Thought I would wake up this forum again, perhaps. I'd like to share some of my latest work, these were all models I created specifically for my last rendering project. All modeling was done in 3dsMax, and rendering also in 3dsMax using the Corona render engine. Comments and critique welcome as always.

The final beauty pass render.

Wireframe of final render.

Some close up wireframes of the objects in the scene:

A few more wires:

All modeling, texturing, and final render was done in about a week and a half (11 days). Final render was not touched in post except to resize for upload, all color management, post fx, and pass compositing were handled in the Corona engine itself. I really didn't need Photoshop for much in regard to this render except to compress the file size for upload to forums and such. The original resolution was 2400x2400 px. in PNG 24bit format.

Great

Great work

Fabulous! I especially like the first one in your "a few more wires" post. I can't even imagine how to get all that extruded and connected properly.

The render would be perfect if you added some imperfection to the coins, and the caliper looks a little too perfect. The materials for the 3d printing stuff is very good, mate!

Miss B -- he's got some tutorials that show how to make some of these models, at least the first one. I think there are some here on Rendo. Correct me if I'm wrong, luxxeon?

Thanks for the reminder SinnerSaint. I just went to his YouTube channel, and see one for Blender that might help. Not sure about the one for 3DMax, as I've never used it so don't know if I'd be able to follow along in Blender. Some UI's are so different it makes it hard to follow a tutorial when you don't know what the equivalent tool used in the tutorial is in your own software. We shall see.

That's a great render, Luxxeon! I can't get over how crisp and clean the wireframe renders are too. The modelling goes without saying. Your tuts are wonderful, and I was able to follow one of the 3dsmax ones in Blender myself a while back, but I admit there were quite a few differences in the software. I wish you had a Blender version for every video tutorial, but I understand how difficult that must be to create.

Well, that is incouraging HMorton, so I may try that one as well.

Miss B, it's not really easy but I was able to follow his twisted star ball one for 3dmax in Blender a while back. I had to look up a few things to find certain features, but it was worth it because I learned a lot. I was waiting to see if he was going to release a Blender version of the gyroid tutorial, but nothing yet. Luxxeon please make more Blender videos for us!

Thank you so much for commenting, everyone! It's good to see that traditional 3d modeling is still alive here on Renderosity, and there is some interest in it. I don't know if I'll make a Gyroid tutorial for Blender at this point. It's been over a month since I posted the original 3dsMax version, and I already have a few ideas for new material, so, unfortunately, I don't think I'll get around to it. However, the techniques are not that much different, and in fact should be very similar in both packages. There's aren't any specialized tools or actions involved in the 3dsMax tutorial that isn't available in Blender. On another note, there have been a few Youtubers who have recreated some of my tutorial videos, and translated the techniques over to Blender on their own. One of those guys who I often communicate with is TokiFX. He has translated many of my tutorials for Blender, and does an excellent job. He's even recreated a few tutorials that I already did for Blender myself, using some alternate techniques I hadn't considered. If you're really interested in modeling the Gyroid object, but can not translate my 3dsMax work to Blender, then perhaps watching his video will help you through some sticking points. He does not use narration audio though and you may need to slow the video down to half speed in order to keep up, because he does have it playing at 2x speed. His videos are meant more as demonstration than a tutorial, but his detailed annotations describe all of the keystrokes and the tools involved. Here's the video, hope this helps:

Ohhhh thank you for this Lux. I'm definitely going to have to check out his YouTube videos.

Excellent work. I can't even imagine unwrapping those surfaces. I just have to ask: how often did Max crash on you during all that work? You just made me feel like an absolute noob looking at this, but hey they are still excellent.

oldguy4440 posted at 5:04PM Sun, 02 April 2017 - #4301222

Excellent work. I can't even imagine unwrapping those surfaces. I just have to ask: how often did Max crash on you during all that work? You just made me feel like an absolute noob looking at this, but hey they are still excellent.

