Alt-Note

by Amirhossein Erfani

Fig.19

So far we have brought the missing smooth shadows back, but it’s not yet the result we are looking for. So duplicate the layer with different Blending Modes and different Opacity values to get a better result. The new layers have various blending modes like Color Dodge, Lighter Color, Soft Light and Hard Light to get a clearer image. Take a look at this image to get the idea and take note of the blending modes and their opacity values (Fig.20).

Fig.20

So that was the studio render of our Pontiac. Remember that we chose this method to get a good render with the least time, but if you want to get the same result directly from mental ray with no post processing you can let the engine process and create the GI. To do so, using a Skylight would be good idea. Create a Skylight and activate Global Illumination and Final Gather in the mental ray settings. Test your renders with the lowest sampling quality and try out different lighting setups to get the result desired. Also using a HDRI map in the environment background will help your image to get more realistic reflections and quality.

And here’s the finished image (Fig.21).

Fig.21

by Amirhossein Erfani

Fig.14

As we are not using GI and Final Gather for this render, to get a better result we’ll blend a few passes in Photoshop. Take Fig.14 as one of the passes, but for the smooth GI simulation and perfect shadow settings we will use another method.

Press F10 to reach the Render Panel. Click on the Processing tab and check the Enable option under Material Override section. Click the material and select mental ray material from the list. Open the material editor and drag the override material to an empty slot. Select the Surface map and assign an Ambient/Reflective Occlusion to its map channel. These settings will help you get a clear pass for the missing GI. There’s a Samples parameter which could be set to 16 or 32 for test renders, 512 or 1024 for final renders. Check out the settings in Fig.15.

Fig.15

Let’s render with the parameters set as above. We will get a result like this (Fig.16).

Fig.16

by Amirhossein Erfani

Fig.09

Click on the Opacity Map Channel and set it to Bitmap. Select the black and white eagle texture and then click on the Show Map In Viewport option to set the coordinates. The final step is to apply a UVW Map modifier to the hood object, with simple planar mapping. We can also use the same method for the tires. Here you can check out the material settings and the result achieved (Fig.10 – 12).

Fig.10

Fig.11

Fig.12

After setting the materials, it’s time to set the scene for rendering our model.

We start with creating the light sources. Add a few MR Spots around the objects; I created one and copied a few more as instances, from different angles. For the white boxes, just create some boxes (or any other standard primitive) with this material. Assign a standard material to the objects, with the Self Illumination parameter set to 100, and a Falloff map for the diffuse channel. Then set both colors of Falloff to pure white, scroll sown to the Output tab and set the RGB Level Parameter a number greater than 1.5. And we’re done here (Fig.13)!

Fig.13

Page 3

by Amirhossein Erfani

Fig.05

Fig.06

In this section we are going to talk about Car Paint Material, lighting, rendering and the Photoshop settings to use to get a good result. These steps lead us to get a good render without using a lot of time. I’m going to use the mental ray engine for the rendering passes, but the method could be used with any other engines too. I’ve chosen mental ray as it is a part of 3ds Max and so we can easily apply ready to use shaders and settings.

So, let’s start with the car body material. One of the greatest materials included in mental ray is Car Paint Material, which could be found in the Materials list if you set the rendering engine to mental ray. So press F10 and in the Assign Renderer tab change the Production renderer to mental ray. Open up the material editor and choose an empty slot. Set the material to Car Paint Material. (Mental ray materials are shown with a yellow sphere).

There are a few tabs in Car Paint Material. Let’s have a brief review:

We start with setting the Diffuse Coloring for the material. Change the Base Color to our desired one but to get better results let’s use a Falloff map instead of a solid color. Also to make some tiny metallic flakes on the surface, set the flake color to a bright one (better use a Falloff map) and control the weight, size and density with the parameters available. This is how the material should look like so far (Fig.07).

Fig.07

When applying the Falloff map, change the Falloff type to Fresnel to get better results. Ok now let’s set the reflections for the material. It’s easy; first of all set the Reflection Color. We use a Falloff map for this part again. Remember, the brighter the color, the more reflective a surface we will get. But after setting the color you can change the reflection weight (both on facing and edges) to control how the surface behaves as a reflective object. There’s also a very useful parameter named Glossy Reflections Spread, which I’ll explain a little later, but just for your information this parameter helps us to make a blurry reflection on the surface, with the sample numbers under our control.

Another useful tab is the Specular Reflections. Here you can set the specular point’s size, colors and weight. Keep the first color (Specular Color #1) near to your Diffuse Base Color, but to get different results you may also want to set a different color or weight. In Fig.08 you can check out the settings I’ve used for the reflections.

