Tutorial by Juan Siquier

"A little farther to the right" is a scene based on the render "Breakfast in the Eighties" which
I completed in September 2013. I tried to keep the "vintage" look of the original scene, but
changed the lighting and camera shot. Basically it's another scene because I used a
combination of natural and artificial lighting which produces different colors; in addition,
repositioning the camera results in the composition no longer being a one-point perspective
(the Kubrick style), but rather it becomes a 2-point generating another style of shapes.
The scene was modeled and UVmapped in 3ds Max, textured in Photoshop and 3ds Max
using Viewport Canvas and finally, rendered using VRay Render.
In making this tutorial, I decided to focus on UVMapping, texturing, shading, lighting and
post-processing, I will talk about some of my usual procedures for tasks such as UVMapping
and building textures in Photoshop. I'll also teach about baking procedural textures. I will
explain how to build an organized PSD and how to paint directly on the mesh without leaving
3ds Max. However, I won't be covering modeling as the objects are quite simple to make;
anyone with basic knowledge of 3D can model a scene like this without problem.
I have written this tutorial assuming that those who see this know the basics of 3ds Max and
Photoshop.

The first thing I do is create the project folder and subfolders. In the picture above you can
see that I normally save the scene incrementally just in case. I want to go back a step for
some reason, for example to retrieve a camera with "Merge" from a previous scene. You can
see that from the 5th file the scene has already a name (1), you can also see that some files
are specific to Baking (2), drastic changes in lighting (3) or occlusion passes (4). I usually
also include a "notes.txt" file (5) to document start date, end, render time, awards,
publications, etc..

It's time to find references in Google Images, Flickr or Pinterest of the objects I'm modeling.
I put all of them into the "references" folder of my project.

I also collect the textures that I think are going to be needed, almost all of them come from
my personal collection of textures and some belong to commercial collections although many
have been painted by myself; most are square and have no less than 2K resolution.

The most used metal in this scene has been baked from the 2D application "Substance"
called "Galvanized.sbsar". I needed Autodesk Maya since I have not found a way to bake
these maps into Max. I created a Blinn (1) on which I have applied the Substance (2)map. I
activated the specular and bump (3) channels and clicked on "Export images to disk" (4),
after setting the path I make the resolution to 2K and that's it (5), you get a map of good
quality and which is ready to be tiled.
Video about baking Substance in Maya

After modeling the scene in proxy mode, it is time to place the camera to capture a good
composition. This step took me a long time because maybe it's the most important stage;
everything depends on good composition.

Have a look at the diagram of the composition. The diagonal with three colors (1) displaces
the balance of the image because the table (2), so I correct it by using the bigger red disc
(3). This game of imbalances and arrangements causes tension, a kind of vibration which
gives the image a little life.

When I get the desired composition, I lock the camera to avoid an accidental move.

I make high resolution modeling with consideration that afterwards I have to Uvmap them,
i.e. must remember to activate the "Generate mapping choords" box in "Lathes",
"primitives", "Lofts" etc.. I also have to remember to make UVs of elements BEFORE
duplicating them. In the picture above, we can see that there are many duplicated items.

Time to do the UVMapping, so we must consider a few rules:

We have to avoid seeing the seam. To help us Max shows us where the seams are in green
(1). Wooden objects in all shells must have the same rotation (2). All shells must be in the
correct scale except for those invisible to the camera - they can be much smaller (3) and you
can try grouping the shells by material (4). Avoid overlapping and inverted elements, fill the
maximum space but leave enough space between shells to can make selections with
Photoshop's "Lasso" tool.

Let's look at "Freeform Mode" (1) because we will use it a lot. It is convenient to activate the
snap for angle rotations (2) which we will do by clicking on the point (3):
pressing (3) we rotate the Shell
pressing (4) we scale the Shell
pressing (4) + Ctrl = uniform scale
pressing (4) + Shift = X or Y scale
pressing (4) + Ctrl + Alt = Radial scale

To document the UVMapping stage, I used the example of the wooden cabinet next to the
door and added an Unwrap UVW modifier, which we can see in the Editor a very chaotic and
bleak picture...it is the most terrific time of 3D.

