This week we’ll be taking a look at how you can use VRay area lights in 3d Studio Max.  Using the warehouse scene we had last week, let’s create a night-time atmosphere with some ceiling lights!

On a side note, you may or may not have noticed all the faulty pingbacks coming from my staging server. The most clever viewers have e-mailed me with critiques about the pending site redesign.  Keep the comments coming- I think this is going to be a massive improvement over the current setup (and it’ll run faster, too).

Hey everyone,

This week is it!  The first VRay video tutorial ever!  I’ve had enough time to fool around with this renderer to start putting together some thoughts and videos.  So far I’m very impressed with how easy it is to get some great effects (almost like Vue Infinite).  This Monday Movie will show you how shockingly easy it is to get some nice outdoor lighting in a warehouse model I made for the next few videos.  Next week we’ll look at indoor lighting using the area lights, and then we’ll move on to materials.

A few things I’m a little disappointed with in VRay but I’m going to hold off judgement until I’m really certain I have a feel for the product.  As it stands, though, I wouldn’t pay $1,000 USD for it.  At least not until Chaos Group decides to respond to my e-mail.  ;)

Transcription

Monday Movie #70: VRay Sun & Sky

Hello everyone, welcome to another monday movie. I’m Mr. Bluesummers.

So for the past few weeks I’ve been talking about creating some of these Monday Movies specifically geared toward the VRay renderer for 3d Studio Max.  I’ve finally had enough opportunity to play around with it that I can show you some interesting things about the renderer.  The first thing I noticed is that it’s very easy to get some pretty good looking effects.  So today we’re going to take a look at how you can illuminate the interior of a warehouse using the VRay Sun light object.

Let’s get started.

I have here a simple 3d warehouse scene, and what we’re going to use is this VRay Sun light object.  Create Panel>>Lights>>VRay.

So when we create the VRay Sun in the perspective viewport we’re just going to pick a nice glancing angle.  Bring that light in.  “Yes” we want the VRay sky environment.

Then I’m going to open up my render settings panel.  Now I need to select the VRay renderer.  So I’m going to go to “Common”>>”Assign Renderer”>>”VRay Demo” and click OK.  You’ll notice that it changes all of these tabs.

Now later Monday Movies, we’re going to take a look at some of the effects in here like, say, “Camera Settings” where we can apply depth of field.  But for today we’re going to look at an introduction to the indirect illumination and Sun features.

If we take a render right now we’re not going to see any indirect illumination.  Let me show you.

So we can see some sunlight coming through the windows, but what we really need to bounce that around is the indirect illumination.  All we have to do is turn it on.

I’m going to turn down the preset from “High” quality to “Medium” quality just to keep things snappy.  Let’s take another render and see what we get!

This render took about 10 minutes, which is a little bit longer than I would have expected for this particular level of quality.  But I’m really surprised at how easy it is to set up this kind of render in 3d Studio Max using the VRay renderer.

Stay tuned next week- we’ll be taking a look at how you can use VRay area lights in order to illuminate this scene at night!

Mr. Bluesummers. www.MrBluesummers.com.
Thanks for tuning in to another Monday Movie. You can find all of my Monday Movies as well as tutorials, resources, and downloads, on my Web site: www.MrBluesummers.com.

Hey everyone,

Sorry for the delay this week- I’m in the process of moving to San Francisco.  Should be smoother now that I’m getting an extension from my landlord until the 1st, but I still gotta find a place to live.

Anyway, this week I’m quickly showing you how we used to create Sun & Sky before we had Sun & Sky in 3dsMax.  mental ray wasn’t well integrated until maybe Max 8 or 9 so this was a staple of solid rendering technique back in the day.  You’ll find it to be a quick and easy way to get reasonable “outdoor” render effects without much overhead.

Found one today.  ^_^

Hey Everyone,

This week we’ll be looking at how you can create an X-Ray render effect in 3dsMax.  It’s remarkably easy to do with materials and you can do it in most renderers pretty quickly.  I know I still owe you another video, but be patient.  There’s a lot in the works!