Design Challenge: Valentine's Day

[melissa.lax]

So Maxers... for Valentine's day we challenge YOU to get a little sentimental and create a V-day inspired scene. 

Here are the details you need to know:  

Challenge: Create a Valentine's day inspired scene of your choosing. When submitting your entry, please include a brief description and tips on how you achieved your design. 

Voting: Just @mention your favorite! Members with the most mentions will have a chance to win. Invite your friends on the thread too!

Deadline: Monday Feb 13, 2017

Prize: The winner will be featured on the home screen of AREA, Area Gallery, and will be interviewed for an article.

Looking for inspiration? check out these video tutorial series: 

Write a love letter - Prefer to say it in words? learn how to animate self writing text. 

http://autode.sk/3dsmaxselfwritingtextseries

Say it from the rooftops - Want to confess your love from the rooftops of Monpazier, France? or revisit the first spot where you kissed? check out Amer's tutorial series on photo modeling. 

http://autode.sk/3dsmaxmodelingfacades

Needing a helping hand? - Get some help from your old friend "stick man" and surprise them with something they'll love. 

http://autode.sk/3dsmaxcatrigseries

Max on 

Melissa & AJ

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

This is a cool one @melissa.lax!  Dig it!

[-niels-]

Ok, going to post this here early...(as an official entry )

Actually wanted to save it till next Friday when I'd also post them in the Inventor Friday pictures, but that wouldn't leave a lot of time for voting. (and it'll be fun to see how many people from the Inventor forum actually end up here.)

It's more or less my first serious attempt at animating with 3DS Max, so it's rather short but i hope that doesn't matter.

I modeled all the items, except for the card and the floor which are simple planes, in Inventor so i can't give tips on how to model those in Max.

(I'll probably add the model of the pendant to the Inventor Friday pictures post on the 10th for those interested.)

Materials/textures and rendering done with Mental Ray.

The lighting is done with IBL, i didn't any any other light sources so there's only one skylight with an HDR image.

First, some stills rendered at 1920x1080:

And here's my animation at 480p.

As for my process, i learned to render my stills normally first and then use a material override setting to make separate AO renders which i then composite over eachother using Photoshop.

I usually also apply another filter in Photoshop to sharpen the image a bit.

These might be things that can be done with 3DS Max but I'm not that familiar with all the settings and kinda used to this process now.

For this animation i had a total of 110 frames which i rendered as png's and then applied this process to, so that was quite a bit of work. (Thank god you can automate some stuff in Photoshop too...)

After that i put it all in this little piece of software called "Time-lapse-Tool" to make it into a video.

So, hope you all like my work and Enjoy Valentine's Day!

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

I think this is looking very nice @-niels-, good entry!  I love that the locket has a nice looking kitty and your profile pic.  This was a fun one and it looks nice too, good work!

Best Regards,

[melissa.lax]

Hi @-niels-,

Thanks for sharing and happy early valentine's day to you!

Wondering if the community can give you some tips on how to achieve those effects in Max?

Best,

Melissa

[Frank-Oosterwaal]

Hi everyone,

I only use Max for animating and rendering Inventor models so I'm far from being a Max expert! Every Friday @-niels- makes a Friday pictures post in the Inventor Forum and I usually participate. He mentioned this post and because this Friday is a Valentines themed Friday pictures I made one with a Valentine theme. Sorry for the fairly low quality of the picture, sadly I don't have allot of time lately so I made and rendered it all this morning.

Anyway, here goes nothing!

Have a good weekend all!!!

This is what I did:

Modeled two heart shapes in Inventor and brought them into Max. Used the cloth modifier (what a awesome feature is that!) to make the heart shape in the sheet. Put two smaller models of the same heart on top of the sheet. Used the other heart shape to fit around the sheet and exported that into Realflow. Filled the model with fluid and gave it a higher viscosity to match chocolate. Calculated a melt of the chocolate and exported it back into Max. Rendered it with Mental ray and voila!

[-niels-]

Nice one @Frank-Oosterwaal, thanks for participating and the mention

For the people that are interested and like free models, i posted the locket from my renders in that Friday pictures post.

[Judith.Hageman]

Hi everyone,

I am still a intimidated beginner with Max, learning to animate and render our Inventor designs. I recently joined the Friday pictures that Niels started on the Inventor Forum. Like Niels and Frank I made a Valentine's picture theme for today and post it here as well.

It is certainly not the highest end result, it can always be better. But for the short time (only 3 hours) I spent on it, I am pretty happy with the picture.

First time I got some sort of nice result with a particle flow!

Good luck with the challenge, look forward to the entries.

Have a great weekend everyone!

This is how it is made:

The box, top and 1 little heart are modelled in Inventor and imported in Max.

Used a simple plane with Udeflector as "table" and put some gravity on it. Superspray with the heart as geometry linked to the box.

I put a deflector on the top to make sure the hearts don't go through the top.

For lighting I used a skylight with a jpeg sky as map. The lighting part is the thing I most struggle with in Max, can't seem to get it the way I want. Some tips on how to fix this would be nice.

