Creating a realistic 3D environment

#1

Hi!

I’ve been trying to achieve this for a long time: to create a realistic 3D environment in Maya for all kind of animations. What I mean is that I would like to figure out a way to create backgrounds with clouds, buildings or whatever objects that would not look like a plane or a 3D sphere.

I have been working a lot with IBL spheres (360-degree background photos) but they always look flat at some point. Maya’s painting system (clouds made with the brushes from the visor) look fake, and fluids take forever to render and I can’t reach the needed details in my fluids to make them look like cumulos and actual clouds. Post comp has given me the worst results, since I can’t figure out a way to perfectly match the 3D and 2D shots (I’m talking about pan shots, complex dollies etc).

I do have Vue XStream in my setup, but I haven’t been succesful to render fast the Vue objects in animations. I know there are no miracles in terms of rendering times, but if you could just help me to go in the right direction. Thanks

#2

This is a rather complex goal. I suggest you post this in the Maya forums; very few people will see it here.

For realistic clouds, I use fluids. You just have to play with them a lot, try different effects, and then work the fluids into your scene for composition. I rarely render fluids alongside my main renders, as fluids also ruin Final Gather. But they work great; just gotta put a lot of effort in!

For buildings, etc., there’s no easy way to do it. Make five or ten different structures, then instance them into your scene. Same technique for trees, only buildings generally are much less complex and have fewer polygons obviously!

Start making up a personal library of your props and getting used to proxies and assemblies. It won’t be easy like it is with Vue, but it also won’t look like crap when you’re done as you won’t have Vue’s rendering limitations and of course it’s just godawful slow compared to mental ray or Vray.

#3

All right i moved the thread here, in Maya’s section:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=7001609#post7001609

Thanks for helping. Clouds with fluids, hmm yeah maybe 2D Fluids (?) would be a good idea… It,s just that I’m having a hard time getting good detailed fluids without spending my short life rendering things hehe…

If you want to add a short comment on the maya thread, I’d be glad if you could join the conversation there too.

Cheers

#4

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