You can use this HDRI map in any of your scenes and has no copyrights attached.
Enjoy!
You can use this HDRI map in any of your scenes and has no copyrights attached.
Enjoy!
Lighting in a scene can make a huge difference for your final composition. As I’ve said many times before in my tutorials and videos- your lighting and materials are keenly interconnected. Your lighting setup can make a huge difference in your scene’s mood. It can hint at details that aren’t visible. It can make your materials more realistic. It can make or break your scene.
In this tutorial we’ll be looking at an example science-fiction scene that you can illuminate however you like. We’ll look at
increase t
Start this tutorial by downloading the starter scene. This .zip file contains the scene file (3dsMax 2012) and a JPEG we’ll use later in the tutorial. The materials I used are the standard Autodesk materials, so you shouldn’t need any additional maps. And remember, we’re interested in the lighting and not in the materials.
The initial render isn't pretty. It's flat and bland- a perfect starting point.
Our first set of lights are ambient. They define the overall values we’ll be working in and help to bring contrast to major areas of the scene. We’ll add area lights over the ledge, around the corner, and on the upper level.
Let’s start off by creating a free light from the command panel on the right.
Create a free light here.
Notice that this will also force you to set up Photographic Exposure Control. Photographic exposure control allows you to have more realistic control over the relative lighting valuesin your scene. It’s like rendering an HDRI or a photograph and controlling the exposure value. This gives you a wonderful level of control.
Click "Yes" to enable photographic exposure control.
From here, press the “8″ key on your keyboard or go to “Rendering”>>”Environment” in the menu bar toincrease open the Environment and Effects panel.
Copy my Exposure Value of "4" to your Environment panel.
Place the light anywhere in your scene, and drag it under the ledge to the right of the camera as shown below. Be sure to also copy my area light settings (I’ve highlighted them in the image below, too):
The position of our first light. Click for high-res.
Take a render from the camera to see your progress. Notice that this light killed the default lighting setup and has darkened the rest of the scene. This is where Final Gather comes in handy.
A single light gets us started.
To help you get more practice with this light and its positioning, copy it (as an instance) to the upper level and change the color from white to a warm orange. This will simulate the look of warm light sources and give your render more illumination.
We copied the light and positioned it behind the upper level. Changed the color to warm white.
The scene is starting to take on illumination, but we may need to reduce the exposure later.
Create a new Photometric free light and place it in the doorway across from the camera. Make sure it’s hidden entirely around the corner, and match the following settings:
The position and size of the light doesn't have to be perfect.
You can see from the image below that we’re getting closer to what we want, but the intensities are off balance. The light from below is more subtle than the light from the hallway on the left, so we’ll need to balance those out later. For now, we’re getting more and more realism.
We'll need to increase the exposure soon, but for now we're headed in the right direction.
Let’s add in the shop sign. This light can be created with a standard material with a “Glow (lume)” map as the diffuse slot and an area light. We’ll be following my Glow (lume) video tutorial. Long story short, just create a new Standard material, set the Diffuse slot to a Glow (lume) map, and follow the settings in the image below.
The standard material and the Glow map it uses for "Diffuse".
Let’s take a quick render with the material as-is. You’ll see why we need the extra area light.
While you can see some illumination from the sign, its clearly not enough. We want it to look like it's turned on.
In order for the sign to appear illuminated, we’ll need to place a cylindrical area light over the same space. Create another “Free Light” from the Photometric Lights menu and place it directly in the center of the neon sign. Follow my settings:
We've set up our area light squeezed into the volume of the neon sign.
Another step in the right direction, though re-balancing the light is in order.
Increase the exposure value in your Environment panel (hotkey “8″ by default). Change it from 4 to 5, and notice that our image got darker. This will make sure there’s room for further refinement of the overall lighting solution. Generally, I’d rather darken my solution thus far and re-illuminate with a skylight than keep trying to tweak the current values relative to each other. I’m also going to turn down the value of the neon sign from 100 cd to 75cd.
This is the same image with reduced exposure value. Darker, and ready for another round of lighting.
Next we’re going to create an advert on the billboard that will add some flair to the scene. I’ve included an image from Coca-Cola in the ZIP file for this tutorial. Use it to create a self-illuminated glowing material like we did for the sign. The billboard should already have the proper UVWs setup- just create the material and apply it as I’ve done here.
Just a standard material, 100% self-illumination, with a Glow diffuse map as shown.
Now that the material is set up, let’s take an initial render. I already have a feeling we’ll need to add a rectangular area light in front of the advert to boost the light output and flood the scene with more red light.
I like the red light, but we're going to need more power if this is going to look right.
