Studio Rendering with 3ds Max and Vray

Where 3d product visualization is concerned, one of the most important techniques for achieving realistic high quality images, is your ability to create studio renders. In this detailed 4 part tutorial you will learn every step necessary to create your own high quality studio renders with Vray and 3ds Max.

This tutorial is divided in 4 parts: Scene setup, materials, lighting, and rendering. In the first part, we will set up the scene, create a base, and import our models, in the second part, we will be assigning materials and using Vray lights to light our scene, and in the last part, we will adjust the Vray settings for the final render.

Note: This is a lighting and rendering tutorial. You will need to supply your own model in order to follow along.

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Linear Workflow in V-Ray for 3ds Max for Interior Design

HDRI Exterior lighting with Vray

An outline of the techniques used for rendering an exterior scene using Autodesk 3ds Max and Chaos Group Vray. A HDR image will be used to light and reflect the environment and VraySun as the direct light source for a typical sunny day scene.

HDRI stands for high-dynamic-range imaging, which is a 32bit float image format that allows a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image.

A HDR image holds enough information to light a scene, where as images such as JPEGs do not hold enough information to light a scene successfully. HDR images can produce good results, but the intensity is still not enough to give realistic hard shadows that would come from the sun. By adding in VraySun as a direct light source, the two methods combined will allow for easy control over time of day and various types of weather conditions.

Before I start, I would like to point out that I will be using a linear workflow with a gamma 2.2 setup within 3ds Max and Vray. I strongly recommend setting this up as it will improve many areas within your workflow. You can find an easy to follow, step by step guide here. This tutorial will not go through the Vray render settings, but you can find a detailed explanation of how to set up the Vray renderer here.

Finding the right HDR image

The choice for time of day and weather conditions will determine what HDR image is required. Within this tutorial it will be a sunny midday HDR image with minimal cloud which you can purchase and download yourself from here. There are various shapes and sizes of HDR images out there on the web. You will need to make sure that the HDR image is a 360 degree spherical image and the higher the resolution the better. When a spherical HDR image has been applied as an environment, Autodesk 3ds Max wraps the HDR image around a sphere. None spherical HDR images will not wrap around the sphere correctly and produce incorrect results. Resolution matters only if you are planning to use the HDR image as a back plate. If the HDR image is only to be used to light a scene, you can get away with a much smaller resolution.

You would want a HDR image that has maximum sky and a hint of a horizon. Typically a HDR image is pure black under the horizon and therefore will not cast any light. In theory it will also be covered up by geometry.

Hot to Fix Light Leaks & Color Bleeding with Vray ?

In this Tutorial “Mr. Alex” for V-Ray Guide shows How to use VRayOverrideMtl  while rendering in V-Ray. It can fix reflections, refraction, shadows and GI of your original object. For more information & latest Tutorial visit V-Ray Guide.

Making a jQuery Countdown Timer

When building a coming soon or event page, you find yourself in search for a good way to display the remaining time. A countdown gives the feel of urgency, and combined with an email field will yield more signups for your newsletter.

Today we are going to build a neat jQuery plugin for displaying a countdown timer. It will show the remaining days, hours, minutes and seconds to your event, as well as an animated updates on every second. Note: the plugin is also available on Github.

Vray Exterior Lighting Tutorial

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Well this is a exterior lighting tutorial showing how to set up the vray sun with the vray physical camera, and you will see some material setup for future reference.

Exterior lighting is pretty easy, but what makes an exterior looks good is the environment that you put in the scene, i normally do not create exterior scenes because it is not easy make great looking trees that you can share, but i tried with this one.

Vray HDRI Lighting for Realistic Rendering with 3ds Max

Well i have some tutorial about how to get realistic rendering using HDRI, but in this case this will be the only lighting source, this is the more simple way to lighting a scene without lighting complication but getting a really great realistic feeling in your scene, i have to say that i love to render with HDRI and for that reason i want to share my workflow when using just HDRI lighting.

Realistic Artificial/Night Lighting with Vray & Photometric Lights in 3ds Max 2012

Rendering realistic images using artificial lighting can be a tricky process, this require a good base of references and a little of creativity, in personal terms i prefer to use high contrast environment when using artificial lighting because it makes the space to look vibrant and emotional.

For get this high contrast environment you have to use a small portion of diffuse light and a high amount of focused lighting, if you see in my kitchen i have some diffuse lighting around the kitchen but i have focused light in the principal spots of the room, for example the dining table, the paintings in the walls, etc.

With this kind of focused lighting, your room will look more lovely and warming, well i have told you some principles about high contrast environment and how to create this kind of feeling, now let me show technical aspect of my scene.

Vray Tutorial – Lighting & Setting up a Realistic Render with Vray and 3ds max

In this tutorial you will learn how to lighting and setting up a realistic render with vray 2.0 and 3ds max 2011, also how to use ies lights, setting lighting with vray sun and vray sky and using vray physical camera, and see how you can set up your render.

This is the final render of this tutorial….