Advanced Lighting Techniques Part 2

by Montree T. (easyyong@hotmail.com) - Smoke3dStudio   

Glass apple in Vray and 3D Studio Max Tutorial

Ok as I have found in the last few days learning to do anything in Vray can be tricky due
to the lack of good beginner/advanced tutorials. That’s why I have been reading the Vray online manual for the last few days and trying to make myself accustomed to Irradiance mapping combined with a secondary bounce coefficient calculated with a QMC engine, precalcing the caustics to a photon map and all sorts of other mind boggling techniques...

Correcting the Vray & Mental Ray Self-Illumination Display in Viewport

The following tutorial assumes that the user has a basic knowledge of 3ds Max when applying textures to the self-illumination toggle; applying the “UVW map” modifier and assigning material slots to objects/surfaces.

When using a bitmap in the “VrayLightMtl” or mental ray “Self Illumination (Glow)” toggle, the texture display is often overridden by its default colour swatch (i.e. white) in the viewport. 

Realistic bump map.

Hello everyone! In this short tutorial I will show you a simple way to create correct bump map for textile material.You are able to create any bump/displace surface using this way.

Hotel Palace 5+

Tutorial by Walid Layouni

Creating 3D grass

Realistic grass has always been a challenge to create in a 3d environment.

Artists have developed many methods to create grass such as post-photoshoping it into the image, using displacement maps to simulate grass strands, or actually modeling 3d grass. It seemed a couple of years ago that displacement mapping was the way to go, but with the recent leaps in processing technology, and the efficiency in high poly rendering of max and renderers such as V-ray, 3d vegetation, including grass, is becoming more and more the prime method for artists worldwide. There are many different ways to go about modeling the grass, and many different ways to go about spreading it. There are recent plug-ins that do the work for you such as "Autograss" by happy digital, ltd. However, as you will see in this tutorial, you might not need to shell out a couple hundred bucks for something you can do yourself once, and re-use on render after render. So I researched various methods taught online, and found an excellent grass tutorial by Peter Guthrie. His method involves creating 3d grass patches and spreading them out as proxies, a method that is creating great results for many.ÂIn this tutorial, we will expand on the method of distribution. Using Groundwiz (free plug-in) we will paint the grass patches (proxies) onto the ground. This tutorial is based on the V-ray renderer, but the concept can be used with any other renderer. The basic steps are as follows:

• Create Patch of grass
• Convert to V-ray Proxy
• Paint proxies onto ground plane

This method allows for viewports to display only v-ray proxies (very light on memory usage), and since you are painting the patches, you can paint more near the camera, and less as you get further into the view where less detail is necessary, allowing for more efficiency. The first part of this tutorial is basically identical to Peter’s and James, and the second half is where I expand a little on the Groundwiz plug-in. Hope you find it useful.

Making of Minimal Loft

Modeling:

With the modeling we tried to do something different than what the usual commercial architectural visualization task requires. The main goal was to create a special atmosphere for the room. After agreeing upon the style I sketched down the proportions of the room. The base model was created from boxes within 3ds Max. It was then subdivided and the holes for the windows were cut. From the beginning the emphasis was on the lighting and posteffects, so after creating a basic floor material I already started experimenting with the lights. By changing the Sun's position I wanted to find the ideal angle of incidence for the main light which has already set the mood for the composition. When the lighting seemed to be acceptable I made one or two test composites in Photoshop. And then I finished the rest of the modeling (doors, windows, switches, radiators, lamps) and also used some furniture from existing model libraries.

Making of ROLF BENZ Kitchen

Hello VRay users, once again - it's a great pleasure to make those tutorials where you can learn some sneaky technique for proper usage of 3Dsmax VRay and Photoshop. Creation of this scene was inspired by one of my favorite German designers - ROLF BENZ. I just love what they do, cos they do it great!

Simple exterior lighting in Vray

TipOfTheWeek: Short tutorial on how to setup the lighting for an exterior scene using Vray 2.0 and 3dsmax.

Tip of the Week - simple interior lights setup - part 2




In this tutorial You will learn how to lit your interior scene using standard lights, like a spot light or photometric IES light.