#Render Cubes
Jonas,
I am comparing the capabilities of 3D Studio 4 with that of a traditional hand
renderer and photography. The exercise involves rendering 4 cubes. In the 3D
Editor construct 4 cubes. Place 3 cubes on a base adjacent to each other to
form a corner or right angle. Place the 4th cube above the corner cube to form
a triad of cubes. Place a camera at 45 degrees to the cubes so that the
picture plane is 45 degrees to the cubes. Only 3 cubes will be visible. Place
a spot light so that the lighting is parallel to the picture plane. The
exercise is to change the material of each cube and compare the rendered image
to a similar photograph and hand rendering.
With all the cubes being opaque the tone of the shading and shadows are
comparable to both hand rendering and photography. With ray tracing shadows,
3D Studio does not start the shadow at the corners of the cubes. Instead there
is a little offset which implies that the cubes are not all touching but
somehow offset from each other. I can live with this problem but I would like
to figure out how to cast the shadows correctly so that the shadows originate
from the corners.
The real problem I am having is with assigning a reflective material to the
cubes using the automatic reflection mapping. The reflective cubes to not show
the reflection of any of the adjacent cubes. Instead the cubes appear to be
opaque. When I use the Render/Setup/Make.CUB command it makes all the six
reflection maps and they seem to be correct. These reflection maps never
appear on the cube with the reflective material.
I'll try and upload the project file so that you can render it. I'll call it
WAYCUBE.PRJ. I would appreciate your help in this exercise or pass it on to
someone who would be interested in helping. It is important to me to make sure
that 3DS 4 can render this simple project correctly. If it can't do this I
would question what it does in more complex scenes. I need to show this work
to the established Architectural rendering community to prove 3DS credibility.
Thank you,
Wayne