Thank you. The unwrapping really wasn't very difficult while the surfaces are still low poly. I've unwrapped all the surfaces and offer them as a "package" for download on other resource sites. I may offer them here, but Renderosity doesn't really have a market for these types of models, unfortunately. Each of the surfaces begins life as very simple, low-poly surfaces and are very easily unwrapped at that stage. Since the addition of detail is basically from subdivision, the UV Coordinates pass up to the high poly iterations quite easily. Personally, I don't experience many crashes with 3dsMax at all. I didn't have any software crashes during the creation process here that I recall.. I know there are others who have reported stability issues with 3dsMax, but the latest versions have been extremely stable for me and I usually work with highly subdivided models. The rare crashes I've encountered are usually triggered by my own errors, or from 3rd party plugin conflicts.

3ds Max User since 2009 and 2017 is my last upgrade since Autodesk went the subscription route with non-perpetual licenses; just like Adobe with their Creative Cloud. 2017 will not shut down clean without a script to kill process and tends to crash on me at the least opportune times; often when doing some of the simplest things. Like their improvements to UVWunwrap but in general I thought 2016 was more stable, it shut down without needing a get process, kill process script and filling my error log with errors every time I'd close it without that script.

oldguy4440 posted at 8:33AM Mon, 03 April 2017 - #4301352

3ds Max User since 2009 and 2017 is my last upgrade since Autodesk went the subscription route with non-perpetual licenses; just like Adobe with their Creative Cloud. 2017 will not shut down clean without a script to kill process and tends to crash on me at the least opportune times; often when doing some of the simplest things. Like their improvements to UVWunwrap but in general I thought 2016 was more stable, it shut down without needing a get process, kill process script and filling my error log with errors every time I'd close it without that script.

That sounds like it could be a hardware or driver compatibility issue. I have a workstation which I've configured specifically for 3dsMax. This includes 32gig system RAM, and Nvidia GTX GPU and drivers. Be sure you have installed all the hotfixes and service releases, and check that your hardware (especially graphics card and drivers) are recommended for the software. Nvidia cards work best with 3dsMax in my experience, especially the GTX or Quadro lines. You certainly shouldn't be dealing with these kinds of issues so there must be some underlying problem because it's not normal to have to use kill script to shut down the app, and dealing with crashes that often is not a normal occurrence. If all else fails, contact Autodesk support to see if there are other issues they might be able to troubleshoot. Good luck, I certainly hope you get it solved.

I'm running a Quadro K5000 with latest drivers, 32g ram, Windows 7 Pro, i7 3930K 3.8Ghz hex core processor all in a box I built myself. I've checked the Autodesk forums and there are quite a few people complaining about 2017. especially the shut down issue. The max script was provided to me by an Autodesk representative who acknowledged the problem. They have some illegal callbacks in their C++ 2015 as the error thrown is not an Autodesk error but a Windows error and they know the issue exists. After a day of troubleshooting the issue I traced it to the 2015 C++ redistributable. A reinstall of that redistributable will fix it for one shut down cycle but the next shutdown throws the error. Therefore the script "get process-KILL process", Well it's not as bad as disappearing verts which I experienced quite a few versions ago and their support response was "we know it exists but we will fix it in a later version".

oldguy4440, are you using any plugins or scripts that engage at startup? Old startup scripts can cause problems, and plugins can almost definitely crash the software. We've found 2017 quite stable until you try saving custom layouts. Corrupted config files caused startup crashes, which could be fixed by simply deleting the config files and having the software overwrite them again. Beware of low ram, and peaked system resources. Keep an eye on your Task Manager cpu performance and memory usage. I agree with luxxeon about contacting support.

oldguy4440 posted at 8:35AM Mon, 03 April 2017 - #4301388

The max script was provided to me by an Autodesk representative who acknowledged the problem. They have some illegal callbacks in their C++ 2015 as the error thrown is not an Autodesk error but a Windows error and they know the issue exists. After a day of troubleshooting the issue I traced it to the 2015 C++ redistributable.".

Ignore my other message, we must have been typing at the same time. Was this addressed in 2017.1, or is that the version you're using?

