Well been filling in the background and rendered this out - 8.5 giving me some trouble but 2008 is rendering it out with no problems. The next few days its nothing but texturing errrrr

https://www.ravage3d.com/images/vcity/vc8_1.jpg

Full 1080p version here

Also how do I render in layers (as this scene is way to heavy now) but yet keep the shadows (eg the train tunnel right hand side is currently in shadow but the building in front I want on different layer).

I set up 4 so far

1) the background buildings

2) Car park, sky scrapers and train

3) Main part of street - cafe, garage and sports shop , rails that side of road ect.

4) Foreground Lights, trees car and building to the right.

But none of it will work if the shadows don`t over lap.

Thinking about it the reflections will be the same.

Any help here?

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are these display layers you are talking about... usually render layers work on beauty, occlusion, shadow, reflection, diffuse (maybe) etc etc

no render layers - if I try and render them all together maya crashes with textures on. With out it seems ok. So rendering them separately and comping them together will have to be the way - just need to figure out how to do the shadows

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a shadow pass.

ok - that sounds like what I need

how do I do that ???

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Wow! Looking pretty amazing so far! I'm looking forward to seeing it all textured up, hope you manage to work out how to do the render layers thing so you can progress with it more.

am liking this one tweetytunes looks good :bow:

just create a new render layer, select everything and add it to the layer. name it shadow_pass or whatever. the easiest way from here is to go presets > shadow.
then render that.

taa daa

you can add all the objects you want to the render layer
then you can assign black hole shaders to the objects you don't want to show in the render but still cast shadows or occlude other objects

that's one way of doing it...

i think i've only gotten the shadow pass preset to work once, but that might have been because i actually included the lights in that layer

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Originally posted by Chirone
then you can assign black hole shaders to the objects you don't want to show in the render but still cast shadows or occlude other objects

Originally Posted by

well when you render a shadow pass it comes out black everytime... the thing you want is the alpha. thats why 2009 shadow passes confuse me.

the preset works fine, how did you comp it?

oh wait, i got my advice around the wrong way.

blackhole shaders are for when you want to render things that appear behind other things...

i meant to say, you could add everything to a render layer, and override the render stats 'visible'

hammer: was that question directed at me? i haven't rendered in layers for 2009 yet, but in 2008 the shadow was just black, even in the alpha channel...

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D

Cheers guys I`ll check them all out and see what I get.

I have no idea if I`ll get the texturing done but almost finished with the city. Need two more main buildings and then finish of the road and paths and street lights. Even if I don`t get this done going to keep working on it as I`m loving this project right now (maybe not after texturing and trying to get this rendered).

Going to do some small camera move with in this city, nothing too great.

Here is an example of what I was thinking (camera jerky in places as this is ruff.

https://www.ravage3d.com/images/vcity/test_car.jpg

Click image for video - Quicktime (3.4 meg)

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looking really good Tweetytunes, I hope you do manage to get the texturing done in time, but if you don't it still looks awesome! Good luck with getting it done, looks like quite a mission to fulfill all that texture!

Here is a rendered version of that test video

Video here

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are you trying to find a good angle for the final still?
one of the angles near the middle of the clip, i think looks quite good

there's a giant white building on the right, and when that gets occluded by another building on the right, it seems like a good shot
or when the building closest on the right vanishes from the camera

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that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D