3ds Max 2011 Announced
If you have not seen the news yet, 3ds Max 2011 has been announced by Autodesk. See Ken P’s blog at: http://area.autodesk.com/blogs/ken/3ds_max_2011_announced The software was also demonstrated at the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC) on March 11th through 13th. There are a lot of new features in Max, but also a lot of new stuff for Maya and Softimage 2011. Those videos will be available soon on www.area.autodesk.com
I can’t discuss anything beyond what has been released so far, and as I understand it 3ds Max Design 2011 will be announced at a later date. Being involved with the alpha, beta and release candidate (RC) versions of the software is an interesting process. It is fun, of course, to hear about the new details being introduced into the software, and it is also interesting to hear some of the reasons things are the way they are. Suffice it to say that I think the developers are fighting the good fight to get you the reliable tools you need to get the job done, and to get the resources to get the development accomplished. It isn’t always what a particular user might like, but the world is full of compromises. There is never infinite resources for the things we want to see accomplished. I think with this release people will see things start to come together, and the Excalibur information Autodesk released helped to explain the path they are taking.
I like to see them bring in tools from other developers, and the new Slate Material Editor (SME) is a welcome addition. Based on the Node Joe editor, it is one tool that saw a lot of internal development from Autodesk; it wasn’t a simple drop-in. Since it was continually changing during the writing of the book, Chapter 2, “Materials and Maps”, was a bit of a moving target and saw a lot of revisions in the many months I worked on the book. The final release of Max has a couple subtle differences, and I’ll see if anyone notices. :)
My opinion of the SME is that it will greatly help people at all levels create and manage materials. It will particularly help new users that are typically confused by the way that you navigate materials and maps in legacy Max; the user adds a bitmap to a material and the UI switches to the bitmap settings, and they don’t know how to get back to the parent level or where they are and why their settings disappeared. Hopefully they will eventually find the Material/Map Navigator button, or the Up To Parent button, but I have dealt with a lot of new users that have a very hard time getting their head around the editor. With the SME everything is visible and you see the connections between maps and materials. Much better, IMHO, and a targeted response by Autodesk in improving workflow. The Excalibur information promises more node-based workflow in Max, so the next few years will be exciting times in the Max world.
Another feature that has been announced is the Quicksilver rendering engine. This is a GPU-based renderer and a pretty cool tool. Do not expect it to run well on old and/or low-end graphics cards. A newer card with 1gb of memory (or more) is likely to give you the features and speed that you are expecting from the renderer. It isn’t mental ray, but for many scenes and on the right hardware it can burn through images pretty quickly.
The new functionality of Containers is another welcome addition. I have been slow to warm up to containers, I’ve had a few issues, however the new ability to make local ‘reference-like’ edits to the objects may sway me into using these more often. The XRef Scene functionality is what I typically use when importing and sharing external geometry.
Ken mentions “Viewport Display of 3ds Max Materials”. Each new release of Max has brought additional functionality to the viewport Hardware Shading functionality, and this is an area of serious development at Autodesk, as is the Quicksilver renderer. The better your video card the better it works, and a nice game-rated card gives an excellent preview of your rendering in the viewwport.
3ds Max Composite, based on the Toxik application, is another welcome addition. In Chapter 10 “mr for Design” I cover a few basics for compositing an image, however Composite is a big application and spending some quality time with the introduction tutorials, and going over the training DVDs from Ken LaRue’s company www.thestreetproductions.com will give you a firm foundation for effectively using this program. I still use Combustion but as I move from PNG and RPF files to OpenEXR using Composite will be essential. The only drawback to Composite is that it shares a license with Max and only runs on the same workstation as Max; you can’t run it on a separate workstation from Max.
Ken P’s 3ds Max 2011 announcement makes mention of “mental ray 2011″, which is mental ray 3.8. I understand that Ken mentioned on CGTalk that iray is not going to be included with Max 2011 or any mr3.8 Autodesk applications, and I believe that it really comes down to keeping only production-ready tools in the program. The iray application was still in development when the 2011 features were set in stone an completing the current toolset was the focus. I hope that it will come out as a subscription benefit down the line, but Autodesk does not tell the beta testers about their future plans and I have no inside information.