I'm running 2017, Version 19.0 SP3 commercial with a PERPETUAL license; I absolutely hate the monthly or yearly "rental" garbage which Autodesk and Adobe migrated to. I let my Autodesk Building Design Suite Premium Subscription lapse this year when they tried to force the rental agreement on me; had been on subscription with perpetual license since 2009 for AutoCAD and 3ds Max then the Building Design Suite Premium. I'll be honest a lot of the crashes I experience are due to operator error; I learned how to use 3ds Max on my own and I am still learning every time I use it. Back in 2009 it was a toss up between 3ds Max and Maya for me (Maya wasn't owned by Autodesk back then) but since I had AutoCAD Max won. Yes Autodesk is aware of the problem but I don't expect them to resolve it for me but they will probably resolve it in the 2018 version. My solution is to run the script provided to me and SAVE OFTEN.

I do run a few older scripts like TexTools but the shutdown problem occurred on a clean, fresh install of Max 2017 when I had to install it instead of 2016; which by License I can't use anymore. Blast those hard drive failures!

There were two additional updates after sp3 which brings the software version to 2017.1.1. These updates were not sr's or hotfixes, they're actual point updates including new features. As long as you are able to work on your current version productively, then I wouldn't recommend upgrading to the point releases. It's not likely they fixed your issues there as you observed earlier. I would wait until the 2018 release with sr1 or 2. We should have that soon anyway.

Well Gee I just checked my account at Autodesk and the last update for 3ds Max as part of the Building design Suite Premium is SP3; thanks Autodesk. Of course I'm surprised I can still access the account since the subscription has lapsed. I'm just going to live with it and be thankful I can legally use 3ds Max 2014 and 2017 till the day I die without giving Autodesk another penny. I have the 2014 version because when I migrated to the Building Design Suite Premium from just AutoCAD and 3ds Max Design subscriptions to save about $500 on my subscription costs Autodesk wouldn't give me any kind of price break so I let one subscription lapse and migrated one. My son's happy though; he gets to use my 2014 version.

There are so many plugins and add-ons for 3dsmax, you should be set for quite some time with your 2017 license. I plan to make a video demo showcasing some of the excellent MCG tools that enhance 3dsMax's capabilities, and they're all free. I had previously been working with the 2012 release until just recently because I really had no need to move up since using maxscripts and plugins enhanced my workflow into the future, and that version was extremely stable on my system. The MCG tool is a huge bonus and will help extend the shelf-life and value of the product for many years, especially for modeling and animation.

I hear all professional users always talking about Quadro cards. Even when I look at Boxxx workstations, they come with Quadro. But why is it that when it comes to gpu rendering, I always hear everyone saying to go with a high end gtx card instead? Even in this thread I noticed that oldguy has a quadro in his machine, but luxxeon said he's using a gtx. So what's the difference, and why are quadro's almost double the cost of most gtx cards? I'm asking because I want to get a new system for gpu rendering, and want to choose the right nvidia card to get the fastest results. If anyone has any insight or can share their own story about why they use the nvidia card they use, that would be great!

HMorton posted at 3:18PM Sat, 22 April 2017 - #4303043

I hear all professional users always talking about Quadro cards. Even when I look at Boxxx workstations, they come with Quadro. But why is it that when it comes to gpu rendering, I always hear everyone saying to go with a high end gtx card instead? Even in this thread I noticed that oldguy has a quadro in his machine, but luxxeon said he's using a gtx. So what's the difference, and why are Quadro's almost double the cost of most gtx cards? I'm asking because I want to get a new system for gpu rendering, and want to choose the right Nvidia card to get the fastest results. If anyone has any insight or can share their own story about why they use the nvidia card they use, that would be great!

Sorry for the late reply, HMorton. Quadro cards are typically found in CAD workstations like the Dell Precision series. and are specifically engineered to use specific drivers that work best with certain specifications in professional CAD software. Quadro cards are made to handle large polygon datasets in demanding software, and perform this task much better than a GTX card would. Quadro cards usually support higher onboard memory (VRAM), and support larger screen resolutions with support for 30-bit color. The extra memory allows you to navigate very large 3D scenes with ease and supports multiple displays at much higher resolution. Obviously, if you are doing architectural development or visualization this would be a very important thing.

