Monne W.I.P.

[Monne]

Hey guys,
I'm currently in my last year studying architecture, so I thought it was about time to learn to render properly. I've got a little bit of free time at the moment, so I took of.
The programs I'd like to use are Sketchup and Maxwell.

First render project planned: a house not so far from me on which I made an essay and I got the CAD plans from.

This is how it looks like


So, today I started on modelling it in sketchup.
This is what I got so far.





Since this is 'my' first project, please post ANYTHING that you think i should consider when modelling in Sketchup for rendering in Maxwell.

Love to hear your opinions.
Monne

[pBarrelas]

Hello Dennis!! I'm glad you decided to post your project and make a WIP of it for us.
The modeling is looking good. I'm not a SU user but Russell (AKA The Allusionist) is a SU guru and he'll give his opinion in a moment!!
When modeling for rendering, you have 2 choices: model the whole project in order to produce lots of images from different POVs and video sequences or you model only what you need. Of course for the latter you already have to know what POVs you want to render or camera moves.

Since Maxwell is SOOOOOOooo SLOWWWWWww to render, you have to try to keep your polygon count as low a possible. Of course sometimes you have to get high polygon count in order to produce the desired effect.

Try to show us human level POVs two. Anyways is looking great so far!!

[Monne]

Here are some human POV's I thought to render.

Ground level:



Basement:

On the right side of the basement is a 'grill' (?) to get light in.
I think this might be to heavy to render with Maxwell when modelled like this?


I think the next update won't be before next weekend. School comming up

Monne

[TheAllusionist]

Welcome aboard!

I don't think this scene is anywhere near big enough to run into memory problems in Maxwell, big exterior scenes with multiple buildings, streets, trees, cars and 3D people can prove to be problematical. I think you are safe to go with as much detail as you want here.

Modeling in SketchUp, normals are important, model in monochrome screen display mode so that you can see if any of the faces are blue instead of whitish cream color. Blue faces indicate that the normal is facing away from you and you are seeing the back side. If you see a blue face, seclect it and right click and select the "Reverse Face" option in the pop up context menu.

Since you are doing shots from inside and out, I would make the glazing have two faces, the outside face with the normal facing out and the inside face with the normal facing in. In this fashion you can also adjust glass material to get the effect you want. If you are all done with the glass, don't worry about this for now, I haven't modeled in SU 6 and then rendered in Maxwell 1.1 so things may play togther more nicely now.

Layering control in export can be problematical, so I would export by material and set up all your materials almost as layers (I setup layers and materials at the same time and match naming convention), if there is a material you are not quite certain about, make sure to assign it's own material in SU so in Maxwell you can tweak it independantly. Probaly the smartest way to texture is to use the maxwell material option in plugins menu and set it up that way. I have basically just textured using SU materials to organize and setup UVs and then do actual material selections in Maxwell, but I recomment using the Maxwell materials and saving yourself a step, some bad habits are just developed prior to an option being available and then it gets hard to change. In SketchUp or Maxwell, I keep the Maxwell material browser/editor open at all times (now it doesn't demand being on top of everything, so it is easier to work with) so that I can look at a materials instead of a list of names that may not mean much, especially since the material contributors at the Maxwell material repository are international and name things in their own language. THE MAIN THING IN TEXTURING IS TO SET UP SCALE AND UVs IN SKETCHUP SINCE MAXWELL SUCKS AT UV CONTROL.

So now you have your model organized by materials, I recommend that you actually organize by layers as well as you add materials, in that way, once you have everything setup in Maxwell you can re-import anything you need to edit, because once I go into Maxwell to render a SU model, I don't go back into SU unless I need to add or edit something in the scene and I am going to export just those items and import into Maxwell via the MXS file format. That may not be necessary anymore, but I prefer to go into Maxwell Studio and adjust stuff so that I can save my changes to the MXS file

So, I basically try to get everything I can set up, in place and organized in SU and after export, basically abandon SU and work only in Maxwell, which is contrary to how you would use it in something like Max or other true rendering program, I just treat the Maxwell plugin for SU as an exporter basically, maybe bad habits developed early on, but it works best for me.

The new Mawell has some things different, access to navigating different, if you are rendering out 'alpha mask' your physical sky won't render, things like that which dis-orientate us old timers. A warning about Maxwell lighting matrials, if you have recessed lighting and have all of them grouped including the lighbulbs and then apply a 75 watt bulb material to the lightbulb group/component, it appears to be distributed across all the geometries so that you will have to bum the output way up to get any noticeable light out of them, that has been my experience, I of course am assuming the wattage is being distributed to all of them, all I really know is that if lights are grouped I have really had to pump up their output.

With any render specific objects, I try to set them up in a blank scene and save out the object for use in future projects, so for instance if you were going to set up a tree for your scene, I would do it in a blank scene, add/convert materials to Maxwell , group all objects into a single tree group and export as MXS so that you can use it again in the future. Of course if you are going straight from SU to Maxwell and doing all your editing in SU and only rendering out in Maxwell, then ignore that advice. Typically when you export out of SU and the rendering starts in Maxwell, you can stop rendering and adjust image size, render duration etc. and re-start the render FYI

Good Luck!

[TheAllusionist]

P.S. The modeling guru of SketchUp around here is DirectorBob, the guy modeled a Harley in SU, a feat I wouldn't even attempt! LOL

[pBarrelas]

I guess that from the basement POV the grill won't show, so you can hide the grill in order to get more light coming in more naturally!!

[Monne]

@ TA: those comments will surely prove to be a HUGE help!
I think i'm gonna redo my model from scratch and make sure i will follow your advices to save me from possible future trouble.

@pB: yeah, it might be better to leave out the grill, but won't that affect the realism? i mean, in real life it is there, so should be there in the render to count the effect as well, no?

[pBarrelas]

The light in the room is very diffuse, you won't have any direct light casting shadows there. In order to put more light there and to not waste calculations you can get the effect without the grill there!

[Monne]

Ok, so I have remodelled 2/3 of it today.
I'm currently looking for a component to make the "zen-stones" in the basement. Any of you have that from a previous project?

This is how it looks in real life.


Cheers,
Monne

[Rotten42]

anybody know how Maxwell compares to the rendering time from Lightscape?