Glass interacting

[Steve Roberts]

Transparency, yes. I don’t use Max, but I’d imagine you would render the scene with alpha channel, or 32-bit.

However … if you want the background to show up as reflections and refractions in the objects, you have to add the background behind the objects within Max, so it can make all the necessary calculations of the footage bouncing around in and off the objects.

[Darby Edelen]

[Steve Roberts] “However … if you want the background to show up as reflections and refractions in the objects, you have to add the background behind the objects within Max, so it can make all the necessary calculations of the footage bouncing around in and off the objects.”

This isn’t necessarily true. You can get some decent refraction effects if you render out a normal map pass and use it to drive a displacement map (all of your renders should be at least 16bpc). Or you could render the depth buffer out of 3ds Max and use ZBornToy to create reflections, refractions, caustics and more:

https://www.taronites.com/zborntoy/zborntoy.php

Of course there is some learning involved in using ZBornToy, but if you’re not on a strict deadline it’s a fun little toy =)

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Steve Roberts]

“Normal map pass” … thanks for the tip, Darby!

[Darby Edelen]

[Steve Roberts] “”Normal map pass” … thanks for the tip, Darby!”

The results from this method are obviously not as accurate as they would be if you used raytracing in a 3D app, but it gives a decent approximation and renders ridiculously quickly.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Ong Joseph]

Thanks. How do I go about setting up the normal pass in max? I checked around but couldn’t find similar terms.

[Darby Edelen]

Unfortunately I’m not very familiar with 3ds Max. I would expect that somewhere in the render options there is a way to set up multiple passes of your scene, and I would also expect that one of those passes should be the normals.

I would check the support documentation of 3ds Max if you need more info than that =)

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Steve Skazenski]

Try searching Max’s help for “Render Elements”, it should be one of the tabs in the Render window.