One very cool addition to Max 2011 is the ability to control mental ray via string options. For instance, in MAXScript, you can perform a few options to access mental ray and then send a character string such as:
“importons” on
…to enable that feature. I will most assuredly have more on using mental ray strings here on the web site, and I’m working on a few things now to help optimize your mental ray settings.
As far as Importons and Irradiance Particles, Max Tarpini will be coming out with a new plugin that is compatible with Max 2011. Although Max 2011 is plugin compatible with plugins for Max 2010, mental ray has changed and so must Max T’s plugin. The Max 2011 ctrl.ghost plugin shipping with the book worked in earlier betas but broke at some point. You can access my information on the ctrl.ghost plugins at:
I’ll be adding an article on the updated ctrl.ghost and mental ray functionality once 3ds Max/Design is released.
Jenni
Final DVD burned, and another book?
I got the DVD image from Wiley’s production group late last week, and went through the files and checked them again for accuracy. Autodesk changed a few minor things in the latest build so I changed a few files so they will open correctly and find the files they need.
Wiley moved all the book files into a sub-folder to work with their Flash menus, so people will hopefully figure out to go to the “Lesson Files” folder for the folders mentioned in the book. They also moved the IPF files for Irradiance Particles into a separate folder, and again I’m sure people will figure out where the pre-computed files are located.
A friend of mine at NVIDIA asked me if I would be interested in writing a book about the new iray application, which would be great I’m sure, so I’m starting to put together some ideas for what to cover. The book would not be specific to 3ds Max/Design and would potentially cover products from Autodesk and other developers like Dassault. Interesting? Is that something you would like to see?
Jenni
Book development winding down, and more content
At this stage of the game I am busy editing PDFs from the typesetter and making a few changes here and there in wording and also in the images provided with the book. The images, when large and/or viewed on the computer, are clear and understandable. However once they are shrunk to fit on the page sometimes the details you need to see in order to understand my point are blended away. Chapter 3, in particular, I went through and re-rendered a number of images to blow up regions and also boosted the brightness and contrast on some to make the point and display the effect I desired.
I’m also working on additional materials for educators – PowerPoint presentations on each chapter, videos, and additional exercises. There were a lot of things that didn’t make it into the book, despite the generous page count, and I’ll be working through those examples in the coming months. I’m not sure how much will be available free and what may be available in another format, perhaps a DVD ‘extras’. Chapter video introductions/overviews are planned to be made available free on the web site once they are completed. I’m providing these as I believe that some things will be easier to grasp as videos, and being able to hear, see, and do are important to learning and memory.
If you have specific training materials you would find valuable, please let me know. I appreciate feedback as I work to develop the materials.
Jenni
New Author Page at Amazon.com
I now have an Author’s page at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0033S6KIW
There isn’t anything there quite yet, but now the blog is linked and entries will begin to be mirrored via RSS feed.
Jenni
“Mastering mental ray” now available for pre-sale at Amazon.
You can now pre-order the book, and if you use this link http://tinyurl.com/y94ase4 I will make an extra two dollars. Sweet!
It is actually pretty exciting for me, and signals I am nearing the end of the development of the book. I’m getting things organized right now for the chapter video introductions and rendering a few things for the DVD content.
Jenni
Caustics Animation and Book Update
Caustics example from "Mastering mental ray"
My technical Editor Mark Gerhard asked to have an animation made of one of the caustics demos scenes from Chapter 6, “Global Illumination and Caustics”, shown above. The link to the rotating torus image is http://www.mentalray4design.com/mental_ray/Caustics.mov (11mb).
