Messages

1

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-28, 19:51:46 »

Thanks mferster I will try that at some point aswell.

Here is what I have gotten so far.
I am following the guide Juraj posted by the letter, I wouldn't know where I deviate from him.
The result looks different from the normal linear blending for sure, I am just not sure if it really is correct.




And last but not least an image of my node graph.


I really dont think I am doing this correctly. The water puddle especially just looks a bit wonky to me.

2

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-28, 18:03:15 »

Try CoronaMix, it has divide blend mode.

Corona to the rescue :D

3

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-28, 17:38:05 »

Alright I followed the tutorial that Juraj posted. One question though, is there someway to "Divide" two maps in 3ds Max? Composite map doesnt have that blend option and I don't see any other way of doing that.

4

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-28, 00:18:10 »

Alright, here are the blended materials.
Unfourtanetly I just realized that the normals are not blended either so I will have to do that tomorrow since it also just uses the Base Materials normal.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-27, 23:45:27 »

Thanks the video is really nice especially for other people who want to do something similar in the future.
Now we have solved the issue of blending the dislplacements correctly and using Vertex Painting to mask the materials.
I am still not any closer to actually blending the materials properly based on height. Doing it in a DirectX material wouldn't be too hard but I am not sure how that would even work with Corona.
And in all honesty. The offline render displacements look so good that anything gained by heightmap based blending would almost be marginal.

On a different note, concering Juraj_Talcik's post.
The material system inside of 3ds Max is kinda meh in all honesty.
I don't mean Corona or Vray, just in general the native 3ds Max slate editor.
Comparing it to something like the UE4 material editor which is essentially just HLSL code presented as template nodes, 3ds Max's material editor is just meh.
Maybe it's my lack of experience working indepth with the 3ds Max material system but to me it feels simply too obscure to make more difficult things with.

6

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-27, 21:35:19 »

But by any of the above solutions, you loose the option to easily adjust height of each displacement separately no ? So it's not such an ultimate solution to current problem.

Well, you can use that same vertex colours map as mask for displacement mix. That should work.

This should easily be possible.
But my head is already starting to spin imagining the node network for a whole bunch of materials blended this way.
I also tried a bunch of different composite maps for all the different materials and I haven't gotten any closer to achieving a similar result to the article I posted at the start of the topic. :|

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Dark bands in the render using Distributed rendering

« on: 2016-04-27, 20:13:35 »

You could always try collpasing everything to an editable poly to check wether or not that get's rid of the banding. Just in case.

8

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-27, 19:33:49 »

Just started looking at it again. And right off the bat I think something seems "fucky".

Sand Material

Forest Ground Material

Both of them blended together using "Corona Layer Mtl" and a "Vertex Color" node set to map channel 0, as the mask.
Only the albedo seems to be blended. The height and normal seem to only come from the "Forest Ground Material" though.

So, am I doing something wrong right from the start?

9

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-26, 23:23:26 »

As for texture to vertex colours, you can bake that info with vertexpaint modifier. You just have to use scanline renderer for that.

Sounds good to me, I will give all of that a try tomorrow when I am come home from work, and post the results here.

10

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-26, 23:03:21 »

I should have cleared up why I am asking and what I am trying to achieve in the first place.

I am using World Machine to create large scale terrains.
Now with a little bit of setting up, World Machine can provide masks that are then planar mapped onto the terrain mesh that define where a material is supposed to be displayed.
Simplest example would be a slope mask that defines where the cliff material is supposed to go and where grass is supposed to go.
Usually I would end up with around 5 of those masks for 5 different materials.

Up unto this point the whole thing is procedural and works A+ for backrounds especially.
But often times I would like to have a bit more fine control for areas closer to the camera on where the different materials go, so I would use Vertex Paint for that.

I haven't actually checked how to do this inside of 3ds max natively yet. Not sure if you can drag and drop a bitmap into a vertex paint slot to use as a base to later paint over manually.
( Usually I am using game engines like UE4 for this kinda stuff )

And in the end I would like to blend all those materials together using the height based blending approach.
The textures are Photoscanned textures provided by a guy named Christoph Schindelar. And the heightmaps are pretty much top of the line.
I'm real sorry that I haven't provided any actual examples yet ( I kinda don't have too much time lately ) but I will try to post an actual example tomorrow perhabs.

11

[Max] I need help! / Re: Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-25, 20:55:59 »

Well, I couldn't really find anything about this online. And granted I haven't tried for very long yet but I couldn't make something that comes even close to the blending there.
Because all I am doing is changing the Vertex Color which is as far as I know just the texture coordinates for the blending ( I have no idea if I have this right ) instead of changing the way the material blend node actually blends.

12

[Max] I need help! / Height Based Texture Blending

« on: 2016-04-25, 20:30:46 »

Hey,
I was wondering if it is possible to blend multiple materials together inside of 3ds Max using Vertex Color and something similar to THIS?

I have to admit I haven't checked indepth yet if something like this is possible using corona. But maybe someone here has already tried or done this before?

13

[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona 1.3 Normal Map Issues

« on: 2016-03-31, 21:43:38 »

Hi. Might be wrong, but I think you should try removing all smoothing groups from the object, and then load the normal map with gamma override 1 instead of adding gamma in the normal map.

You are a genius, that's exactly it.
http://imgur.com/l0Biqax
I have also figured out why it worked in the other programs.
I exported from max with the zbrush preset active. Now even if I change the preset the change will not be saved and it will still just export the preset.
I didn't know that and I didn't see it either.

So, well.... I guess that's the end of this thread :P

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona 1.3 Normal Map Issues

« on: 2016-03-31, 19:26:18 »

Alright, so here are two more renders using both Scanline Renderer and mental Ray, perhabs this will be useful.
http://imgur.com/tSSn3rf
http://imgur.com/ZddSsGn

They don't look that awesome either but they don't have that weird shadow going down the middle.

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[Max] I need help! / Re: Corona 1.3 Normal Map Issues

« on: 2016-03-31, 09:51:41 »

I can try rendering in other 3ds max renderers once I get home from work.