Add another rectangle light as you’ve done before, and position it in front of the advert. It has no front or back, so don’t worry about which direction it’s facing. Just make sure it’s the right size. Notice my light placement and settings below; I selected a dark pink color because the billboard is red and white. The cd value is 75, which should keep the effect noticeable but subtle.
It's oriented the same as the light and placed just in front of the billboard.
Consider our starting image and finishing image. What a huge difference illumination can make!
The initial render isn't pretty. It's flat and bland- a perfect starting point.
The new render has depth, is clearer, and the soft lighting adds realism.
Make no mistake, this image is far from perfect. The subject is uninteresting, the materials are bland, and it’s missing key elements like a background. But you can see my point clearly- we went from “abominable” to “better than most beginner images”. Consider the impact of lighting on your scene carefully, and remember that you can use lighting offscene to enhance what’s in view.
Hello everyone!
Welcome to the second mental ray lighting tutorial. In this feature, I’ll be walking you through a typical lighting project for a scene I built for one of my Monday Movies. Remember that this isn’t the only way to illuminate a scene, and your render times could get pretty high. We’ll be using mental ray Sun&Sky to get the base lighting, followed by a few area lights to illuminate the hallway section of the render. I’ll show you some common settings you’ll need to set up along the way, and by the time we’re done you should have a well lit scene!
You can download the starter 3dsMax Scene Here.
Our final render.
Note that some of these images will have light leaks above the center divider wall. I didn’t notice these until I was done writing the tutorial, so please excuse the error. The scene I uploaded for you to start with has been fixed. In addition, at the end I changed the floor to carpet instead of hardwood, so don’t be surprised when you start rendering and notice there’s carpeting.
Where the magic begins.
Go ahead and load up the file You’ll notice that there isn’t any lighting, but the materials work together pretty well. I’ve gone ahead and included some little details such as the coffee maker and the tree. However, you’re free to add anything you’d like! Throw in a conference table for good measure, or some blinds on the windows if you’d like to be extra classy.
Our unlit render.
If you take a quick render, you’ll notice that the lighting is unimpressive, but the materials are right and the modeling is diverse enough to give us a good outcome once we’ve started lighting.
Create a mental ray Sun & Sky light.
The first thing we need to do is create a daylight system in 3dsMax. Day-time renders are a piece of cake because most of the lighting comes from outside. Under the “Systems” tab of the modify panel, you’ll see “Daylight”. Create a daylight system by clicking and dragging to create the compass rose, followed by another drag and a click to create the light. If you get a dialogue asking if you’d like to use photographic exposure control, click “Yes”. It will yield good results and is vital for this tutorial. The direction of the light doesn’t matter. Click on “Manual” under the “Position” group in the modify panel, and you can then drag the sunlight light wherever you want. I recommend a glancing angle that bounces the light off the floor and wall.
An overview of the scene and setup.
Ignore the box you see on the open face of the building. It’s a little hack that lets you see inside a wall while keeping it inpermiable to light. That box is renderable and only casts shadows. The rest of the walls have a shell modifier on them.
The next step is to set the daylight object to mr Sun and mr Sky. I know it seems like this should be on by default, but there are times when you’ll need to use IES. This isn’t one of them though. By setting the daylight to mental ray Sun and Sky, you’ll be tapping into a powerful natural lighting engine that can make just about anything look awesome. If you get a dialogue asking if you’d like to set the background to the mr Sky map, click “Yes”. It’s just a good idea if you’ve got nothing else for a background.
Setting up mental ray Sun & Sky.
Go ahead and take a quick render. You’ll see that our scene’s lighting has changed dramatically, and Final Gather is now giving us a little more depth.
Our first render with only the outdoor light.
Comparable to a real-life photograph, the exposure is adjusted to make the outdoors look reasonable at the expense of making the indoors too dark. We’ll increase the exposure shortly. First, we’ll help mental ray understand that these windows boarder the outside world, and should therefore bring in a little more light.
Under the “Create” tab, under the “Lights” section, you’ll find mr Sky Portal under the “Photometric” group. The mr Sky Portal can be put in the window frames to boost the lighting, and basically earn us an additional Final Gather bounce for free.
Create area lights.
It’s important that they reasonably approximate the window frame. It’ll take some guessing and checking, but it’s worth it. You’ll also want to enable the “From ‘Outdoors’” checkbox, if available.
Set up your mental ray Sky Portals.
Now that the sky portals are set up, take another render. Notice the difference between this and what you had before. The additional light is clearest on the ceiling and the blueish glow on the wall.
Render with your new Sky Portals.
But the image is still too dark! Like I mentioned earlier, our exposure is set to make the outdoors look normal at the expense of how the indoors looks. Let’s increase our exposure such that the indoors looks normal and the outdoors looks blown out. Open your Environment and Effects window (hotkey ’8′) and set the exposure value to 11. Don’t hesitate to try other values and see what you think. This is a very powerful mechanism for altering the brightness of your renders.