Fig.08

 

Page 2

by Amirhossein Erfani

Fig.01

Fig.02

There’s something important about using the Cut and Quick Slice tools. Try to keep the mesh clean. What I mean is, don’t use the Cut tool more than it is required. The more a surface is divided into polygons, the sharper result you’ll get after smoothing, which is an advantage if you need some lines to appear sharper. But you are the one who controls this balance, so when you need a Hard Edge or a sharp line on your surface, use the Cut or Slice tools around that edge to make the smoother behave harder on that edge. Take a look at this image and notice the number of edges used to make the model appear non-smooth one around that part (Fig.03).

Fig.03

Alright, let’s talk about the smoother a little bit. When you’re editing the mesh in Editable Poly mode, there’s a tab named Subdivision Surfac”. Find it and check the Use NURBS option to smooth the model, with level one at least and level three at most. You can uncheck this option to continue editing, but do it every few changes you make to check out how your final result will look. Remember that the NURBS method performs a perfect smoothing on the model, but if you want the surface (especially a car body surface) to look nice, control the edges and polygons with the tools mentioned above.

I kept modeling a little more with the same method to get the result seen in Fig.04.

Fig.04

by Korosh Ghanbarzadeh

In the case of shaders, for the sclera you can simply choose a standard material or SSS if you like.
The settings for a standard material can be seen in Fig.21.

Fig.21

The cornea shader is the most important and there are several shaders we can choose from. But I found that a Raytrace material with the settings shown in Fig.22 worked well enough.

Fig.22

Apply all the maps and then you can move onto the rendering stage. I’d recommend using a powerful renderer like mental ray, with whatever settings you like. But before rendering, you’ll need to create two or three area lights to mimic light shapes and reflections in the eye. Don’t just use the default lights!

Once the lighting is sorted, hit “render” and enjoy the result!

My final render can be seen in Fig.23.

Thanks for your time and if you have any question, you can contact me: hkm7art@gmail.com

by Korosh Ghanbarzadeh

It’s now time to work on the eyelashes. For that, it’s better to use splines as a guide for extruding a circular surface along them. Create several different spline curves, then create a circular surface and extrude it along each spline to get different curved eyelashes. Set the taper amount parameter to make one end thinner (Fig.16).

Fig.16

You have to create different curves for lower eyelashes because those are more curved and smaller. When you’ve finished, copy these eyelashes, make a crowd and place them along the eyelids, as shown in Fig.17.

Fig.17

The direction of the eyelashes should be approximately toward the center of the eye (Fig.18).

Fig.18

Bear in the mind that it takes time to create eyelashes in a realistic way and to give them suitable randomness, so be patient!

After you’ve finished the eyelashes, create the wet layer by using a curved piped like geometry. The curvature of the wet layer should match the curvature of the cornea and lower eyelid. You can create the caruncula use a triangular geometry with some depth. Place it at the inner corner of the eye (Fig.19).

Fig.19

The time for texturing has come! Use pelt mapping to UV out the cornea and sclera. It’s better to make a whole seam at the middle of each sclera and cornea meshes, as this way you can avoid stretching. Then use Photoshop to make textures; the more realistic the texture, the more realistic the eye. There are about four maps that you need (Fig.20):

All the maps have made from the sclera diffuse color. The cornea bump map should have a subtle noise, as well as the sclera bump map.

Fig.20

by Korosh Ghanbarzadeh

Duplicate this sphere using Shift + Scale. This way you’ll have two spheres in the same place. Select the new, larger sphere and then select the edges shown in Fig.10 and chamfer them (Fig.11).

Fig.10

Fig.11

Apply a MeshSmooth modifier and play with the geometry. You want to make a bulge in the front of it, like the one shown in Fig.12.

Fig.12

Now select the inner sphere and use soft selection mode to reshape the geometry and flatten out the front of it. That area will be our iris and you should now have something like this (Fig.13).

Fig.13

The final eyeball geometry should be like this one (Fig.14).

Fig.14

Notice that the scale difference between the two spheres is very slight. For placement of the eyeball in the head mesh, I recommend using a sculpting software while the sculpting of your head mesh is being completed. After you’ve placed the eyeball correctly, import both the head and eyeball meshes back into 3ds Max (Fig.15).

Fig.15

by Korosh Ghanbarzadeh

Set the side numbers to eight, then convert it to an editable poly and delete all the middle faces, as shown in Fig.05 & Fig.06.

Fig.05

Fig.06

Weld the two parts together and you will have a nice sphere (Fig.07). Then select the edges shown in Fig.08 and connect them together.

Fig.07

Fig.08

Then select these edges and remove them (Fig.09).

Fig.09