Grimm Behind the Scenes from Bent Image Lab on Vimeo.

However, I once again cant remember the exact variable that i have to reset.  imageviewportbackgroundfilename?  Soooo, after looking it up again, I'm posting it here spo I can always just come back and look it up.  I should do that more with things I always forget...

BackgroundImageFilename = ""

I love using Vray lights for soft shadows and reflections, but often they look very artifical and fake.  Adding and HDR image to your area light make your stuff look so much more natural.

Here's a reflection in a car with a simple white Vray light plane. 

It's nice, but the light gives a perfect square of light.  No hot spots, and perfectly clean edges.  Now take a look at some examples of using HDR images of some studio lights.

The great part is that they are HDR, so you can turn them up and down to adjust the hot spots and intensity.  I published my top 6 favorite HDR images for use on Vray lights up on Turbosquid. ($10)

I use these images on every project I work on.  I captured a bunch of stage lights and use them on Vray lights to get much more realistic reflections and lighting on my CG.

http://www.turbosquid.com/HDR Studio Lights

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/342039896/from-the-sea-callioscope

Normally, after "Freeze Transform" on a characters control rig, (Alt+RClick) you will want to put the character back in its original pose with the coresponding "Transform to Zero" action.  

Sometimes, you will select some objects that might not have had their transforms frozen and  "Transform to Zero" will throw an error. You will then see this dialog warning you that something was never setup up with the"Freeze Transform" action in the first place. 

And, you might get this dialog 12 times.  Wouldnt it be more helpful if it told you what object was the problem?  Well, with a swift line of code in the macro, it can. Simply open the macro from the 3dsmax\ui\macrosricpt folder and change this line.  (The original line is remakred out -- in green)

And now, when the script fails, it will throw the object name into the messagebox and you can write down all the ones that failed and deal with them individually.  (Cause not all character rig things should be frozen! Dont be trying to freeze your IK bones and Handles.) BTW... Whats with the stupid white bar across the dialog where the ok button is?   

The idea of a graphical node interface to deal with materials seems obvious, but its also a large design project as in how it works and what it's workflow is.  To me, it fell short, and like everything else in 3dsmax, it will be abondoned and ignored, instead of tuned and improved.

I've been building more complicated composite's in my shaders layering mudbox bitmaps over each other to dial in my looks and tonight I thought I'd give that old "Slate" material editor yet another try.  As I undergo the task of jumping around bitmaps and shader settings to dial in my creatures skin for a render, I'll see if this tool can asist me in a journey i am already familiar with.

One of the big reasons I dont like this tool is the branding.  "Slate" material editor.   It's got a fucking name?  WTF? Am I to belive that this technology is so god damn brilliant that not only was it patented and given awards, but it's got  its own name too.

I open the "Slate" material editor. Ok, good start.  Lets grab the material I already started.  Oh, eyedropper icon, I got that. Ok, lets look at what I have. I had a composite shader, with 3 bitmaps connected to the diffuse component. As I look at the screen, it occurs to me that while the old interface shows the maps stacking bottom to top, the "Slate" material editor has them in opposite order, top to bottom?  Oh great.  so which "layer" is on top?  immediate loss of confidence that anything is right from here on out.  

I accept this flaw, just as the modifier stack is opposite of the track view's take on the modifier stack.  But still, a good design should dictate he proper view on data.  I see that everything is names "Map #44" or whatever so i decide to rename things.  This goes fine for the bitmaps, but over the composite material, I right click to "reanme" the layers and NO.  This is rename for the node itself!  You must rename the layer using that other interace.  The rightside up one.  Ok, I get it.  This composite material was made a while back and doesn't know how to talk to the new "Slate" technology. Lame...

Ok. Whatever.  Im a trooper, there could be some amazing thing that improves my workflow here. Right? Ok, lets add a couple other bitmaps i made in mudbox.  OK, lets clone this bitmap here and replace its path with a different bitmap.  NO.  No copy and paste in "Slate" material editor. Wait, let me double check that.  Yea.  I dont see a way to copy and paste a node anywhere.  What about dragging a bitmap over to the material pallette area?  You know, the one with sliders on the side that show the tiniest window of materials?

And whats the the damn bitmap icons in the composite material?  First of all, they don't apply 3dsmax system gamma properly so mine always look super dark.  It's also really slow.  Like those images are rendered live everytime you see them.  As I jump around that shader map always has to re draw it's icons.  How about an option to turn off the icons then?  I can name my stuff and deal with it that way.

I don't blame the engineer for these problems.  I can't even blame the designer that worked on it.  I could only assume that to do this toolset right, would have taken more time than the company would allow for.  

I was just announced as the next speaker for this conference and Im stoked to be a part of it.  I'll probably be speaking on redering skin with Vray or a nuke production pipeline or working with hair-farm.  If any of you live out that way, register for the EUE- I hear it's a blast!