Hi Angelo,
3ds Max can render out your passes and material overrides no problem. There are mutiple different passes (render elements) that can be extracted from a render as seen in the Render Elements panel.
One workflow I really like for extracting the map of an object into one pass, you might find helpful:
- Select material to be extracted
- Between material and map, add a an mr Labelled Element (making sure your texture\procedural map is in the Passthrough slot of the Labelled Element)
- On the Labelled Element, add a label to the Label field (could be anything)
- In Render Element panel, add an mr Labelled Element render element
- in the render element parameters below, type the same Label you put on the material
When you render, you will produce a render element which contains the map you added in the passthrough slot of the Lballed Element.
You can also use an mr Shader Element in the Render Elements panel to override your scene with a shader\material of choice. You could use this for instance, to create an ambient occlusion pass.
There are many ways of replacing your Revit families with more higher detailed models in 3ds Max. You can of course model you own but that might be time consuming. One resource I really enjoy is the models found on Google Warehhouse (https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/?redirect=1). These models are completely free and are literally a drag and drop into 3ds Max since 3ds Max supports SKP files. There are literally thousands of models on this site and it's all free. If you are looking for even more, I would recommend Turbosquid, these are not free for the most part but they are very high quality models.
For water I would suggest exploring the Autodesk Water material or the mental ray Ocean shader. Either will give you a nice water look quickly.
Hope this helps!
Jose
