Photoshop Composition Tutorial - Photoshop Tutorial

View from my home

Post-work is done in Photoshop CS4.

1st anniversary of c12hris CG

Glad to tell it's 1st anniversary of my blog. I've just created a special video for it. Please watch it in HD quality. Enjoy!

Smoothing Group - 3ds max tutorial

While I was wandering around the Internet. I found that some users ignored the importance of smoothing group. Actually, smoothing group can be very useful if you use it appropriately.

What's smoothing group?

Smoothing group is used for creating smooth surface. Once there're same smoothing group found next to the selected polys, smooth surfaces will be created. You may ask what're the differences between smoothing group and Meshsmooth. The major one is that it will not add any polys to create smoothness, unlike Meshsmooth. So we shall consider using smoothing group before MeshSmooth or TurboSmooth.

How to use it?

It's simple to use. You have to convert the object into Editable Poly first. Assign smoothing groups by selecting the polys you want. Then, assign the smoothing groups by clicking the one you want within the Smoothing Group Panel ( as shown inside the screen capture).

Simple Interior

This is my latest work. It's rendered with Mental Ray. Post-work is done with Ps. Any comments are much appreciated!

Adding background to MR sky - 3ds max tutorial

There are always posts asking how to add a bitmap background to the mr sky. This problem used to bother me a lot. But recently I found that it's not really a difficult job. The reason why the users get stuck with it is because there's a slot called "Use custom background map". Many users put their bitmap here with no avail.

How to get it done?

Actually, it's a simple job with a few steps. You have to drag the mr Physical Sky map to the material editor. Uncheck the box "Inherit from mr sky". Put your background bitmap into the Haze slot. You might have to raise the output value of the bitmap a bit (about 5-15). That's all! You may try it out yourself.

P.S.: Notice that the bitmap color changes according to the position of the mr sun.

More about TurboSmooth - Tips & Tricks

I've shared some knacks about controlling TurboSmooth long time ago. This time, I'd like to share my experience of using TurboSmooth and problems that you might encountered before.

Once you applied TurboSmooth, the modifier helps you to add more polys to the object. It works best with quad polys. With other polys, there might be some artificial or poor surfaces created.

Sometimes, when you TurboSmooth an inward-extruded object (e.g. a cup), the hole is being "filled". It's because there are no edges connecting each topmost vertices. This can be solved by connecting all vertices with Cut tool within editable poly panel.

An object without connecting the topmost vertices.

 

An object with topmost vertices connected.

Ancient City Project WIP

I'm currently working on the Ancient City Project and it's about an ruined city with worn-out building scattered. There are some groupmates helping me out. I posted the progress on AREA. You may check it out here: The Area | Castle Project

The Radiant Sunset

This is the latest work I've done. This is my first rendering done by Vue 7 Xstream. Unlike a year ago, I'm now more familiar with it. I'm going to use Vue to integrate with the project that I'm recently doing - Ancient City Project.

Creating brick partly covered by mud with Composite material - 3ds max tutorial

PDF version: brick_tutorial.zip (enriched content)
In this tutorial, I will discuss how to create a brick material that is covered by mud. This is a technique that I recently discovered. This can be applied to other fields as well to achieve various effects.

1. Create a ProMaterials: Stone. Set the properties as the above screenshot shown.

 

  2. We have to tweak the value of the Output Amount a bit. The image of the brick texture will be thus become clearer. Set the Output Amount as 2.5.

 3. Create another material. Keep using the Standard. Then, insert a Mask map inside the diffuse slot. Insert the mud map and Noise map inside the Map slot and Mask slot respectively.

 

4. set the Output Amount as 2.0.

5. Adjust the size of the Noise map to 75. It determines the pattern of the mud.

6. Create a Composite material. Drag the brick material and mud material to the Base Material slotand Mat 1 slot respectively.

The final result

 The properties of those materials depend on the size of the target objects. You may play around with those properties so as to get the best results.