SimFox's Pixel Torture Chamber

[SimFox]

Thank you guys!

Base is moving along, slowly, but steadily. At this stage any step forward comes at ever increasing effort and time. I have to reconstruct bit by bit, the way structure is assembled, or invent when (as often with bases/street level) there is simply NO information available trying to keep stylistic cohesion.

[bixel]

Looks amazing.

[jeronij]

The whole thing looks enormous, massive... BIG  ¡¡¡

Will you add some flora to these terraces perhaps ?

[ussagus]

Looks awesome...

Saludos

[SimFox]

Oh dear!! After HongKong (a Simtrropolis member) posted some excellent shots of One Silver Sea - great many thanx to him for that) I ended up redesigning parts of the base all over again. But now I believe all the parts are right and it is near completion. Only minor things left (structurally but not necessarily work wise - pool, basketball/tennis court, some plants and furnishings to go on the public spaces. Plus I still have to finish all the rooftops. According the views from Google Earth all but one towers have rooftop swimming pools for so called Sky Villas - natural perk for a home that cost about 5-7 million  US$ Anyway here is redesigned base:






And what is called in the industry Clay render. these are used to show basic proportions and design prior/separately from material selection. I've done this cause I needed to refresh my skills in another renderer - V-Ray which is a defacto king of the hill in small scale productions (especially in the interiors)

still with an old base

[Shadow Assassin]

If you had one of those new 3D printers, you'd be able to have a 3D recreation of that building on your desk.

Nice work - it's very real.

[Pat]

SimFox that building is looking reallly great... keep up the hard work - pat 

[tag_one]

great work on the model. I like the massif amount of details. the olny thing that caught my eyes is the color of the texture on the base. maybe you can make it a bit darker

[callagrafx]

That's a byproduct of using the sun/sky rig as opposed to "normal" lighting...it bleaches textures out like a sunny day would do.  I suspect they are darker in reality and will, when exported with the BAT lighting rig, appear darker.

[SimFox]

That's a byproduct of using the sun/sky rig as opposed to "normal" lighting...it bleaches textures out like a sunny day would do.

Saying that is VERY misleading! That's not quite that straight forward. Sun&Sky lighting rig on its own doesn't do ANYTHING of the sort.
Anyway here is first approximation of the material that will be used for base walls:

[Rayden]

Saying that is VERY misleading! That's not quite that straight forward. Sun&Sky lighting rig on its own doesn't do ANYTHING of the sort.

So, I'm sure you wouldn't mind to explain exactly what it does, so we all can learn that as well, or is it a secret?

[Nardo69]

That basement without the skyscrapers alone would be a great building, too!

It made me think of the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart - one of my favourite museums for contemporary arts ..

Linkie1 and the homepage of the Staatsgalerie

Get some nice plants and a pebblestone texture on the roof, maybe a cafeteria with some nice tables and we have a great Museum for modern art!

Take care and make backups!

Bernhard 

[vester]

So, I'm sure you wouldn't mind to explain exactly what it does, so we all can learn that as well, or is it a secret?

Yes please do explain, what is making the textures so bright.

[Pat]

So, I'm sure you wouldn't mind to explain exactly what it does, so we all can learn that as well, or is it a secret?

Rayden i bet it is a secret LoL... SimFox great progress here...

[callagrafx]

Not quite sure how it's misleading, as I have tested the system time and time again and get the same results:

No lights (standard Max illumination)



BAT Lights (medium rig)



And Daylight system using IES sun and sky, set to Helsinki at 15.00 (today's date)



Now, as I do more interior projects and products, I could have the sky/sun set totally wrong, but this was from cold, no mucking with settings, using the create > system > daylight and orbital scale set to 60

[vester]

Sorry SimFox, but callagrafx do make a good point.

[jeronij]

Mmmm.... very interesting discussion about the different lights and environements.... lets keep it this way.

[SimFox]

