My impression is that Mstn may soon be able to offer itself up as an alternative to 3dMax/Design as the preferred stills rendering app in the AEC market?
3dsMax users... what is still missing in Mstn that is fundamental...?
Plug-in infrastructure? Fully scriptable?
Procedural materials editor? BIM-aware materials assignment ?
Hardware based preview windows?
Better integration with Photoshop..render to layers? Include 3d plane / depth info so that PS extended can 'paint' like Piranesi?
Other question would be if there any AEC specific functionality / opportunities for Mstn to consider?
Photo based or 'infused' workfkows?
Image based 3d modeling, texture /decal acquisition....?
Point clouds are becoming popular.. but mashed up with particle shaders for rendering? Laser scanners can also capture colour inf0.. convert to textures?
Something that is aimed at rendering landscaping / foliage? Mesh? Particles? Voxels?
Geo-referenced / Verified View Montage tools
Environmental ?
If everything was imported as geometry than it's no wonder there are problems. Hopefully, this instancing / LOD stuff will be solved soon.
Anyways, does anyone have some DWG's with materials etc for testing? SS3 apparently will include more support for rendering info. Please forward to Don.
That's exactly what I feared regarding MS coping with high poly scenes. Is that message just with that 1 instance of that plant? At least you got the textures looking good but as you say it would be a nightmare to have to do that with all models you want to use even if it is only a one time exercise.
I just translate the evermotion archmodels. It's tedious work, but possible to do (maybe bentley recommend several companies to prepare for them specifically collections). A bigger problem is the size of these files. Most can not be used because they are too big. After connecting them to the scene and try to rendering them Luxology prompts you for the out of memory. Perhaps we should think about the special collections of models for MS and a proxy as in V-ray.
Dominic,
Max is quite a special animal. Since it's beginning it was designed to have plugins for special effects, import/export and so. all the things you mentioned are solved by external plugins. since its SDK is quite well documented, it seems to me easier for someone to write Max <--> DGN translator as Max plugin, then starting from scratch and create import in MS
Materials - .mat files are something different. Max is using enhanced mat format that covers MentalRay shaders. part of install are so-called Arch & Design materials - set of predefined materials with textures, tiling, ... these are supported across Adesk AEC products. there are also various other types of materials to convert MR shader tree, special types materials, photometric materials, ...
and even every decent rendering plugin - VRay, FinalRender, Brazil ... delivers its own optimized set of materials to be used with this plugin.
not sure how easy is to translate some of these at least to Luxology system as material system is highly depended on the rendering engine. anyway would be nice to have access to them. as you said, Max has far biggest community with lots of useful content
p.
/pt
Peter,
Yes... FBX seems to be evolving.. translation between ACAD and 3ds Max also not perfect... apparently.
Max is the market leader... Mstn/LX must be guerilla in asymmetric situation?
A lot of content generated in Max will need to translated into game engines or Renderman-type high end renderers, so it must be possible to get materials out....?
Dominic