Artificial interior lighting in mental ray. Lesson: architectural visualization (mental ray). Setting up a scene for rendering gemstones in mental ray

3ds Max includes special sources that simulate realistic daylight. They help set the daylight of the scene in a few clicks. But at the same time, they have sufficient flexibility, allowing you to customize parameters such as horizon height, sky color, atmospheric conditions, cloudiness, and even the exact geographical location. These light sources in combination are called Daylight system(Daylighting system).

Rice. 2.4.01 Example of an illuminated exterior Daylight system

When creating Daylight system, 3ds Max will prompt you to activate Exposure. A dialog box will appear in which you can activate it by pressing the button Yes(Yes). Or you can manually activate the exposure later. In addition, a request to create mrPhysical Sky as an environment.

Rice. 2.4.02 Exposure activation dialog

Rice. 2.4.03 Installation dialog mr Physical Sky as an environment

mental ray's daylighting system includes: mrSun Mr Sky and mrPhysicalSky(which will be discussed later in this section). Exposure control must also be taken into account. mrPhotometricExposureControl described earlier in this chapter.

Rice. 2.4.09 Setting time (left), and geographic location (right)

Select the map of the desired continent from the drop-down list Map(Map). The map image will update. Click on the location you need to set the desired map point. When installing a checkbox NearestBigCity(Nearest big city), then the pointer will be installed at the location of the city closest to the specified location from the list City(City) on the left side of the dialog box.

Daylight sources inmentalray.

Light sources and tools for simulating daylight in mental ray are: mr Sun, mr Sky, mr Sky Portal, shader mr Physical Sky.

To achieve the most realistic results, it is best to use all of the above components in the system Daylight, and in conjunction, for example, the parameter Red/ Blue Tint, which is present in the sun and sky light source, as well as in the environment shader mr Physical Sky. Each component is described later in the chapter.

Note:Projection windows 3ds Max support interactive display of daylighting bundles,mr Sun Andmr Sky.

First, let's look at the parameters of the mr Sky light source separately.

mr Sky Parameters.

Source mrSky is a photometric omnidirectional light source (sky), which serves to simulate the diffuse light of the sky.

Rice. 2.4.10 Parameters mr Sky daylighting systems

On(On) Turns the light source on or off.

Multiplier(Multiplier) Light brightness multiplier. Default value 1.0 .

Ground Color(Earth color) The color of the “surface” of the earth.

Rice. 2.4.11 Examples of influence Ground Color for global illumination

Note: Figure 2.4.11 shows the influence of the color of the earth on the reflected light on the walls of the house; in addition, the “surface” of the earth does not perceive shadows from objects in the scene.

SkyModel(Sky model) In this drop-down list you can select one of three sky models: HazeDriven,PerezAllWeatherCIE.

We will look at one of these models HazeDriven(Controlled by haze).

Haze is a uniform veil of light that increases with distance from the observer and obscures parts of the landscape. It results from the scattering of light by particles suspended in the air and by air molecules.

Haze reduces the contrast of the image and also affects the clarity of shadows. See also AerialPerspective(Aerial Perspective) described later in this section.

Haze(Haze) The number of particulate matter in the air. Possible values ​​from 0.0 (absolutely clean atmosphere) to 15.0 (maximum “dusty”). Default value 0.0 .

Rice. 2.4.12 Parameter influence Haze on the atmosphere of the scene: 0.0 (left) ; 5.0 (center); 10.0 (right)

mrSkyAdvancedParameters(Advanced mr Sky options)

Rice. 2.4.13 Additional parameters mr Sky

Horizon(Horizon)

Height(Height) The height of the horizon line, negative values ​​lower the line, positive values ​​raise the horizon line. Default value 0.0

Rice. 2.4.14 Horizon line height: 0.0 (left); -0.6 (right)

Note:Horizon height only affects the visual appearance in the light sourcemrSky. In addition, the hue of the horizon also depends on the light sourcemrSun.

Blur(Blur) Blurs the horizon line. A higher value makes the horizon blurrier and less obvious. The default value is 0.1.

Rice. 2.4.15 Horizon blur: 0.2 (left); 0.8 (right)

NightColor(Night Color) Minimum sky color "value": meaning the sky will never be darker than the color value set here.

NonphysicalTuning(Not physical settings)

Using the parameter of this group, you can artificially tint the color of the sky with cool or warm shades to give the image a more artistic look, as opposed to a photorealistic image.

Red /BlueTint(Shades of Red/Blue) The default value is 0.0, which is physically correct (has a color temperature of 6500K). By changing the value to -1.0 (rich blue), to 1.0 (rich red) you can adjust the color of the sky to give the sky the color you want.

AerialPerspective(Aerial perspective)

Aerial perspective is a natural phenomenon when, as objects move away from the eyes of the observer or camera, the clarity and clarity of outlines disappears. Objects at a distance are characterized by a decrease in color saturation (the chiaroscuro contrast softens and the color loses its brightness). That. the background appears lighter than the foreground.

The phenomenon of aerial perspective is associated with the presence in the atmosphere of a certain amount of dust, moisture, smoke and other small particles. See also Haze(Haze) described above.

Checkbox AerialPerspective(Aerial perspective) This checkbox enables the display of aerial perspective.

