Bump maps...possible?

[Shaolin23]

Hi All,

I was wondering if someone could help me get a bump map working out of Max into Applab via Realitydesigner.

I've tried converting standard materials with simple bitmap textures in the bump map slot, and using the Bump (3dsmax) map as well, but to no avail...

This is in the RealityDesigner release notes:

"Improved translator for Autodesk 3ds max specific shader "max_Bump"
when the bump map shader could not be baked by the DCC. Now the
translator can in some cases extract simple textures from the shader
assigned to the bump map."

Can someone give me a little primer on how one gets this working?

Thanks in advance.

[johan]

Hi,

RealityDesigner is currently getting its shader translation rules updated to work with the iray renderer in RealityServer. Unfortunately when switching to the new rule set in 3.0.0.38, bump mapping stopped working. Very sorry for the inconvenience.

The next release of RealityDesigner should fix this, but in the meantime there is a way to re-enable the old ruleset and output scenes with bump mapping. Please follow the steps below, but please note that by doing so the exported scene won't work with the iray renderer in RealityServer anymore.

Create a scene in 3ds max with bump mapping:

1. Create a plane.

2. Open the material editor and create a Arch & Design material.

3. In the "Special Purpose Maps" section of the Arch & Design material, add a Bitmap to the bump map slot.

4. In max 2009, make sure UV mapping is correct, in 2010 it should be ok by default. Make a test rendering to make sure the bumps appear ok.

This is now a scene that should produce bump mapping after an export with the next version of RD. However in the current version (3.0.0.3 this does not work yet with the new shader translation rules. To re-enable the old translation rules, please follow these steps as well:

5. Open the file <rd_home>\autodesk-max\bin\2010-32\RSMenu.ms (exchange 2010-32 for your flavor of max) in a text editor and comment out line 9 so it looks like this:

-- RealityDesigner.RSSetDirectConnect true;

6. Restart max for changes to take effect.

7. Open the file <rd_home>\autodesk-max\examples\templates\multiview_ws.xml in a text editor and change line 132 from:

<template src="rules/iray_rules.xml" id="rules"/>

to:

<template src="rules/shader_rules.xml" id="rules"/>

8. Select "Export Application" in the RealityDesigner menu. Open the file:

<rd_home>\autodesk-max\examples\templates\multiview_ws.xml

in the file browser that pops up.

9. Select the place to export the application to and click on the export button. The application will be placed in a folder called "applications/multiview_ws" in the folder you selected. By exporting to the root folder of an RS application, you can then run the multiview_ws application directly by opening the following url in your browser (of course exchanging localhost to something suitable if needed):

http://localhost:9091/multiview_ws/

10. To upload this to AppLab, open the mutliview_ws folder and zip the scene folder youfind there. Then upload that zip file to AppLab.

Hope this helps!

Regards,
Johan

[Shaolin23]

Thanks for the quick response Johan -

I actually got it working yesterday exporting "standard" architectural materials with an assigned bump map...no problem.

My next question is about photometric lighting:

I've been handed a file with a building model complete with photometric lights setup, as well as MR sky portals and a daylight system.

What's the easiest way to convert these lights over?

As a side note, I'm running on a machine with a Quadro 1800...Am I missing out on certain things due to the spec being lower than the recommended model? If so, what are those things?

Thanks in advance.

[johan]

I take it that you have tried to export the scenes with RD but without any proper results? If possible, could you post a simple scene using the light setup you have problems with?

I am not familiar with that specific card, but in general, no you are not missing out on anything. The "gpu" renderer requires a sufficiently specced graphics card, and the "iray" renderer requires a CUDA capable graphics card, but can also use CPUs only. Finally the rt_bsp renderer is a software renderer and don't use the graphics card at all, so that one will always work.

[Shaolin23]

Hi there Johan,

I've attached a scene file which I'm having some trouble with:

- Bump map scale seems too large when brought into RS
- I can't get the sample rate up to a respectable level using the "Default" renderer
- Looking at the logs, my .IES light profile doesn't seem to be exporting / importing properly, although I've switched to the IES included with Realityserver "wallwasher.ies"
- What are the proper settings for the tonemapper in RS? I can get it close, but not perfect
- How do I enable reflections and refractions while rendering with the GPU? is this even possible?

Thanks in advance!

[johan]

Hi,

Light profiles are "lost in translation" at the moment unfortunately, this is a known bug. I won't be able to check out your scene today, sorry, I'll get back to you next week with some more answers.

Regards,
Johan

[johan]

Hi again,

I have tried out your scene, and it appears the lights are not getting through properly, I am getting total blackness. I'll look into this more closely. The other problems you mention seems to indicate that you do get lighting, is this with the scene you sent, or a modified one?


Some answers/follow-up questions to your questions:

- Bump map scale seems too large when brought into RS

The shader mapping from mental ray to RealityServer is not 1-1 unfortunately so the result will probably differ a little. Could also of course be that the translation script is doing something wrong I'll check. Also, if you feel like a poweruser, you can always check the RD log and see which scripts are used and attempt to do tuning to this yourself, they are written in JavaScript.

- I can't get the sample rate up to a respectable level using the "Default" renderer

Where are you setting this? If you haven't already, right-click on the image in Multiview, select rendering options, and check the advanced options checkbox you get a lot of settings to play with there.

- What are the proper settings for the tonemapper in RS? I can get it close, but not perfect

Not sure I understand what you mean with "proper settings". Again in multiview you can play around with the settings by right clicking and selecting tonemapping options. Is this what you have done? I noticed also that in the scene you uploaded you are using the mr Photographic Exposure Control which should work, but there appears to be no RD translation rule for this tonemapper, I'll investigate this as well.

- How do I enable reflections and refractions while rendering with the GPU? is this even possible?

This is not possible with the gpu renderer. Please see the JavaScript documentation in the section "Technical Principles"/"Renderer Selection" for a table of the different features supported by the different renderers.

Regards,
Johan