTT you could try to change the Gamma Values to around 2.0 / 2.5 by putting a gamma & gain map as master. (but choose to not have it reverse the gamma correction in that case). 
Or try to disable the gamma correction completely while rendering.

Or you try to make your AO bakes with Mental Ray (

) Or Vray - if you have it - i personally find VRay still the best.

Eventhough Light tracer and skylight can help improve here in terms of not leaving dark borders where floaters are.

For instance: 
Use the Scanline renderer
Add a white material to your  geometry / model.
Add a skylight
Open RTT 's options and add a Complete Map to your output (make sure the shadows are selected in the render options 'and' the skylight)
Use the Skylight's Rays per Sample parameters to raise the quality in case you have artefacts.
Check on the actual rendered image (not in the preview window ) they mostly have a different look and outcome.
On a side nodte: It still might leave a few things to retouch in an image editor. 


It could also be a smoothing group problem, which i doubt in your case, since it's all plain walls.

For more info look here: http://wiki.polycount.com/AmbientOcclusionMap#A3ds_Max_Baking_Methods

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

It's hard to say what's the issue without seeing a bit more. You provided some good pics of the result, but I can't see your RTT settings because the picture is too small.

Talking about too small, that might be the cause of your blurriness. Can you post a picture of your UV map or RTT result? You can render to any size in 3ds max, but SL won't accept anything over 2048x2048 and it won't save anything over 1024x1024 on the servers.

If that's your issue, you can do a number of things to cure it.

1) The "dumb" way, which isn't always bad, is splitting up your object into multiple UV maps with multiple textures, increasing the canvas size.

2) You can do it the "smart" way and re-use certain parts of the texture. If a wall is repeated many times in your build, RTT one of them, then apply that texture to multiple walls. Depending on your lighting that might not always work.

3) Then there's the "special" way, which is a trade off between looks and performance (/Landimpact), just like the "dumb" adding of more texture space. You can duplicate your geometry in 3ds max and put the light texture on one of the objects with a single repeat, then a generic brick, stucco, panel or whatever texture on the other with a high repeat. In mesh objects the two textures should look like layers in photoshop, without any texture chatter in SL. You of course do need the light texture opaque-invisible rather than black-white. You also need to make sure you put the material on the correct face in SL.

Personally I prefer 2, but again, that's not always an option.

The black lines on your texture are caused by texture bleeding. You can set the padding (under the Objects to Bake rollout in the RTT window) a bit higher. Depending on the size of your output texture the padding can vary. The smaller your texture (or better the smaller your texels), the bigger the padding needs to be.

I also prefer MR over Scanline. Maybe you could increase the render values such as soft shadow precision and sampling quality. Most settings can be found under Render Setup -> Renderer. Indirect Illumination has some useful settings too, like final gather.

[Anakin Crystal]

Thank you...ill work on what you all said today...ill post back....

 

As the AO...im not using the ambient occlusion as what Codewarrior  has said, and i dont have Vray sadly....and i didnt know you could actually RTT with Vray...thanks for telling me that. 

 

But even with no light what so ever... you's think there would not be any dark borders or even any shading wouldnt you think?

 

I will also try MR, just my experience with MR i get errors and errors in my renders alot.. is that because i dont use the Arch and Design? 

What should my set up be if i use MR? Raytraced shadows? and do i need to configure anything in the "rendere? "

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Anakin Crystal wrote:

 

I will also try MR, just my experience with MR i get errors and errors in my renders alot.. is that because i dont use the Arch and Design? 

What should my set up be if i use MR? Raytraced shadows? and do i need to configure anything in the "rendere? "

 

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What kind of errors?

And to that final question... that really depends on what you are trying to achieve. If there was one "perfect setting" for mental ray or any other renderer, it would be the only option. So do you want occlusion? Do you want shadows from the sun? Do you want reflective walls? Do you want ..well I could go on and on.

[Codewarrior Congrejo]

Unfortunately i have to join what Kwak said regarding the fact that it all depends on what excatly you want to achieve. 
And that there are no 'easy - working for all cases' settings.

Sometimes even different parts in the same building require different treatment to get the best results.

Dark borders can result from many things. That i have assumed you are trying to do AO bakings is maybe based on some missing informations.

Try to explain what exactly you are going for, and at which steps you get exactly which errors,  that makes it easier to give some tips =)

[Anakin Crystal]

Ty all again...

Kwakkelde Kwak i get a bitmap error...."fail to create bitmap" when i use MR, even though i still processes the file apparently..i think i will get a SS of that to also if you need me to...

Ok ive also posted 2 maps, both were done in the RTT..

http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/test_zpsacc3073c.jpg

 

http://i1147.photobucket.com/albums/o548/Anakinsw2010/shoptest_zpsffac49b0.jpg

 

The last map, as you can see has no shadows whatsoever. i didnt even use a light, just a standard RTT..

 

And Codewarrior, yes i am trying to a AO, but its not coming   out right... with all this blurryness in the textures...even if i use MR, i still the blurryness and dark borders, thats even with out a "light" and no shadows are disabled...so you tell me...lol...

In all honesty this is a bit fustrating, perhaps i could add any of you to could add me to Skype or i can email my project files? , i really would like to know waht i am doing wrong... 

My Skype name is anakinsw2010

PS: i did a ao map and a diffuse map, merged them in PS, still its blurry when its uploaded to SL....or any other world.  

Thanks all...

 

 

[Kwakkelde Kwak]

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Anakin Crystal wrote:

Kwakkelde Kwak i get a bitmap error...."fail to create bitmap" when i use MR, even though i still processes the file apparently..i think i will get a SS of that to also if you need me to...

---

From what I read that error indicates some memory issues. Maybe the model is simply too big for the amount of RAM you have. MR can be very RAM consuming. You might be able to fix this by closing all other programs. You could also try to split up your UV map into several ones, to be honest I'm not sure if this will reduce memory use, but it sounds logical.

How much RAM do you have? If I render big scenes (bigger than your build without a doubt) I sometimes see memory use of over 8 GB. You can see the physical memory use of 3ds max in the "rendering" window. You can see your total memory use in the taskmanager.

---

 with all this blurryness in the textures...even if i use MR, i still the blurryness and dark borders, thats even with out a "light" and no shadows are disabled...

---

The blurryness is most certainly caused by the layout of your UV map (the first of the two and parts of the second). Going by the looks of the first map, you'd need a texture a lot bigger for any sharp renderings. As I said, 1024 is the limit, so I like to refer to the 3 options I gave you earlier. The map, organized as it might look, isn't very efficient. Most of it is black and therefor wasted.

If you have a surface of let's say 5x5 meter somewhere on your object, you want it to have 256x256 pixels on the UV map. (the higher the sharper, but this ratio seems to work for me for buildings in most cases). That is about 50 pixels per meter, or one pixel for every two centimeter. For reference, the biggest part in your first UV map, the cross in the lower left corner,  is about 170x170 pixels.

To make better use of the entire canvas, try to weld as much as you can in the UV editor instead of using so many separate islands. On these welds you'll also lose the black borders then, because there is no black that can bleed onto your UV islands. When you weld together as much as you can, you can scale your islands up, resulting in more detail.

You can either move, rotate and weld in the UV layout you have now or select certain faces on your model which are connected and unwrap those as a group.

By the looks of your building and UV map, you probably need to assign multiple materials in 3ds max, resulting in multiple faces in SL. You can use up to 8. As far as I know you can't RTT a single material, if anyone knows if this is possible please let us know. What you can do is detach all individual materials from one another, RTT all of them then attach them again.

Don't forget to set the padding in the RTT window to get rid of the black lines remaining.