Simple tips for improving your renders. (3dsmax)

MadHQ · Commander **Joined**: 07 Nov 2003

One thing I see way to much when people start making shapes or renders for RA2/TS is poor quality. They could do a few simple things to improve the quality of there work tremendously. So I will help out.

Were are going to look at this bunker for an example. The render to the left is a render I see way to much. Its flat and blurry. And with a few simple tricks you can have some thing that looks like the render on the right.

This is a picture of the material editor and settings you should really looking into adding/changing in your regular work habit.

The first step is to add some shine to the texture. This can be annoying at times, as the lights in the scene will brighten the high areas to much and even some times to full white-out. Its a matter of visual and personal option what levels they should be. But I generally set the Specular Level to 75, and the Glossiness to 50. The effects at this point do not show to much, but with a few more steps it will really pop!

Now lets add some depth to the textures. You could have a bump texture but if your to lazy to make one, the texture itself will be better then nothing. So any ways add a bump texture to everything! You can add what ever amount you feel works best for that texture, 300 seems to work fine for me, so you will have to play around with the number tell you find something you like.
*Adding a bump texture for bricks is a must!*
*This render just uses the texture itself as the bump texture.*

Now were starting to get somewhere! However the render still looks a little blurry. So lets go into the render scene settings. There really is only two that you need to change. First up lets look at the filter. There a quite a few selections to chose from most wont sharpen or do much but you can still a difference. The one I found to be the best is Catmull-Rom, But fell free to play around and find what works best for you. Next in Global SuperSampling area just check the "Enable Global SuperSampling" box.
*To get to this window just go to rendering in the pull-down menu, and select Render, then finally go to the renderer tab. (Or hit F10)*

Here we have the final render with some simple improvement settings. Much nicer I think.

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Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

Nice tutorial.
Seems like we are doing the same improvements. Very Happy

Though i often find the Global Supersampling making the texture too smooth, especially on small buildings, where every pixel can hold some important detail and is this way blurred away.
But this is up to the modeler and the characteristics of his rendered stuff.

For a more realistic lighting i would also suggest everyone to not use always the Specular 75 Glossiness 50 settings (these are more for plastic surfaces), but some that fit to the material. e.g. metal should be more around S90G15.
But this is again up to the modeler. For a RA2 cartoonish lighting, the S75G50 settings are already a good start.

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MadHQ · Commander **Joined**: 07 Nov 2003

So your making a building and want the building to look more dirty without making a new texture. On the left picture you see the start of a building with a simple brick material placed onto the mesh. However it looks far to clean and bland. There are very easy ways to dirty up the walls like you see in the right picture.

Lets start off by working with blend on the base brick texture. I want to add that low dirt that can make the bricks look like they are dirty from the environment. Material 1 and 2 are basically your basic materials to blend. The thing to remember is Material 1 is the texture behind Material 2. And the Mask material is basically and opacity texture to set the look you want.

As you can see it adds a gritty look to the walls.

Another option is to use a standard material with an opacity texture. This is going to add some dark gunk that is dripping off the roof. Its so easy to set up in the material editor because all you have to do is pick a diffuse material and add a opacity material.

Now to use this material just create some basic mesh's over the walls and add the material. And as you can see, you can use this same technique for many things such as graffiti.
*Just a note, You may want to go into the objects properties and unselect the cast shadow option so the mesh does not darker the wall behind it.*

And now you can see the final result with all technique brought together. It really creates out a more gritty look to your render.

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Deformat · Defense Minister **Joined**: 17 Sep 2007

The more you post,the more I say that it deserves to be sticky'd.

daTS · Posted: Tue Jul 27, 2010 11:28 pm Post subject:

agreed. tutorial vault, though. not media hut.

this is great. Smile

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Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

Concerning the opacity texture for some dark gunk dripping from the roof.

Transparent stuff used above the surface of the model causes antialiased/blurred edges against the background, even if you have set "Don't antialias against background" in the 3dsmax options.
If you zoom close into this picture you can see the antialiased and blurred edge there where the opacity texture is applied to the mesh in front of the cube.

Thus i would advise to use this technique only, if you don't come close to the silhouette of the model.

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SMIFFGIG · Posted: Wed Jul 28, 2010 11:22 am Post subject:

I think personally I would bulild the texture along with masks etc all in Photoshop and then use it as the diffuse in 3ds max

Mainly cause im unfamilar with all the layer masking etc in max's MatEditor (but also for the reasons LKO said)

Not to say i wouldnt like to learn more about it and that it doesnt have its uses

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Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

Oh a mask map is indeed useful.
Imagine you have a complex building with many different textures for the sides. If you now want to add dirt to the area where the building touches the ground, you would have to edit many different textures with photoshop.
In 3ds max simply give the whole house material with its compositemap (that has all the different maps as submaps) a primary mask map and all textures get the dirt map applied at the same time. Since the dirt texture is independent from the other house textures, you also don't have the problem of a stretched dirt texture, which can happen if you apply the dirt directly to the house textures.

And this is only one example. Mask maps can be also very useful when you want to make a building look damaged.

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