The difference between a Quadro M6000 ($5000) and Nvidia's powerful Titan X (around $1200) card is the memory support. Quadro M6000 has between 12- 24gigs of DDR5 GPU ram. As you can imagine, this is very handy when working on scenes with possibly millions of polygons in a CAD application.

On the other hand, Quadro cards do not have the rendering power of high-end gaming cards like the GTX. The Titan X, for example, has 3,583 CUDA cores on board. CUDA cores are used by all GPU render engines to speed up the renders, so the more cores your card has, the faster it will render a scene. By comparison, the Quadro M6000 has 3,072. So the Titan X has 300+ more cores for rendering than the M6000. This means that when you send your scene to a render engine like Octane or Cycles, the Titan X would render the scene faster than the Quadro. This is comparing two of the highest end Nvidia cards, but the overall comparison holds true for other cards in the two lines as well.

If your primary concern is viewport performance and memory handling while working on large, complex polygon scenes, then Quadro cards would be the best way to go. On the other hand, if you're buying a card specifically for GPU-accelerated rendering with CUDA, then a GTX or Titan card would have more CUDA cores and thus provide faster renders.

The ebots seem to not be working for me because i didn't know you responded here. Thanks for that info, luxxeon. It definitely clears up a lot of confusion I had about the differences between those cards. So if all I'm doing is using the card for rendering in Blender, I'm better off going with a GTX than a Quadro, and save some money in the process. Thanks!

The way I understanad the difference between the GRX & Quadro Series is the fact that Quadro are more for industrial applications for example when modeling a real product and you need to find out it's weaknesses and make a simulation which is mostly for engineering purposes and production of real stuff , etc. Of course here you are going to need very very precise and will need tons of polygons. Animation game development , etc, do not need to go that far it's optional so it may not be that advantageous to have a quadro as opposed to a GTX card where as he said there are more cuda cores each acting as a separate mini cpu and this is great for rendering along with RAM.

Animetion posted at 11:13PM Sun, 18 June 2017 - #4307830

The way I understanad the difference between the GRX & Quadro Series is the fact that Quadro are more for industrial applications for example when modeling a real product and you need to find out it's weaknesses and make a simulation which is mostly for engineering purposes and production of real stuff , etc. Of course here you are going to need very very precise and will need tons of polygons. Animation game development , etc, do not need to go that far it's optional so it may not be that advantageous to have a quadro as opposed to a GTX card where as he said there are more cuda cores each acting as a separate mini cpu and this is great for rendering along with RAM.

Overall, that's an accurate assessment. To put it in the most simplified terms, Quadro cards have more VRAM and memory bandwidth than a GTX card (up to 4 times the onboard memory), which account for why they cost up to 4x more than a high-end GTX card. Quadro cards are also supported by a 256-bit memory interface which allows them to handle much larger datasets than a GTX card. This is the reason it is very beneficial to use a Quadro if you are working with memory-intensive calculations, such as physics simulations or video editing. Certain software applications have been programmed specifically to take advantage of the Quadro's 256 bit data processing and access to large amounts of VRAM. The software specifications will usually list the Quadro as a certified card if the programmers have added this additional functionality into the application routines, Usually, professional CAD software will list the Quadro as a certified card for this reason.

On the other hand, most Geforce GTX cards come equipped with a greater number of processing cores and faster graphics clock speeds. Often these cards can be re-programmed directly by third party hardware distributors to reach clock speeds that are twice as fast as their native GPU engine specs (this is known as Overclocking). The overall graphics performance of a high-end GTX card makes them very suited to processor-intensive tasks like polygon rendering. This is why GTX run games better than Quadro, and why they can render 3d scenes in GPU render engines like Octane faster than a Quadro card could.

Also, there are now Geforce cards, like the new GTX 1080 and the Titan X, which can contain up to 12gb of VRAM, which means they can handle relatively large datasets too.