Turn your exposure values up to 11.
Here’s what my render looks like with a value of 11.
Render at an exposure value of 11.
We’re looking good! But the hallway still doesn’t have any light. The client won’t like that one bit! Let’s add some lights to the lamps hanging from the ceiling. Select a “Free Light” from the photometric group in the lighting section of the create panel, and place it in the light trough of one of the lamps.
Place the light in the light trough.
In this case, we want to use long cylindrical lights like fluorescent tubes. We’ll need to select “Cylinder” under the “Emit Light From (Shape)” group. We’ll also need to alter the length and radius of the light to fit nicely in the trough. Finally, be sure to enable “Light Shape Visible in Rendering” so that it actually appears as a tube! It’ll look great with the semi-transparent material I used. Finally, we need to set up the shadow casting. Select “Raytraced” from the pulldown under the “Shadows” group, and then click the exclude button. You want to exclude the light troughs because otherwise they’ll create abnormal shadows on the walls. From the list that appears, select Cylinder02, Cylinder 03, Cylinder09, and Cylinder10. Sorry for the lousy naming conventions- these are the troughs. Finally, select Exclude from shadow casting only; we still want the troughs to light up!
Set the area light parameters.
Here’s a render showing where we are so far. The hallway is starting to light up nicely, and the conference room looks like it might actually make meetings fun. This is really going to blow away that client, but we’ve still got a little ways to go before it’s perfect.
The render's starting to come together.
From here, let’s bump up the mental ray settings a little. The Final Gather bounces are still on zero and very low precision. The bounces value can be changed to 1 and the Final Gather Precision slider can be moved to “Low”. The renders will take longer, so don’t hesitate to lower these back down until the very end. I’m just increasing these to get closer to my final render.
Increase the Final Gather bounces for more light.
Here’s what the render looks like after the increases. There’s a little more light in the corners as the Final Gather bounce pushes the lighting into recessed corners. It’s a subtle, but important difference.
A render after increasing bounces.
We’re almost done! I just want to add two more things.
The first is a light around the corner in the hallway to show that it’s a corner and to imply that the building is larger than just what’s in the field of view. I accomplished this by using a “Free Light” (like in the lamps), only this time I’ll be using a rectangular area light. This will create better shadowing by the door, and make it look like there’s more natural light (like from the other side of the office building). Be sure to increase the brightness a little (I used 2000 cd).
Add another area light for depth.
The last thing we want to do is boost up the lighting in the hallway. Right now we’re only seeing what the four florescent lights are generating with the help of the Final Gather bounces. Unfortunately, it’s a little rough between the two lamp units so we’ll want to throw in an ambient-only, standard omni light to brighten it up a bit. Notice that you’ll need to use an abnormally high intensity in order to compete in the photographic exposure control solution. If you didn’t have the exposure control on, the image would be pretty much all white. You can use my setting of 200 intensity, or experiment to see what works for you.
Include an ambient-only light.
And that’s all there is to it! Take a look at the render below to see the final outcome. Just for kicks, I changed out the floor material for a carpet because that suits the “office” theme a little closer.
Our final render.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and learned a little more about lighting a scene using mental ray. Stay tuned for my weekly Monday Movies, and, until next time, happy lighting.
For this tutorial, we’re going to explore mental ray by making a simple room and lighting setup. I’ll be using 3dsMax 9 but you can follow along with any version. I’m also including my finished file so you can pick it apart if it suits you.
Our final render, after some materials and direct light.
Now I’m assuming a low, but non-zero level of previous knowledge during this tutorial. Specifically, that you’ve been using scanline for a few days or weeks and would like to extend your knowledge to include mental ray. While I’ll include images and try to go step-by-step, Remember that mental ray isn’t for those just starting the program for the first time.
I’ll start off by making a box that’s 200x100x70 that’s the basis of my room.
Convert it to an editable poly object by right clicking and selecting editable poly.
Select all the polygons and in the Edit Polygons rollout, select “Flip”.
Create a box with flipped normals.
Feel free to deviate slightly from the tutorial at this point if you’re feeling confident. I’m going to create a single window at one end of the long-ish room. However, you could do some pretty ambitious stuff with the roof, creating a long skylight and then putting up rafters and plants. Oh my! But for me, and for the sake of some beginners out there, I’m going to keep it easy and direct for now.
Select the polygon at the end of the hall and inset it, then extrude it with a negative value. If you want to resize the window you can. I’ve selected the bottom polygon of the window sill and moved it up a bit.
Delete this polygon. This will form our window!
Cut out a window for the room.