The book is coming along well, and I’m working on edits from a variety of editors, and hope to be finished quite soon. Chapter 2, “Materials and Maps” got a reworking to reduce content in some areas and increase it in others, adding more focus on the Arch & Design material rather than other optimizations in ProMaterials. I’v also go through second drafts of chapters 6, 8, 9 and 10. I’m now going through some edits for a second draft of Chapter 7, “Importons and Irradiance Particles” and then will be looking at chapter overview videos.
Much thanks goes out to Sebastian Dosch of Dosch Design (www.doschdesign.com) for providing a car model and HDRI environments for the book!
Jenni
Bokeh Lens Effect, Environment Blur, and Blackbody Radiator
A Bokeh effect is a lens effect whereas distant objects are blurred into a specific shape. With a real camera that pattern’s shape usually matches the number of blades that make up the iris of the camera. This image shows DOF/Bokeh with a custom “plus” shaped image.
A sample image showing DOF and Bokeh effects
You can create your own tiny images of various shapes to control how rays are blurred in the distance.
The Bokeh shader in Max 2010 is hidden from the user interface, however it can be easily made available to you. Located in the file:
C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2010\mentalray\shaders_standard\include
is the file architectural_max.mi which includes the lines:
gui “gui_mia_lens_bokeh” {
control “Global” ”Global” (
“uiName” ”Arch: DOF / Bokeh”,
“hidden”
First Draft of Chapter 10 Done
Finally – the first draft of Chapter 10 is done, the last chapter. It was great to be able to write, “In this last section of the book I cover…”. Now it is a matter of getting back to the numerous edits and corrections for the previous chapters. I get chapters back from various editors at random times. Each editor has their specialty, and the things they are looking for and correct. Mariann is my Acquisitions Editor (AE) and is the one that pitched the book internally at Wiley and is overseeing things. Mark is my Technical Editor (TE) and makes sure everything works and is correct. Jen is my Development Editor (DE) and is responsible for overall content, structure, and deadlines. Now there are Copy Editors (CE) involved as chapters get finalized. The CE is the last stage before actual typesetting, I believe. I’ll then have a PDF to sign off on, although I can still make minor edits as long as the length of a page isn’t increased.
For the final round of edits from the Copy Editor I find that many things are changed that completely change the meaning of what I wrote. They will misinterpret what the technical term represents and rearrange the sentence to match what they think it means, and it then makes no sense at all. So I have to spend a lot of time picking through every edit they made to see if what they changed still makes sense. Reading through their edits, though, will help with my writing as I am training myself to get it right the first time instead of needing them to fix it and send it back for me to then pick through and validate. I can be trained! I’m going through Chapter 5, “Indirect Illumination and Final Gather” right now. Chapter 3′s doc file got corrupted by a script the Wiley provides, we think, and I have to rebuild a big chunk. The backups have the same fatal flaw, so the last rewrite that I did was mostly lost. As I tell my students, it is always easier the second time!
Because of the color format of the book I am limited in the number of pages I can write, and although 400 sounds like a lot, I have been more limited by this number than anything else. When you look at a feature, like Render Elements in Chapter 10, you have to make a decision about what will be included and what will not. You just kinda skip stuff. My instinct is to be thorough and explain every bell and whistle. This book isn’t a “mr Bible”, though, and there isn’t room for all of that, every detail, so I have had to learn to let that go.
Another thing that I didn’t expect to be as challenging was the examples. One thing that Mark, my TE, stressed to me is to make examples that can be done by people and at schools and universities that may have moderate computer resources. Throughout the examples I try to keep things lean and point out ways that you can speed up the rendering of an image. I also provide pre-computed Final Gather, GI and Irradiance Particle files, along with the final result images so that you don’t even have to wait for the image to render. As an instructor, though, I don’t necessarily want the students to have everything handed to them. As Mark says, though, at a seminar you don’t have the luxury of waiting 30, 60, 90 minutes for a rendering.
