SevenCubed
08-10-2009, 08:21 PM
Hey... So I had someone ask me to discuss technique on here, and I reckoned I could throw up my usual "3D-to-carving pattern" process.
Note: I got used to this technique before the STL importer was implemented, so this may not be especially useful. But let's get down to brass tacks! It's as simple as A, B, C:
A.) Camera! First step in this process, once you've got a 3D Scene and a composition in mind, is to find out what your Z-Buffer range is gonna be. Once you've got your camera lined up the way you want it, click on the "Show" box for "Environment Ranges" in the modifier panel for your camera. Once this has been done, you should be able to move around two little rectangles. Adjust these until they represent what you want to be the shallowest and deepest part of your carving. In the picture I included, I was very generous, because I'd rather get too much in the scene than not enough.
B.) Z-Buffer! This is where the magic happens. In your Renderer dialogue, you can click on the "Render Elements" tab and press that "Add" button there. When you do that, you'll get a whole list of stuff, but you wanna scroll down to "Z-Buffer" and add it. While still in the "Render Elements" area, scrub down to the Z-Buffer options, and use the Near and Far values you plugged into your camera. Whatever's near will be white, whatever's far will be black. You're familiar with the drill, I'm sure.
C.) Profit! That's it, really. Press the render button. It'll render the scene like normally, and then a window will pop up showing the Z-Buffer window. Render your scene in Stupid-high resolution, and she's good to go! You can save the Z-Buffer image with an alpha channel, in case you wanted to post-process a little bit in Photoshop.
That's basically it! It's a very uncomplicated process. Hopefully this is useful to folks! I'm kinda assuming that you have general familiarity with 3DS MAX and whatnot, but feel free to ask me questions if you get stuck anywhere.
Note: I got used to this technique before the STL importer was implemented, so this may not be especially useful. But let's get down to brass tacks! It's as simple as A, B, C:
A.) Camera! First step in this process, once you've got a 3D Scene and a composition in mind, is to find out what your Z-Buffer range is gonna be. Once you've got your camera lined up the way you want it, click on the "Show" box for "Environment Ranges" in the modifier panel for your camera. Once this has been done, you should be able to move around two little rectangles. Adjust these until they represent what you want to be the shallowest and deepest part of your carving. In the picture I included, I was very generous, because I'd rather get too much in the scene than not enough.
B.) Z-Buffer! This is where the magic happens. In your Renderer dialogue, you can click on the "Render Elements" tab and press that "Add" button there. When you do that, you'll get a whole list of stuff, but you wanna scroll down to "Z-Buffer" and add it. While still in the "Render Elements" area, scrub down to the Z-Buffer options, and use the Near and Far values you plugged into your camera. Whatever's near will be white, whatever's far will be black. You're familiar with the drill, I'm sure.
C.) Profit! That's it, really. Press the render button. It'll render the scene like normally, and then a window will pop up showing the Z-Buffer window. Render your scene in Stupid-high resolution, and she's good to go! You can save the Z-Buffer image with an alpha channel, in case you wanted to post-process a little bit in Photoshop.
That's basically it! It's a very uncomplicated process. Hopefully this is useful to folks! I'm kinda assuming that you have general familiarity with 3DS MAX and whatnot, but feel free to ask me questions if you get stuck anywhere.