Ehm...everything...?

[Wozza]

Yeah, gidday. I found my way here in a sort of round-about way (It all started back with Duke3D, making maps with Build. Anyone here remember Build? I'll bet if I thought about it, I could remember the sequence you tapped to save the map, just from doing it every 30 seconds), via mapping for Half-Life, and sort of dabbling in Machinima. *twitch* Build *whimper* =P

Like all the other newcomers I've seen here, I've been staring open-mouthed at the art in the galleries. It's...well...open-mouthed-stare-inducing!

I'm also just competent enough with Gmax to get myself into trouble (I can't afford anything...at all. It's all freeware for me)

Ah, and in the fourth paragraph, the question(s)! Woo!
And here they be:
- How do I get from my basic model in Gmax to the sort of renders I keep seeing around here? By that I mean lighting, depth-of-field, and so on. Can it be done in Gmax, or do I need something seperate for that (maybe along the lines of compiling a map for HL? I dunno...)
- How (like I said, just competent enough...) do I go about creating transparent, reflective, and maybe light emitting faces in Gmax? Is it even possible?
- I've seen people talk of polycounts in the millions, and from the looks of the images, I don't doubt it. But I can't pan a Gmax viewport (usefully) with 100,000 polies (running on a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz, 512Mb RAM, GeForce4 64Mb, in case that's relevant) Ehm...wtf?! =P

Maybe if someone could (be bothered to) give me a quick step-by-step account of how they go from scratch to image, or something. Just mentioning the basic procedures.

Ah yes, I've got hold of The Big PDF Wossname About Stuff. Great bit of explanatory goodness, that =) But it didn't answer all of my questions.

Thanks in advance for any help (or abuse, you know, flames and the like. After all, it's the though tha...eh...no, wait...)


-Wozza

[_tofu]

firstly; welcome to the forum

i remember using "build" so many years ago, and i remember if i compiled my map and launched it from the program everything would crash, so i had to quit out and launch it manually everytime i wanted to test something...or it was some stupid error like that anyway

as for your questions;
How do I get from my basic model in Gmax to the sort of renders...
well from what i remember gmax is only for modelling, and has no render function. i'm pretty sure there is however 3rd party plugins that will let you export it to a different format which you can render from. try www.scriptspot.com

i cant really answer your second question because i'm not familiar with gmax.

I've seen people talk of polycounts in the millions...
just because they say that they're poly counts are in the millions doesn't mean they actually work like that in the viewport, when i get in the high poly counts i usually use some sort of viewport degredation, also i almost always leave my meshsmooth values to render only.

you can catch me on msn if you wanna know all about my procedure and stuff, i dont really have time to do it now here

hope i sorta helped...if not then...well.. :\
...at least i gave you a welcome

cheers


*edit* just realised i dont have my msn details on here, just pm me if you want any more help

[Wozza]

Gleeting from across the ditch! Cool banana =P

Many thanks for the (fast) reply, that certainly clears a couple of things up. What sort of program would I be looking to export to, to render from? And (more importantly ) is there a free one?

Thanks, and thanks again. Now what was the lo-tag for a swinging door...?

As _tofu mentioned, in Gmax, there is no render function. The rationale behind this is that it was made for amatuers to create custom content for games. Games have their own render engines, hence no need to render. Not saying I agree with that rationale (a scanline couldn't hurt,) but there it is. You may be able to render through a 3rd party renderer, but I'm not sure which one. I know there were a few free renderman compliant renderers knocking about, but then Pixar got into a legal battle over one of them so who knows what the situation is now.
Maya PLE is freeware & allows rendering, although with a watermarked image. Might be worth looking into though. Other than that there are free packages available like blender that can do it all, as well as cheap ones like truespace or hash:animation master that can get you started. Lighting is integral to most of these too, but things like DOF are a more high-end feature & tend to be in packages that reflect that in the price. You can simulate DOF in post though with photoshop or paint shop pro or similar & the z-buffer information, as well as other methods.

Materials are handled in Gmax much the same way as in big sis afaik, so some research into the material editor, the various map types and shader features are worth a go here. (Here's a primer in the mapping types: http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=77484 - check out the texturing for dummies series.) Transparency is handled backwards in max, so look for the opacity spinner & lower it. Once you have played around with that for a while, hop over to www.neilblevins.com & learn a heap about reflection, refraction and the fresnel effect, amongst other things.
Light emitting would require a renderer, & for that sort of effect, a high end one that handles GI & probably radiosity. You can simulate glows through various means, (not sure if Gmax has video post, but I doubt it,) & considering that most Gmax content is in theory destined for a game, light emitting faces would be the programmers job.
As for large polycount models - there are ways & means to handling that sort of thing. It partly depends on what sort of interactivity you are prepared to put up with. I personally add an edit mesh modifier & hide all the faces that I'm not working on directly in polygon sub object mode. The reason I add a modifier to do that is that it's more controllable & non destructive to the model. Also to make all the faces reappear, I can just switch the modifier off or delete it from the stack. This is usually a good approach for a lot of things. Making a big change to your model but not sure you'll like it? Add an edit mesh modifier & if you don't, you can delete the modifier, leaving the model unscathed. The modifier stack in max is very powerful if you learn to use it. (Here's a tip - it has quirks, learn them & treat it with respect. )
_tofu mentioned adaptive degredation, which is where the model turns to bounding volume boxes when you pan, rotate or zoom the viewport. That's another way, but I prefer to see my model when I rotate to spot problem areas, so I hide parts I've happy & finished with & leave the other parts visable. If there are other models in the scene but you aren't working on them, hide them completely.
Hope to see some of your work soon.

[Wozza]

Man...you *******s is good *******s =) (this is a good thing; we even have Good *******s beer here)

Many thanks!

As for seeing some of my work, at present the only thing I have is half a head that looks suspiciously like the one in the Joan Of Arc tutorial (albeit with a simpler nose). Still, I'll be sure to post something as soon as I have something worth posting. Exactly how soon that will be is...well...probably doesn't bear thinking about =P

Thanks once again for the prompt and helpful...eh...help.

-Wozza

[edit]
Woah...they starred out *******s. Ack. Ehm. Illegitimate children. It's a good thing, like I said. Heh.
[/edit]