The documentation for every part and parameter of RichScene, including internal details for large studios.
Snapshot of the user interface
RichScene creates 4 effects - each effect can use a RichDirt preset (plus later fine tuning). See the parameters in detail below.
Effects 2,3 and 4 can be switched on / off. Often 3 effects are sufficient. The fourth effect is for your advanced / special cases.
The weights determine how important an effect is. 0 is off - 100 is full intensity.
The color of an effect. Use it to add a color tint to dirt. Good examples are a green tint for splashes (moot), or a brown tint for streaks (rust).
The 'mode' determines how dirt is added to the underlying texture. There are 3 modes. Cover - dirt covers the texture, like a thick layer of paint. Darken - makes the original texture darker, like typical dirt. Lighten - makes the original texture lighter, like streaks of white chalk.
RichScene has 4 locks (Ignore). Use a lock to keep materials unchanged. This is useful to skip glass (transparent), or metal (reflective) so dirt is only added to certain material types. Locks can also be used when removing dirt. For example you could remove dirt just from glass materials.
New in version 2.2 is support of Render Elements. There is a new button "to RenderElements" next to the "Add/Update" button. If you press "to RenderElements" 4 Render Elements are added and each is connected to a RichDirt effect. For VRay VRayExtraTex is used. For mental ray a mr Shader Element is used.
More than 4 layers are possible, using a nice naming scheme. Render Elements created use the 2 first letters of the RichScene material name. For example if you have 2 RichScene pseudo materials in the material editor, one named "army" and the other one named "navy" the Render Elements will be named ar_first, ar_2nd, ar_3rd, ar_4th and na_first, na_2nd, na_3rd, na_4th. That way you can handle dozens of layers (Render Elements). You can also split Render Elements by changing their name, like abc_first instead of ar_first. Then RichScene doesnt touch them and you can do whatever you want. Also note - RichScene never deletes a Render Element. If you want to remove one , do it in the 3ds Max Render Element dialog.
Named Selection Sets - VRays ExtraTex supports named selection sets. This allows to exclusively run RichDirt on some objects (the selection set). It can save time as less pixels are computed. It can also be used for a fine grain control where to apply dirt.
There is a rollup for every effect (layer). For fine tuning each rollup has a nearly full copy of RichDirt parameters available. The names are identical to the RichDirt map plugin. See the RichDirt documentation . RichScene itself uses Tooltips - very often these are sufficient to tell what a parameter does.
1) First do your regular material assignment and texturing. I.e. start with RichScene when your scene
is already textured.
2) Then run RichScene, change effects and colors so you get a good overall effect for your image.
The dirt manager allows to make tests with different colors, weights, effects very fast.
3) When you are satisified with the overall look, close RichScene and tweak individual materials,
like making dirt stronger in one area, or removing dirt in another area.
Because the merge objects feature is often good for all 4 layers an extra checkmark is provided to switch it ´on´ everywhere. Good to know - when it is switched off the merge object flags in each rollup have priority.
Dirt can affect the ´materials in the scene´, or the ´materials in the material editor only´, or add dirt to the ´Selection´. Select a -part- of a house and RichScene adds dirt to its materials.
A big advantage for professional scenes is that RichScene can add dirt to XRrefs as well. Since XRefs are typically huge it can take a minute to scan all of them. To update the list of XRefs press the ´Update Now (XRefs) ´ button. The number of currently active xref objects is displayed on the right side of the button.
RichScene supports the material types Architectural, Raytrace, Standard, VRayMaterial, mental ray Arch + Design, MultiSub, Blend.
Use ´Convert ...´ to convert RichDirt1 scenes to RichDirt2. The code upgrades the full model. Both RichDirt1 and RichDirt2 must be installed - otherwise 3ds Max will display a warning message. RichDirt1 and RichDirt2 can exist on the same computer, so you can choose when you want to do the conversion. RichDirt2 streaks are better, and look a bit different. For Version 2 ´flat cone´ results are stronger (corners of a flat object are more intense). The conversion script does its best to create very similar results. It is good practice to not switch the version inside an animation.
The ´add object ids adds ids to all objects in the scene. If you already assigned object ids before it does not change these, it only adds ids for ´empty´ objects (id = 0). Object ids are good for RichDirt2 to create different dirt per id.
RichScene is automatically installed with RichDirt2, to the main plugin directory,
which is typically found in C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 20XX\plugins.
When you use 3ds Max Design this is ..\3ds Max Design 20XX\plugins.
As of 2017 Autodesk did remove the seperation into Standard and Design.
When you buy a seperate RichScene license (seperate from RichDirt) copy the plugin
to C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 20XX\plugins.
RichScene works nicely with Slate. Use add change and remove. See all the connections that this creates. 3ds Max as of 2013 can unconnect but not finally remove shaders in Slate. A simple solution is to close slate for a short moment, run the remove from the compact material editor, and continue work in the Slate material editor later.
This is information for larger studios that do massive tweaking of scenes. To tweak materials after Dirt had been added it is good to know the structure used by RichScene.
RichScene uses a composite map with 5 layers.
The first layer uses the original diffuse texture (map). If the material didn´t have a texture a RGB_Multiply is used for the main color. The other 4 layers have each a RichDirt texture as ´mask´ and a RGB_Multiply for the color of the effect. RichScene automatically assigns nice names to the layers, and shrinks the layers that are off.
How does RichScene know that it created a layer, so it can be removed later ? Why does the removing (undo) take extra care ? RichScene does many changes to the scene so the redo/undo system of 3ds Max would be under heavy fire. RichScene bypasses this bottleneck by using a clever database that easily can rebuild the original (clean) scene. RichScene checks the composite maps second layer (precisly the mask). If this contains a RichDirt map it knows it had been created by RichScene. It can then remove the full composite map when you press the ´Remove RichDirt from diffuse´ button. The advantage of only checking the second layer is that you are free to exchange anything else in the texture tree, like adding many more layers, or using different texture types.
enRichPro Copyright © All Rights Reserved