Using FinalRender but I’ll see about similar settings.
I do hope the new portfolio format will be much more organized than this ongoing
text posting in general, instead of specifically for each image posted.

Don, do you still dont know what is causing the flickering in the chariot animation?

If so, may I presume that you’re rendering with mental ray using final gathering? I’d also presume that you’re rebuilding final gathering every frame, even though there are no moving parts in the scene, save for the camera.

Assuming I’m correct in thinking the above, the solution for you would be to go to the rendering dialog> indirect illumination tab> final gathering> untick rebuild. I dont have max here with me so I cant check for the exact name, but it should be in that place, maybe with a slightly different name. The idea here is to “freeze” final gathering solution and reuse it throughout the animation. Using so few samples causes it to flicker when rebuilding FG in every frame. With FG “frozen” it will reuse the same data from the last frame, while updating only the missing elements.

This way it should render much faster, as its not recalculating FG every frame and the animation should be flicker free.

It’s a typical approach in MR. Background/ non moving objects have their FG calculated at start and reused throughout the animation, while the moving objects, save for the camera, are rendered in separate passes with higher FG density/samples to reduce flickering. (notice how I said “reduce” and not “avoid”. you cant avoid flickering, you can only reduce it to non visible amounts.)

Hope this helps

Hi zanfankid!
My idea when creating the scene was to display the audio occlusion feature in Foley Studio Max
( http://www.boomerlabs.com/ ) which can be heard in the video version as it increases speed.
My avatar is based on a vehicle I saw in a movie.
More here:
http://www.hometime.net/chariot.html

Thanks for commenting!

Don

aww, but it looked very promising!
i saw the entire animation LOL. i wanted to see it go o fast it would fly of its foundation and destroy the world.
i was wondering what your avatar was btw. it looks nice.

I am not able to change anything in my portfolio, it’s frozen,
it won’t accept another image. I’ve asked. complained, tried,
but no change. I’m not working on it any more.

im happy you know the problem with the steps already.

Hey Ivan,
Guess I see what you mean about the contrast of the sharp and blurred, not sure what I may or may not do about it.
We’ll have to see about further development, but I do appreciate you guys’ willingness to comment.

Mentioning morphing as I just wanted to suggest a possible conversion, transmutation of one object (machinery) into another one or even something organic, if you intend to develop the storyboard in such way. But this was just a suggestion you will find your one story all by yourself I’m sure.

Anyway if you are after creating a realistic environment (this is not absolutely necessary) the shadows on the floor could not be as sharp as they are now, the window-frame is too far and there is a kind of contradiction between the blurry background and the sharpness of the shadows. Certainly if you like it fully surrealistic and if you do like it this way leave it like it is now. Go on we are eager to see what will happens there.

ivan

.
Thanks for viewing guys!

eodeo,
When I posted this to the regular forum I had a question, “what do you think I don’t like about this picture?”.
The answer was the steps, mostly because if you look closely they are out of scale for the scene and it distracts from the main thing, the size of the rotating “machine”.
Not the steps model, per say, but the size of the steps, there should be about twice as many steps in the same space.
Will have to correct that.
Thanks for the nice comments on a number of things.
I am kind of pleased with the depth of field and depth fog, added in After Effects.

Ivan,
You’re right about elaborating on the mechanical fantasy part.
The thing in the back right corner is actually a large computer but you really can’t tell and even seeing it by itself doesn’t make it all that clear. There’s also the same model to the left of this view in the corner.Not really sure about using morphing, so maybe you could clarify on that.
I kind of did the elaborating (after the original idea of the rotating machine) is too much of a hurry and I think it shows.
Thanks for the nice comments.

Don

I love the lightning, the atmosphere and the general look of it. I dislike the floor texture. Its obviously too low res and stretches too much. Also stairs are too sharp, and alto while gritty they seam too clean and 3d. If i ignore the first plan, and look beyond it- the whole picture looks completely real. The shadows are amazing! Especially in the background on the box thingies.

Great picture.

(i had about 10 errors in the text above before i spell checked it in word ;)