So, do you scale down the examples to fit the least common denominator of computer or available seminar time? I’m being a bit facetious, but the book is “Mastering mental ray” not “Sorta Mastering mental ray”. I had heard a comment from a Max user talking about a different mr book with the comment “I never look at these books and thing ‘Wow’ and see great examples.” I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea. So I weigh these things as I look at the examples I’m creating. There will definitely be extra projects on the DVD, whether it is content taken out of the book or large projects that were not reasonable to render.
I got a draft copy of the cover concept, and rather than their typical “Mastering” cover they have been using it shows a Sponza Palace Atrium image from the book, which is great. The name has also been shortened to just “Mastering mental ray”, and on their end it always said “Mastering mental ray”, but I think showing the application will certainly help users. Everything, with few exceptions, is geared towards 3ds Max 2010. I even have a few Max 2009 files, but not many. I’ll try and make some FBX files for anything that can’t be opened in 2009. It go to be too much to try and get it all working as Max 2009.
Cover Concept for Mastering mental ray
Jenni
Chapters 7, 8 and 9 done, and in the home stretch.
The first drafts of Chapter 7, “Importons and Irradiance Particles”, Chapter 8, “Effects”, and Chapter 9, “mr for Architecture” were completed over the last few weeks. The final chapter, “mr for Design”, is due on the 7th, and then I start getting back into revisions and corrections to the remaining chapters.
The mental ray “web brain” is being updated regularly: http://webbrain.com/u/10FG It is still very-much in development, but new content appears regularly, and this will accelerate as I get into the final stages of the book. The downloadable brain will not be available until after the book ships. It is my hope that this becomes a companion to users of the book, and mental ray/3ds Max users in general. I appreciate your feedback.
We (4DA) got exceptionally busy with a couple rush projects, so that set me a bit behind where I need to be for the book. We completed an architectural animation and a huge solar power plant animation in the course of two weeks. The solar power project, in particular, was exceptionally challenging. We did a project for this group last spring and had a lot of the 3d models cleaned-up and ready, however we enlisted the help of my friend George Matos, Melissa Marcy of Virtuality, and Tom Munz of Pulse Studios. We’ll get some images up in the gallery, once the gallery is in-place. I’m thinking about switching from the PHPBB to the CPG-Nuke CMS to combine PHBB with the Coppermine photo gallery, as I’ve done with other sites.
Our 3December celebration is on December 3rd 2009 at Flashpoint Academy in Chicago, and it looks like it will be wall-to-wall-people and a great event!
More soon!
Jenni
Back to the book..k
The first draft of Chapter 6 is done.
The first draft of Chapter 6, “Global Illumination and Caustics” is done. As usual I’ll probably find a few things I missed in the draft, but that is why it is called a ‘draft’, right? And that is why I have great Technical and Development Editors.
GI Photon Path
Books, it seems, have a number of things that affect their content. The author, certainly, and their ideas for what should and should not be there, but also the real limitations of what can fit into the space you have allocated. The list of things I’d like to cover certainly far exceeds both my time to write and the pages I have allocated to the book. Six chapters down, at least for first run-troughs, and four to go. The way things are tracking I’ll have considerably more pages that I will be able to use, and some things may get put onto the DVD as bonus material for each chapter, or even the last couple chapters that were more about using other applications with Max and mental ray, may get turned into bonus content, which will work well. That may let me add more back into the earlier chapters without having to be concerned about hitting the top-end early.
Sponza Visual Diagnostics Image
The Wiley’s Acquisitions Editor once said to me that authors tend to over-write, and they have certainly pushed for me to keep it to-the-point and “tight”. I think about that a lot as I am working, and will often revisit paragraphs and reword them, sometimes reducing things considerably. Often times the feedback from the editors has been to add additional explanations and examples, and that has certainly helped improve the content. Overworking paragraphs and having too much time to write can have a negative effect, too, as I used to jump into a paragraph and rework it to later find that I had done the same thing and added similar thoughts elsewhere. Being conscience of those issues, and printing out the entire chapter and putting it up on your wall or spread out on the floor to get the ‘big picture’ certainly helps with the process. And having good editors. :)
Caustics Demo
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