Artefact Five - Advanced 3D Mapping & Post Production Composition (Part 1)
The fifth artefact will be dealing with the second part of the compositions research and also advanced mapping in 3D studio Max. The composition this time will be focusing on altering or adding to a render created in 3D Studio Max, unlike last time where the focus was on amending the lighting and shading to create a clearer more dominant outcome the scenes created in this artefact will focus on actual objects in the scene. An example would be to add grass to a rendered scene in Photoshop instead of creating and rendering it in 3D Studio Max. The first of the artefact will look at advanced mapping, mainly concentrating on displacement and opacity maps. These will be used to alter an object(s) that has been created in 3DS Max to make them look that they have been modelled thoroughly. In a sense the artefact will be experimenting how to ‘cheat’ an object into looking that more work has been put into it than it really has whilst still giving good results.The point of the artefact as a whole is to distinguish a method that can fasten together two different applications and reduce the amount of time to create the overall output (rendered images) but still enable the quality that is desired.
Advanced 3D Mapping
The first area covered of the advanced mapping section will be looking at opacity mapping. Opacity maps in 3D Studio max are used to create an illusion of geometry that isn’t there in the first place. A user can then create unusual or even fairly complex objects that can be visualised and made to look like the whole object has been painstakingly modelled. The scene that will be looked at for this procedure will be a simple chair. Below is the rendered chair in its original state and everything has been modelled and textured, the main problem with the chair is that the shadow underneath is blocky. As the chair itself will have holes that can be viewed, the light cast on the object must be able to pass through and create the new shaded areas.
The fifth artefact will be dealing with the second part of the compositions research and also advanced mapping in 3D studio Max. The composition this time will be focusing on altering or adding to a render created in 3D Studio Max, unlike last time where the focus was on amending the lighting and shading to create a clearer more dominant outcome the scenes created in this artefact will focus on actual objects in the scene. An example would be to add grass to a rendered scene in Photoshop instead of creating and rendering it in 3D Studio Max. The first of the artefact will look at advanced mapping, mainly concentrating on displacement and opacity maps. These will be used to alter an object(s) that has been created in 3DS Max to make them look that they have been modelled thoroughly. In a sense the artefact will be experimenting how to ‘cheat’ an object into looking that more work has been put into it than it really has whilst still giving good results.The point of the artefact as a whole is to distinguish a method that can fasten together two different applications and reduce the amount of time to create the overall output (rendered images) but still enable the quality that is desired.
Advanced 3D Mapping
The first area covered of the advanced mapping section will be looking at opacity mapping. Opacity maps in 3D Studio max are used to create an illusion of geometry that isn’t there in the first place. A user can then create unusual or even fairly complex objects that can be visualised and made to look like the whole object has been painstakingly modelled. The scene that will be looked at for this procedure will be a simple chair. Below is the rendered chair in its original state and everything has been modelled and textured, the main problem with the chair is that the shadow underneath is blocky. As the chair itself will have holes that can be viewed, the light cast on the object must be able to pass through and create the new shaded areas.
Original chair with blocky shadow. Rendering time 2 secondsThe next item to change in the scene is to apply the opacity map that will allow the light to pass through the chair holes and also create the geometry to look like the model has been done with some time taken. How the opacity map works in 3d Studio max is that when it is placed onto an object it creates a transparent effect that follows the colour of the map, the example below shows an opacity map of black circles on a white background. Here these black circles will be 100% transparent and the white 0%.
Below is of the image with the effects taken into account and the transparency has been set to 100%. Setting it to the upper limit will totally craft the black areas into full transparency whilst anything less will show a slight greyish tint where the black is and create a glass look which is not wanted here.
Chair with Opacity Map and shadow. Rendering time 2 seconds. Polygon count 9,174.Notice that the black areas can now not be seen at all on the chair seat and rest and also the bonus of opacity mapping is that it allows the light in the scene to pass through and create the shadow that can be seen on the floor below.The final stage of this experiment is to create a chair that is fully modelled with the detail in the previous render, however each hole will be physically modelled to create the geometry of the final chair. From here, an analysis can be made to distinguish if viewers will find the effect of the opacity map will give similar results or indeed better results than the fully modelled chair. Below is the image of the final rendered modelled subject.
Chair with no opacity map and shadow. Rendering time 3 seconds. Polygon count 37,358.There is not much difference in rendering time between the renders, however it is clear to see the difference in polygon count. Granted that the second subject has a few more holes than the previous, the concept that the modelling of each hole will create more polygons which will take longer to render.The feedbacks in results given by peers were quite positive the all of them reported back that they could see no difference between the two renders (besides the amount of holes). This in turn has made this experiment a success showing that opacity mapping can be as good as modelling geometry for a subject.The conclusion from this procedure has been a positive one, using opacity mapping can be used to reduce the amount of time taken to create objects and the secondary benefit is that light can pass through to create shadows as well as a model that was created with pure geometry. Rendering times are cut via the amount of polygons that are not there which in turn is excellent for larger more complex scenes.