The best we can do is take a deep breath, turn on good relaxing music and go step by step,
little by little and before we notice it, we'll have the job finished. What you need to do is
select items (1) (2) and apply flat or cylindrical maps as appropriate, to the furniture door
which is almost entirely flat. I give a "Quick Planar Map" based on the average of the
selected normal (3), this will be a button that will be most pressed in the mapping process.

To finish the curved frame, we extract the largest polygon in the center by selecting it and
pressing Ctrl + B (Break)

Let's activate the "Freeform Mode" (1). We'll select the central polygon of one of the curved
frames (2), grow selection (3) and break with Ctrl + B, then rotate with the help of
"Freeform Box" until it is vertical (5)

Select all curved frames and click on (1) or in the Menu/Tools / Relax... in the Relax Tool
dialog choose "Relax By Polygon Angles" (2) and click "Start Relax"... maybe this button will
also relax our brain!!

Now select one of the edges of the large rectangle and see that another side of one of the
curved frames turns blue. That's because in 3D space, the object shares the same edge.
Click on "Stitch" (orange arrow) and see how the curved frame goes to the selected edge and
welds to it. We do the same with the other 3 edges of the large rectangle.

Go to the drawer of the cabinet. We'll select it whole and click on one of the Flatten options
for use and see which works better. In this case, I choose "Flatten by Material ID".

Repeat the operation of selecting edges and sewing.

We continue selecting furniture elements and repeating the procedure until we finish, then
activate "Show Edge Distortion" (1) and see our shells in different colors from red to green.
If a shell is seeing red with white corners (2), it's too big and we have to rescale (3) until it
looks green. If it is simply red then it is too small and we have to rescale it.

A good idea is to apply a procedural "Wood" tiled in Y (1) to check the direction of the grain
wood in the picture above, so that we can see any mistakes.

To correct it, select the wrong shells and rotate them 90.

Finally we pack up the shells. First we'll select the metal shells and any others that have to
be together and we click on "Pack Together" (1). Then we press the rest of the shells and we
click "Normalize Pack". After that, we can move the shells by hand if we think we can
improve something and... that's it! The cabinet is Uvmapped.

I've mapped all other objects in the scene individually, but have packaged its UVs together.
To make this, I've applied an Unwrap UVW modifier to a multiple selection (that's why the
text is in italic) and packaged it the usual way.

Then I stamp the UVs on an image for use in Photoshop using "Tools / Render UVW
Template" (1) and increased the resolution to 8K (2). Finally I can convert all objects to
"editable poly" to collapse all the Unwrap UVW modifiers.

At the end, the different resolutions of the textures remains like in the picture above so I
only have to work in 3 PSD files (Note that I'm not considering objects that were already
finished when I published "Breakfast in the Eighties").

I always make an Ambient Occlusion bake to use it as a dirt mask and specular mask; the
first thing I do is save the scene under another name
(aLittleFartherToTheRight_BAKING.max), I activate the mental ray render and attach all
objects that share a UVMap (Attach List).

I press "0" or go to Menu / Rendering / Render To Texture ... I choose the output path of the
image (1), I select the object (2), I press "Use Existing Channel" (3), then press Add ... (4)
and choose "Ambient Occlusion (MR)", I put a name to the render, for example _AO (5),
specify an image format (6), leave white background (7), and then set the rendering
resolution (8).

I increase the samples (1), set the occlusion parameters (2), for making that, I render
several tests in low resolution, then I activate "Render to Files Only" (3) and I press "Render"
(4).

Sometimes I also bake the dust map based on a "Landscape" map that I apply to the diffuse
channel of any material, for example a Blinn.

In this case, the element that I added was the DiffuseMap (1) (2)

I can color this resulting map in Photoshop like dust masking the areas of dust in the
specular channel (1), a small fingerprint is always very effective (2).
Another way for getting useful maps..

Ive started texturing and will also use the cabinet to document the process. I'll use two
kinds of wood; a natural in the first layer (baseWood) and another above which consists of
two layers (beigeWood and flat). First is a copy of the "baseWood" with tweaks to have a
beige color and above a flat beige which I put in as "darken", blending the two top layers
seem painted wood.

I made this texture for baseWood, you can download it for free at the bottom of this page.

I add an adjustment layer to get the desired color.

I add a layer with a tileable dark marble.

I select with the Lasso tool (1) and with the support of UVStamp marble shells (2), once it is
selected, I make a mask in the marble layer (3).

Now I select the object parts that have different color wood.

