Another texture baking test using vray renderer inside of 3d studio max 2009. I tried to use gobo-effect lighting, like the use in live performances on stage and stuff or on shows like Jay Leno, so it is not smudged or anything (this is the actual lighting set-up). The only blurry thing is the quality of the baked texture (512×512), but its just a test anyway! Its so cool, when all the textures were baked and I re-applied them to the objects, I could rotate around in viewport and see my scene fully lit (without any lights!). You can see in the thumbnails, those are sceenshots directly from max:

Here is short animation, check out the render time per frame (2 seconds!) instead of 40 seconds!

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Today, I tried doing some texture baking in 3d studio max. After I got the rendering of all the sides of my glowing light box, I added the logo in photoshop and reapplied the texture back to the same box. So, it still does look like glass, but in reality it is just a jpg texture with vraylightmtl. MORE>>

Today, I did some Mental-Ray tests:

Believe it or not, ever since I started using 3D Studio Max (5 years ago – 3d studio max 4.1 awesome!), I started using it with Scanline and later with Vray plugin. Mental-ray seemed always very complicated to me, and I didn’t bother using it, because MORE>>

Tried to use Onyx Tree Storm 6 today, pretty happy with the results. This software has so many options for making trees, it almost feels like you are God.

Realflow test 002.  Simulation time 8 minutes, rendered with 3dstudio/vray (render time ~17min), compositing in AE for depth of field and some color correction.

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Just for fun!

Testing water dynamics and caustics, using 3d studio max reactor and vray.

While making these experiments, I wrote down some notes MORE>>