Post-Apocalyptic Gas Station

[Dr. Feelgood]

Okay, she's definitely done now...

I got my brand spankin' new 3DS Max 2010 today, along with my real-time Shadows and a fantastical Shader to work with thanks to Xoliul.

Aside from perhaps rendering off a video for my show-reel at a later date, this is it. I've done sort of some Early Morning/Midday/Late Afternoon Viewport Grabs to demonstrate Max's new lighting and effects, along with showing off my Textures good and proper thanks to Laurens' awesome Shader.

Thanks to the peeps who've helped me out along the way, yous know who you are And as usual, if you've got and questions or queries, simply ask away!!

[crazy 989]

wow that looks sweet, very nice lighting, better than most games imo, so whats your next project?

[Dr. Feelgood]

Thanks very much mate Very glad you like!!

I'm not quite certain on what the next project is gonna be... It's a toss up between re-creating my twin-engined monster-truck which was my first ever serious (ha!!) car, or another environment piece.

[et_fone_home]

Dam, i want a car rendered in that scene! It would look realistic + fast rendering times. Or maybe none!?

[Xoliul]

Hey Doc, great to see the use you're giving this. There's a few tricks you could still pull to pimp this even more.
2010 has real time Ambient Occlusion which really brings some more depth to the scene. I do believe you enabled the high quality AA since everything is nice and smooth.
Secondly my shader has these fresnel falloff rimlight eyecandy options. They're all the way at the bottom of the shader, with some tweaking they can be used on pretty much everything.

Oh and I gotta agree, placing a sexy car in front of that gas station would look awesome!

and ET, as you can tell from Doc's grabs, you get up to 400 "renders" per second

[Dr. Feelgood]

Yerp, thanks to ET, I've decided to do some renders of my Fairlane model in front of it. In the middle of Materialising that now

Will have a play with those Shader settings you mentioned when I open the Gas Station scene again I did see them, but only really thought it'd be used with something that's reflecting, since I'm using it on my car now.

[Xoliul]

Ah cool, looking forward to it!
Here's a nice example from some guys from my school how you can use the fresnel on anything:
http://i43.tinypic.com/1g55rr.jpg
http://i41.tinypic.com/iqlclz.jpg
The subtle edge effects are what I mean.

[Mr.So Much]

Wow that's really cool looking! I like the shadows cast by the beams on the third one. Looking forward to seeing the fairlane in there.

[tiberius]

yes, this is really looking good, needs your ZH in there.

[multimediaman]

wait! you're not done! flesh out your scene more! Duplicate the road segment, minus the tire tracks, and extend the road a bit... then put perhaps some ruins of a building (some rubble around a foundation, with some various things showing of what was there before, and maybe a sign for them out front that was destroyed, plastic shards on the outside edges of the sign, the fluorescent light tubes inside, not all of them in-tact...

then make some woodsy-looking area, or a rocky embankment surrounding it... Put some trees on top beyond that, or put some mountain ranges beyond... just get something so that your scene looks completed.

I tried having a very well-detailed building, and everyone that critiqued my reel at one point said to do something to make it feel like a completed scene.

Don't forget a skybox/dome and horizon cylinder, most importantly!

[schaefft]

What buidling do you mean? The starbucks store? You should really finish it.

[Dr. Feelgood]

Thanks guys

Yes MMM, the scene's done for now... I may make other terrain pieces further on, but I doubt it. The mission was to A.) Create my first ever game environment set-piece, and B.) Learn DirectX Shaders, and I reckon I've done alright on the both of them

Again, thanks for your help along the way schaefft & MMM

[schaefft]

No problem, I hope to see some new stuff from you soon, next time maybe inside a game engine? Crysis maybe? Doesnt seem to be too hard, there are tons of tutorials, already imported one of my WOTW meshs.