To that selection, I apply an Unwrap UVW modifier and I make a 4K stamp disabling "Visible
edges"
Another way to obtain masks from faces

I drag the Stamp to the texture I'm editing in Photoshop (1), if I drag while pressing "Shift",
the layer will be perfectly centered. I select with magic wand (2) the surface outside the
shells (3), then I reverse the selection with Ctrl + Shift + I and finally go to Select / Modify /
Expand menu ... (4) where I expand the selection by a couple of pixels.

Then I add a mask (1) in the "coloredWood" layer which is a copy of the base wood but with
Hue Saturation retouched to give a bluish-green color. I can finally delete the layer that I
used to select the shells with.

Now I add a layer with a metal texture from my library and I scale it using logic and consider
the size of objects (1), then I drag the AO render which I created in the process of baking
that I had explained before into the document (by pressing Shift) (2), I put it in "Multiply"
blend mode, I decrease the opacity to 50% and color with Hue/Saturation to turn it brown.

Now I collapse all woods and their settings except baseWood so I get two: baseWood and
ColoredWood, to the latter will apply a mask on white (1).

Then I leave the color palettes black and white (2), allowing me to paint over the mask (1)
to reveal the wood below (3) for effect of bumps, scratches or peeling. If I paint black on the
mask, then I basically chip the ColoredWood and if I switch to white ("X button) it removes
the peeling.

I can create a layer style to coloredWood, add a shadow with distance 0 and subtle inner
Glow.

I can also paint some dirt by hand.

Now I create two layer groups; one for the specular map and one for the bump.

I drag with "Alt" all the layers except the dirt and AO to the BMP layer group and adjust
levels, as seen in the image above. What I'm looking to achieve is to have baseWood darker
than coloredWood.

I set the marble so that only a few dark spots remain, which will effect small pores.

The metal is simply the original desaturated and with very little contrast.

Now I drag all layers by pressing Alt to SPC layer group and I adjust the various materials
much like in the picture above. The AO to 100% and the metal has to be very clear.

Finally I save the maps that I will use in 3ds Max in the "Textures" folder of the project with
the names of the image above.

We go to 3ds Max and open the "Slate Material Editor". We assign a multisub material to the
furniture and then we create three materials: one for wood, one for the marble and another
one for the metal parts. To each of those materials, well apply the diffuse map weve just
created in Photoshop (I can drag and drop directly from Windows) into the diffuse channel,
we can press the right mouse button on the image node and enable "Show Shaded Material
in Viewport", which will allow us to see our furniture with texture.

All advanced materials (aiStandar, VRayMat, mia material) have control BRDF (bidirectional
reflectance distribution function) that controls the reflectivity according to the angle to the
normal of the surface on the object. In most materials (VrayMat, aiStandard) this function is
obtained with the Fresnel control, so just turn it on and adjust the IOR to obtain a realistic
material.

I prefer to work the customized fresnel curve and in most cases this will be my procedure: I
drag to the "Slate Material Editor" the map furniture_spec.tif, and I connect it to Map 2 of a
Fallof node, I connect the output of this node to ReflectMap channel (if VRay) Reflection Color
(if MR Arch & Design) then I adjust the Falloff curve more or less like in the picture. The right
side of the curve which reflects the 90 of viewing angle and the left side reflects the 0 of
vision angle.

I make the same thing for the marble, changing a bit the Fresnel curve.

For the metal I connect the node image "forniture_spec.tif" directly in reflection because
what distinguishes metals from other materials is their high IOR causing a very flat Fresnel
curve which is quite similar to have no Fresnel effect.

Now I drag to the Slate Material Editor the Bump map, "furniture_bmp.tif" and I connect it to
their respective slots of the three materials.

It's time to observe our shader, for this I put an HDRi in the environment and I put a couple
of area lights. I turn off the Diffuse and Bump to see only the reflection. Sometimes I put
primitives with intense colors to make the judgment, easier.

At this point, I can continue to adjust the fresnel curves to obtain the desired result.

I finally decided to put another falloff node to the metal reflection but reduce the contrast
clamping blacks.

I disable the diffuse and Reflect, and I put the diffuse color gray to check out the Bump.

I activate all channels and looks great - pretty good results!

To finish I intercropped a color correction node in the diffuse just in case you have to tweak
itwhen the lighting stage comes.