Select the floor polygon. Inset it a little bit, and then extrude it down to form a baseboard. This is a minor stylistic thing that always adds a little realism to the room! I’ve also taken the artistic liberty of raising the base of the window a little higher.
Create a border for the floor.
Now we have the makings of a basic room. Go ahead and save your work. Always a good practice.
We need to enable the mental ray renderer, since the scanline is being used by default. Hit F10 for your render settings panel and under the “Common” tab in the “Assign Renderer” rollout, hit the “…” next to production and select t the mental ray renderer. For a shortcut, in the little pink box in the lower left corner you can type
renderers.production = mental_ray_renderer()
Super! Let’s get some lights in here. Under your create panel, go to the lights group, and select an “mr area omni”. Place it at the base of your window sill in the perspective viewport. Move it up so that it’s just outside your window.
Now for some lights!
Take a render (Shift-Q). Hmm…not quite what we want yet, is it? That’s ok, I know just the trick!
Not quite what we expected.
For starters, we need the polygons of the room to be double sided so that light doesn’t leak in from the walls. Hit your hotkey “M” and open the material browser. Drag and drop any grey material from the browser onto your room object and the material will be applied. Select the “2-sided” checkbox in the material you just dragged over.
Create and use a 2 sided material.
If you render again, you’ll realize that now we can’t see inside the room! That’s because the walls are now impenetrable. We need a camera on the inside of the room. Under your create tab, go to the cameras group and create a target camera inside the room by clicking and dragging.
You can switch to this camera by pressing the “C” key. Reposition the camera if you feel the need to. It was likely created at ground level, and that’s not quite right.
Now if you render you get a much better perspective on things. If you’re having trouble, it could be because the camera is not entirely inside the room, or it’s not pointed in the right direction.
Next, go ahead and hit your “8” key or go to the tool bar “Rendering”>”Environment” and click the black swatch under background color. Pick a very light blue color. That will make it look a little more like the light coming in the room is real.
Pick an outdoors-y color.
Re-render the image, and you’ll see that it’s looking even better now!
Our second render's looking good.
But something is still off with the light. I bet if we enable final gather it’ll look twice as good! Final gather is a light bouncing solution in mental ray similar to 3d Studio Max’s native radiosity. If we turn it on, the light will cast around the room in a much more realistic way. If you’re using 3dsMax 2009, final gather is probably on by default so you can effectively skip this step.
In your render settings window (F10) you’ll see an “Indirect Illumination” tab. Click on the checkbox that says “final gather”, select “Draft” from the quality preset pulldown, and change your bounces from 0 to 1.
Re-render your image. Now we’re cooking!
Final Gather makes all the difference.
What do you say we make that light source look like it’s really from outside? Select the mental ray light, and under the modify panel, click on the “area light parameters” rollout. We want to change the height and width of the area light to fit the window better. The window is the lightsource. Increase the radius of the light such that it can reach the left and right sides of the window, even if it starts protruding into the room. Use the scale tool to scale it such that it becomes a big flat disk right outside the window. You’ll have to twiddle the radius spinner to see the size of the disk, so don’t hesitate to do a guess-and-check kind of approach. Don’t worry too much, this isn’t that critical.
The spherical light is softer.
Re-render, and you’ll see the lighting solution really coming to life. It’s a little graining and dark, so we’ll have to increase the intensity of the light. In addition, change the samples on the light from 5 and 5 to 8 and 8. This will increase the sampling of the shadows and remove some of that grainy texture. Note that this change will increase render times, so if it becomes difficult for your system to handle, leave it low until you’re ready for a final render!
We're getting more light now.
Cool beans! Now I’m going to let you try out whatever you want on this scene. Put some materials around the room and see how they render. Maybe make more windows or direct lights and let the light sources interact and brilliantly light up the place. It’s your call! I encourage you not to skip this step. Playing around is what really teaches you how to use this program, tutorials like this are supposed to get you to that stage.
Our final render, after some materials and direct light.
I’ve done a few things to my scene, and you can check them out at your leisure. The biggest changes are the extra light sources, a few lighting tweaks like intensity, and the materials.
If you have any questions, you can always find me on the 3dTotal Forums and PM me (Bluesummers-3dt).
Until next time, happy rendering!
“Hi Guys and welcome to part 3 of (Understanding Lights In Maya), in this tutorial we will understand the Area Light and Volume Light. In previous parts we already covered Ambient, Directional, Spot and Point Light. Please read the Part 1 here and Part 2 Here. Ok let’s started by creating a Area light in the scene.”
“Hello guys and welcome to the last part of Understanding Lights In Maya tutorial, in this tutorial we will light up an interior scene which should help you understand how lights works and how to setup lights to illuminate any interior scenes.”