Used the ART renderer to get the end result.

[melissa.lax]

Hi @Frank-Oosterwaal,

Thank you soo much for your contribution! It looks soo good I could almost eat it. Can I? 

The cloth modifier is pretty nifty and I see it was pretty useful to get your heart shape. Are you familiar with the crease modifier in Max >

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2016/ENU/3DSMa...

Could be useful to "smudge" your chocolate edges even more. Just a suggestion from my colleague @ads_dumonta who was also salivating over it ;). 

Have a lovely weekend,

Melissa 

[melissa.lax]

Hi @Judith.Hageman!

Thanks for your contribution and welcome to the Max forums. 

Love the "explosion" effect you've created with the hearts. Oh how I wish that was an explosion of cinnamon hearts .

Regarding your question about lighting in Max, it can be tough at first but I asked my colleague @ads_dumonta, QA for Max, he suggested to use less lights to better manage your lighting. He also suggested you check out "Simulating Exterior" lighting topic. 

Here are some resources in case you're interested:

Simulating Exterior Lighting" Video Tutorial 

http://area.autodesk.com/account/tutorials/3ds-max-lighting-and-rendering-simulating-exterior-lighti...

Lighting & Rendering in Max Video Tutorial Series

http://area.autodesk.com/learning/series/3ds-max-lighting-and-rendering

All you need to know about lighting in Max

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2017/ENU/3DSMa...

Thanks for taking the time to create this!

Best,

Melissa

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

I was out on vacation for a week there and when I came back I see this thread has had some great additions!   Nice work @Frank-Oosterwaal and @Judith.Hageman and also some great learning links by @melissa.lax!  Very nice to see all this on my return!  Thank you all for taking the time to participate, and that liquid chocolate and the heart box are looking cool!

Best Regards,

[Judith.Hageman]

Hi @melissa.lax, 

I keep wondering: who won the Challenge?

Cheers,

Judith

[melissa.lax]

Hi @Judith.Hageman

 I'd say you all won J we let the community vote for this one:

"Voting: Just @mention your favorite! Members with the most mentions will have a chance to win. Invite your friends on the thread too!"

We should get another challenge going soon.

Cheers,

Melissa

[-niels-]

Prize: The winner will be featured on the home screen of AREA, Area Gallery, and will be interviewed for an article.

Voting rules aren't very conclusive, here's how i see the result:

Submissions: @-niels- @Frank-Oosterwaal @Judith.Hageman

-niels-

@mentions:

• Alfred.DeFlaminis
• Melissa.lax
• Frank-Oosterwaal (did not mention my picture as favorite)

3 kudos:

• Alfred.DeFlaminis
• robert
• aon.914858227

Frank-Oosterwaal

@mentions:

• Alfred.DeFlaminis
• Melissa.lax
• -niels-

1 kudo:

• Alfred.DeFlaminis

Judith.Hageman

@mentions:

• Alfred.DeFlaminis
• Melissa.lax

3 kudos:

• Alfred.DeFlaminis
• Melissa.lax
• aon.914858227

I don't want to declare any winner, so i'll go with the "you all won"... which means you'll have to put all our images/videos on the AREA home screen

[Frank-Oosterwaal]

Hold on!

I didn't have any time to look at any post or anything last weeks so sorry for the late response but I hereby vote for @-niels-.

It wouldn't be fair to declare all of us as winners because Niels has definitely the best model and render of the challenge.

So if it's up to me, Niels wins...

[Judith.Hageman]

Yep, I agree with @Frank-Oosterwaal.

I vote @-niels-!

[Robert_Benjamins]

My vote goes to @-niels-.

Because of Niels, even I started to use 3ds max to try to make Inventor models look nicer.

[Judith.Hageman]

Hi @melissa.lax,

It has been quiet over here for over a week now. Does that mean all votes are in and it is time to call a winner?

Cheers,

Judith

[melissa.lax]

Hi @-niels-,

My sincere apologies for the late reply! I didn't get the notifications for this post... 

I really must say you're ALL winners @Judith.Hageman @Frank-Oosterwaal.

For a few reasons:

1. Quality of all your work 

2. Your dedication

3. The deadline mentioned was Feb 13 😞 

@-niels- as a token of our appreciation for your dedication and overall spirit I'd like to invite you on a thread "takeover" where you will be featured in our AREA series. 

You're a true team player and extremely helpful, I'd love our community to experience the "Niels effect" too. 

Cheers,

Melissa

[-niels-]

@melissa.lax

---

@melissa.lax wrote:

@-niels- as a token of our appreciation for your dedication and overall spirit I'd like to invite you on a thread "takeover" where you will be featured in our AREA series.

---

Not sure what you mean by the "thread takeover", but I'll accept the invitation.

If you need any input from me, PM or email me.

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@melissa.lax wrote:

You're a true team player and extremely helpful, I'd love our community to experience the "Niels effect" too.

---

Lol, feels like you're exaggerating a bit here... or I'm just too modest... 

"Niels effect"...

Thanks for making my day start with a smile.

@ everyone else, thanks for the support!