Nope he doesn't. Some crucial bits and pieces are missing.
Callagrafx statement could be described with this question from an old jock – "What is better Sun or moon. Moon of course, cause sun is totally useless. It shines at day when there is light anyway, Moon on the other hand shines at night when it is dark!" Comically correct, but still wrong in principal.
To start with I want to point that Sun and Sky rig doesn't need to be  IES Sun&Sky or MR Sun&Sky or VR Sun&Sky (the list may go longer)rig. Most people probably thing that as it is ANY  sun and sky rig the results will be the same. But that is NOT the case. Putting half backed IES Sun and Sky rig as an example is that misleading bit. In Sun and Sky rig the key concept is not Sun. Sun is nothing but the targeted infinite Direct light source. The key concept is Sky - absolutely unique type of light, like no other. It is an area light taken to extreme. Light radiates from entire inner surface of virtual sphere (like with max standard skylight) or hemisphere surrounding/half surrounding your scene.
About pictures posted.
Supplying MAX "no lights" illumination picture is absolutely pointless and I'm puzzled as to what it serves here. We, or at least I, have no idea what lights are used, their intensity, hue anything...
About the BAT illumination. Well posting picture like this one is very misleading too. For starters the most crucial point of ANY light is missing (missing on all shots actually) - shadow! My biggest and original grievance with Default bat rig was the quality (or the lack there of) of shadows it delivered. But the main issue with that render from Medium Default rig is that it is totally crocked. The Rig and the render(naturally). What rig are we actually talking about? The one included in Bat4Max v2? Had anyone (just out of curiosity) tried to open those scenes? (located in Scenes subfolders in BAT folder). Problem with HUGE one keep surfacing now and then, but there is more. In this Medium Rig that Callagrafx decided to show here as an etalon of sorts,  2 lights are turned off for some reason. One in "sun" group with intensity multiplier of 0.5 and one in "sky" group with multiplier of 0,4 i.e. both are some of the brightest in the bunch! The "sun" one is even called "MainShadow"!! And it is off! Naturally it produces picture that is VERY different then one produced by respective rig in BAT for GMAX. I mention this for those "purist" insisting that any change is to the bad. And that we have to stick to what was in the original BAT for the sake of compatibility. There is your compatibility.
Also the picture with IES Sun shows ONLY illuminated part of the cube.(Helsinki 15.00 is a nice touch, though. But Callagrafx's setup is obviously missing one ABSOLUTELLY crucial detail determining how render with such an IES sun would look like. I'll show you later what it is.
Back to default rigs. This is what render from Medium Default rig included in Bat4MaxV2 looks like:


And this is what the picture from Default rig SHOULD look like (and what it looks like in GMAX) if it wouldn't be wrecked by someone sometime:

At any rate take a close look at the either of the pictures! And particularly at the mess of a shadows you see on them! This should be enough to say Good Bye and Good Riddance to the default rig! But our topic today is texture wash-out.
Ok, but back to our topic – bitmap texture bleaching, its causes and fixes.
Here is a render from very basic Sun and Sky rig. I switch to Mental Ray as a render because its Final Gather algorithms automatically calculate realistic looking shadows (sort of Ambient Occlusion) from Sky.

This is a very simple (just basic Skylight dropped anywhere in the scene and oneTarget Direct light playing sun) but true to the principal Sun and Sky rig. Target Direct light has intensity multiplier set to 0,6 (this, of course, could be tailored to anyone's taste) and Ray-traced shadows. I'm not going to dive into shadow types now as it is a bit outside of the topic, but if anyone is interested I put together little explanatory article of sorts on shadows and it is available in my "Forces of Light and the Geometry of Shadows" thread in BAT Workshop section of Simtropolis forum.  So, how does this particular bitmap texture look? Is it ruined as Callagrafx had prophesized? With little time adjusting relative strength of lights (and that isn't all that difficult task as there are only 2 to deal with) you can get very credible replica of either True Default or Crooked Default rig. But it will still be superior! Just look at the shadow (there is only one to start with) and see how its intensity changes. And that is with MOST primitive of setups! 
Here is render from same rig with values of lights a bit altered:

Now to the beef! IES Sun... The one upon which  Callagrafx has built his case against my obsession with Sun and Sky rigs. Well, I do have one, I confessssss! But truth is that it's only ONE particular case, one of many possible ones. Ok let's get us Photometric IES Sun&Sky rig and render our cube. Here is a result:

No, there is nothing wrong with you monitor and picture is right there before your eyes. Yes it is totally white! Why?? If you have digital camera with manual controls you can make a little test. Set it to make properly exposed picture inside in the night with one lighting of about one 60 W incandescent light bulb in a 16-20 sq m room, of something along these lines. Then, next day, without changing any settings (exposure time, Aperture opening, ISO settings) go outside on a sunny day a make picture of sunlight something . and see the picture. It probably will not be totally white but nearly so. In Max we see same thing. Max light with multiplier of 1 is about the strength of that bulb. And IES sun is not for nothing in Photometric lights section. It is trying to imitate sun (including it relative brightness). So to see anything in our output window we have to change our "camera" settings to fit illumination of the bright day. In MAX it is accomplished with something called Logarithmic exposure control, plus you have to tick and option that says Exterior Daylight because it is, after all exterior daylight scene.




