3dsmax Rendering Support Topic

Jordan · Post by **Jordan** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 3:55 pm

Not unless they could recreate Bungie's engine...

Tural · Post by **Tural** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:45 pm

*Bangs head on keyboard*

benman08 · Post by **benman08** » Thu Apr 20, 2006 4:47 pm

You guys are so funny...

INSANEdrive · Post by **INSANEdrive** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 8:36 am

Tural wrote:*Bangs head on keyboard*

No No No....

You

Veegie[Temp] · Post by **Veegie[Temp]** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:46 pm

You realize if you had pixel for pixel accurate bumps, it still wouldn't look the same as the games? Or as good...

trepdimeflou · Post by **trepdimeflou** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:22 pm

I don't know about looking the same, but I'm sure that it's possible to look far better than the bungie engine if someone had pixel-for-pixel perfect bump maps. Max is not limited to the restraints of the xbox hardware, so more advanced lighting systems / etc. can be used.

Veegie[Temp] · Post by **Veegie[Temp]** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 1:28 pm

It's not restricted to xbox hardware...of course. It doesn't have any of it. Max is software, and on a PC. I'm speaking in regards to a rendering engine.
And I don't think anyone here has that .dll

Tanasoo · Post by **Tanasoo** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 9:43 pm

Has anyone stopped to think about the fact that you don't need the whole engine to make accurate bumps? Only a small snippet of code (relatively speaking) that will convert the greyscale bumps to (Nvidia) normal maps. I could be completely mistaken, but I don't think it should be much harder that to write a program that converts standard bumps into normal maps (Like in photo shop).
*edit*
If you paste the alpha chanel of the bumps onto the normal map for the chief you will find that they mach up EXACTLY, every little pixel is in the same place.
Another thing to note is that the halo engine works in real time while max does not, so you have allot of performance issues there. Although you could try using a DirectX shader to get a close in game look in the view ports.

Veegie[Temp] · Post by **Veegie[Temp]** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:00 pm

Tanasoo, it isn't the bitmaps themselves.
It is how Max HANDLES the bitmaps.

Tanasoo · Post by **Tanasoo** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 10:56 pm

I know, All I am saying is that someone needs to make a program to convert the bumps into something Max can handle correctly.

Veegie[Temp] · Post by **Veegie[Temp]** » Fri Apr 21, 2006 11:01 pm

No matter how well they look. Max can't handle them like Halo 2 does.

Want to prove me wrong?
Let's see your hog tires.

trepdimeflou · Post by **trepdimeflou** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 7:45 am

*renders*

Tanasoo · Post by **Tanasoo** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 4:40 pm

>.> It doesnt need to... In the end I want all of my models to look better than ingame, don't you? Not EXACTLY like on the xbox. And I just said that max handles them differently. All I am saying it that it would be cool if someone could make a program to make the bumps look correct, instead of the weird way they look when exported.

Tural · Post by **Tural** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 5:00 pm

You're both agreeing with and contradicting youself.

Jordan · Post by **Jordan** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 5:31 pm

If they look "correct", like you're saying, then they look in-game. Afterall, in-game is correct.
Simply asking someone to make a program to make the bumps into normal maps isn't helping. It's a little more complicated seeming how we don't have their rendering engine to convert the bumps in the first place.

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Sat Apr 22, 2006 6:55 pm

You might want to see a doctor about the hole you just shot in your foot, Tanasoo.

Nick

Chief Cow · Post by **Chief Cow** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:04 pm

Sooo anyone have any ideas on my previous posts?
Veegie told me to wait so its been a couple of weeks now...

Tanasoo · Post by **Tanasoo** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:34 pm

Okay, perhaps I am not explaining my intent well enough. First of all, after re reading all of my posts on this matter I have yet to come across a part where I say I want them to look exactly like the game. I also never said that we need the rendering engine either. I simply said we need a small section of code, more specifically the algorithm for converting those bumps into the proper looking normal bumps (if the engine event does that). Perhaps I should not have said "...All we NEED is..." and should have said something like "all we could use is" or "It would help us to have"

Jordan, I think you have this backwards; ingame ones look correct, not correct ones look ingame. I have seen quite a few renders that look better than ingame, does that make them incorrect? Perhaps I should not have said "... make the bumps look correct..." and should have said "Make the bumps more resemble the ones in the game"

Now I will try to explain what I want in simpler terms because it seems a little to hard for some people to grasp.
Take the Master Chief's bumps for an example. If you apply the masterchief_bump.0.0.dds bump to the model, max sees this black and white image as a standard bump map and makes all of the white go "up" and all of the black go "down" and everything in-between accordingly with 50% grey of course, doing nothing.
masterchief_bump_camo.0.0.dds, however, as you all know is a RGB "normal map" image that you use with Max's "normal bump" feature. Normal maps, as you may or may not know represent angles and the directions of those angles instead of just height (such as in standard bump maps) and figures out the height from there. I would recommend that everyone following up on this should use Google and find an article that covers how normal maps work in more detail.
The problem being that masterchief_bump.0.0.dds is not a standard bump map. It is a new type of map that, most likely, bungie created themselves. In these maps only the angles are represented With White being the most angled and black being flat. 3ds max 7 and up however, only ships with the capability to handle the first two maps that I have said. Now I want to make this clear: Although with a plug-in it is possible to make 3ds max able to render the masterchief_bump style maps, dare I say it, correctly, That is NOT what I want to do. What I DO want to do is make a program that will work much like the Nvidia photoshop plug-in that converts the standard bump maps into normal maps. This new program will take the angle data already represented in the masterchief_bump style bumps and convert it into a normal map that looks like the masterchief_bump_camo style bumps. That is all. It will not take bungie's rendering engine, it will not modify max to render like bungie's engine. All it will do is convert one type of bump into another type of bump so that 3ds max or any other program that supports the use of normal maps will be able to use these bumps.

Tural · Post by **Tural** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:39 pm

So... a Photoshop action?

Tanasoo · Post by **Tanasoo** » Sun Apr 23, 2006 1:50 pm

Chief Cow,
What renderer are you using? What type of material are you using for the glass? Unfortunately it may not be fixable without getting a better renderer, because I know that if you have the opacity set low on a material (it being transparent) it will sometimes not render effects behind it. Try using the mental ray glass material.

Tural,
If you could figure out how, a photoshop action would work.