Lens Effects

[rubble]

Hi,

Is there a plugin, or a way to get a fisheye effect in 3D Max?
Also, how do I get Max to render with a transparent background.

[Brent]

render your model and save as Targa with the alpha box ticked....it will have transparent bkgnd.
Yes there is a plug...it called Brazil.....ha ha
Yes mabey there is a plug...I will have to check to see...

ciao

[Brent]

follow up....
yes there is a plug on www.maxplugins.de
it is for 5 version only.....
nothing for 6 or 7

you can probabl;y fake it by rendering through a glass sphere in front of the camera

ciao

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

Don't be silly, of course there is.

Go under the 'Environments' window, accessable by the option under Render > Environments (I think, I've been away from home for some time now).

The tab you're on by default is Environment, but at the top of the window, there should be another tab called 'Effects'. That will have a rather unorthodox method of assigning various effects to your lights (Halo, ring, streaks, glows, etc) and you can choose the settings for them. Read all about it in your Max Manual or on F1, but I can tell you that they're very difficult to manipulate and take a lot of practice.

But they're way better than the 3 or 4 options Photoshop gives you. Much less tacky and quite slick. I wish Discreet put a little more thought into making them more easy to manipulate. :grr:

**EDIT** See next post, where I'm more awake.

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

Oh my.

I seem to have entirely missed the gist of your question. You wanted fish eye effect, not lens flair. :o

I'd recomend the earlier suggestion- using a glass sphere to distort the image. I knew a lot of Bryceans who did that too in order to get fish eye effects in that God-Forsaken program.

Please excuse my absentmindedness, I just woke up. :haha:

[Brent]

?
he is referring to camera lens effects[fish eye] not lens flare effects for lights.

ciao

[Brent]

lol....sorry bad timing for post:)

ciao

[rubble]

I saw one tutorial that mentioned something about reflecting the scene off a sphere with a mirror material. That means the camera has to be facing backwards, kind of a pain.
How do I go about making this glass sphere. Is there a way to visualize the effect?
What about in Photoshop, how would I do that?

[Brent]

in photoshop you can do
filter-distort-spherize....
but the effect although pretty good dosen`t distort the entire image.

ciao