Ok let's do that and render:



ta-dah!! – Callagrafx picture of horror – washed out texture! Oh my! What to do? Why on earth.  If you set your digital camera properly for outside exposure you wouldn't see anything like this, would you?? No you wouldn't! And if you would you should examine your camera, you cameras manual, or take it to repairs!!  So what's wrong with MAX. Well the answer is – NOTHING!! Absolutely nothing! This was an unnecessarily aggressive sentence, this will not be tolerated.
Let's take one more look at this washed out image. What is exactly wrong with it? Is it too bright? No, not really. And Shadow looks fine... it is ONLY the texture that suffered. It looks like it has been heavily equalized. And it has been!!! So let's remember what we have done to our settings. We have applied Logarithmic exposure control for daylight exterior. The key word here is Logarithmic – non-linear!!! So, non linear gamma correction has been applied to our rendered image. It compensates for the extreme brightness of photometric sun and sky. But our texture on the cube has already been created with this adjustment because it's meant for use on low dynamic range equipment like our monitors for instance. So in a way this process is now applied to it twice – that's why it looks so washed out. To fix this problem we should simply tell MAX not to do this second correction to our bitmaps or to reverse correct it prior to the application of gamma correction to the entire image! This is done in Customize Menu -> Gamma and LUT tab. First you have to enable gamma correction. The number there is, most probably 1,8 but that doesn't really matter for a moment (although it is a VERY powerful tool just like levels in Photoshop. What matter for us at this moment is that we have to tell MAX how to correct our bitmaps. You have to put exactly same number into Input Gamma and keep Output Gamma to 1,0.

That 's it! Oh and I would recommend also to tick Affect Color Selector and Affect Material Editor. So that you'll see both basic colors and bitmaps that way they actually are! Otherwise MAX displays everything in Linear Gamma. Why?? God knows, cause our monitors are NOT linear! Well, God isn't really involved, but linear is more practical for material that goes to further compositing and stuff like that.
Anyway, after these manipulations (actually it is a basic setup!!) this is what you render will look like:


Sentence moderated, this forum is not for personal attacks. I do not pretend to know everything nor did I write any book on 3d. But I try to find how things work and why do they work in the way they do. Also if I give some advice to people I, as a habit, check my facts and solutions before go public with it.


I am very sorry that I had to moderate this thread, but I could see this one coming from miles away the same as Jeronij could. - Fred

[callagrafx]

whoa, easy there hoss....let me explain a little about the 3 renders first.

The first one was a default scene in Max with no lighting whatsoever...Max will still illuminate the scene until you add a light source, then that takes over the illumination.  The second was using the standard BAT4Max lighting rig.  There are no shadows because I have not added a ground plane, for the simple reason that when you export a model for the game, there is no ground plane.  The game creates the shadow cast to the ground (I say "creates", I really mean "screws up").

The third was, as I said, created from the Daylight system script that generates the sun/sky rig and changes the settings accordingly. BUT, I pointed out that I did a render with no alteration to the settings.  This is what most people would do and would then wonder why this was the case.

Now onto the misconception...I have no problem with the Sun/Sky rig and your self confessed obsession with it  , in fact as I'm doing more and more exterior work I'm finding it more and more useful...I'm a graphic designer and have an advanced knowledge of photoshop and colour so I know how a bitmap responds in a particular gamut, but what I missed was the gamma correction step (as I said, I've not been using the sky/sun rig for long) and that little nugget will certainly stay in the brain. 

So in a way, both of us are right...It can wash out textures BUT it also does make a building look more realistic. That said, the process is not 100% suited for creation of game assets, as it sits outside the game palette and requires serious knowledge of Max to get it to be of any use, and 99.9% of all BATmakers use the standard rigs, so this is really academic, albeit very interesting.  I appreciate the time you took to explain the differences, so we can all understand the methodology a bit better and apologise if I sounded like I was attacking you...I was simply basing my assumptions on my experiences with Sky/Sun.

Edit:  Fred, I don't think SF meant that sentence as an attack and I didn't take it that way, but I appreciate the concerns...

[SimFox]

Callagrafx, no problemo! Glad i could be of assistance... May be you could teach us a thing of two about texturing and UWV spaces/mapping... I'm pretty much in the dark on those...
I think it is important to know the tool you use. Plus BAT could be just a first step. There's such a big and interesting world out there!
I spoke of the shadows cause they are quite important to show the real properties of light. True that shadows on the ground in the game are generated there  - in the game, but those ON the buildings are coming from the BAT. That constellation of shadows that is very obvious on the ground plane in first two renders is partially (in addition to shadow map type) responsible for their incoherent shadows plaguing more intricate BATs when you see façade elements and roof junk "floating" about it instead of sitting put.
Anyway, what's light without the shadow? Just half itself.
As for natural desaturation that suppose to occur at very high levels of brightness it will still be there. MR does quite a commendable job of it. But that issue you've pointed out doesn't really look remotely natural, does it? Looking at it you'd never say : Oh yeah, that's a sunny day!
BTW is your Default Medium Rig fine? Or does it also have some light turned off? I wonder when and why did  happen...
To overzealous moderator Fred:
I'm a bit surprise to see my message being edited... there wasn't really anything inflammatory In the phrase cut away from the end of my message.
That would be ok, but since people other than me and Callagrafx will not be able to see it they would naturally assume the worst. To the detriment of my reputation... again... But anyway...