(Visible distance) This counter indicates the distance of influence of aerial perspective and the range of visibility of objects.

Lesson taken from the site RENDER.RU

I continue the topic of lighting in Mental Ray. In this lesson I want to talk about simulating artificial light sources to illuminate rooms. Photometric light sources will be used, which 3D MAX 2009 puts at our disposal. Photometric exposure control will also be considered.

It is assumed that those reading this lesson are familiar with the lesson on indirect lighting: posted earlier.

Let's get started

When choosing any photometric light source, Max insistently suggests turning on photometric exposure control, so I’ll start the lesson with a description of this type of exposure.

Exposure control:

After creating a light source based on its physical characteristics (brightness, color, ...), it is assumed that illuminating the scene with it is the most correct and we can only globally change the brightness of the image (render) using exposure control.

Photometric exposure control is done in MR by analogy with the operation of a camera.

Answering yes to the warning when creating a photometric for the first time:

we agree to the inclusion of appropriate exposure.

The exposure control menu is accessed from the main menu:

or through the “Environment” item (key 8).

in the mr Photographic Exposure Control rollout you are prompted to select preset exposure parameters:

for the exterior scene (day/night) and interior (day/night) scene, but they are usually very rough and it is still better and more correct to configure manually:

Those who use cameras know that the main parameters (for lighting) when shooting are film sensitivity / matrix (ISO), aperture and shutter speed (shutter speed). The brightness of the image depends on the settings of these parameters.

For example, pictures showing a table lamp with a light bulb with the following parameters:

that is, the brightness is 370 lm, and the color of the light flow is 4500-5000K (halogen)

Due to the setting of different shutter speeds, the brightness of the image is different. Similarly, in MR, by setting different exposure parameters, we change the brightness of the rendered image, without changing the parameters of the light sources .

For example, I made a very simple scene where there is a light source with the same physical parameters as in the photo, and only the exposure speed changes:

Parameters:

Shutter speed- this is the shutter speed or shutter speed, the value by which 1 second is divided - the higher the set value, the darker the photo

Aperture- aperture size - the larger, the brighter the picture

Film speed- film sensitivity - the higher, the more sensitive the film is to light and the brighter the picture.

In 3d MAX it is not necessary to edit all three parameters; a parameter is created based on them Exposure Value which is used by the renderer, so it is enough to either set EV, or, as I usually do, set only the shutter speed.

Below the exposure parameters are the image processing parameters, similar to those in digital cameras or similar to the use of film filters. - gamma, adaptation to the type of light sources.

Actually, there is nothing complicated in using exposure, the main thing to remember is that you should not change the intensity of the light sources, thereby introducing an imbalance into the scene - just adjust the exposure for a darker/lighter image in the render.

Now, actually, the light sources

When creating an artificial light source, the editor divides them into targeted and free:

no matter what source is created, you can make it either targeted or free at any time by checking the target checkbox in the main source parameters tab.

From my own experience, I can advise you to first create a targeted source, for the convenience of its location on the stage, and then turn off the target, so that later there will be no problems with the orientation of the emitter in sources other than point ones.

To correctly calculate shadows, it is proposed to use “Ray Traced Shadows”, which are created taking into account the characteristics of the object’s material.

Depending on the requirements of the scene or the effects being created, you can use Shadow Maps, which are calculated faster, but do not take into account all the characteristics of the materials.

Examples of shadows:

Traced shadows:

shadow map with default settings:

As you can see, the transparent material is not taken into account, the shadows are created based on the object mesh. The quality of the shadow depends on the quality of the creation of the shadow map and is configured in the “Shadow Map Params” rollout of the light source settings. For example, by increasing the map size or sampling quality, you can achieve sharper shadows.

Since the lesson is aimed at creating artificial light sources for the interior, I will not dwell in more detail on creating a shadow map, since in interiors (my opinion) it is more relevant to use traced shadows.

As for traced shadows, sometimes when using glass like Thin Geometry, Glass (lume), some artifacts appear on the object, in the form of separate spots (look at the first picture with traced shadows - the right cube has spots on the inner shadow). There is no use in improving the sampling parameters in rendering. You need to enable the two-sided shadows option in the light source settings:

Photometric Web- a light source, the configuration and intensity of which is calculated based on the “photometric web,” most accurately conveys the light parameters and saves a lot of time when creating scene illumination.

Spotlight- a light source of the “spotlight” type is usually used for global illumination of the scene; its use in interior solutions is irrelevant (again, my opinion), except for simulating projectors or special effects.

Uniform Diffuse- a light source illuminating in the direction from the emitter to the target.

Uniform Spherical- a light source that illuminates in all directions from the emitter.

Uniform Diffuse and Uniform Spherical

The settings for these types of sources are identical; with their help, you can simulate almost any light source well - fluorescent lamps, light bulbs and ceiling panels:

In the settings you are prompted to select the emitter type:

and if the emitter is different from the point one, it will be possible to include it in the rendering process

Let's look at some of the nuances of creating specific light sources:

Fluorescent lamps:

When creating a fluorescent lamp, its intensity based on the entered data will be calculated as from a conventional light source, but for fluorescent lamps (especially older models), the distribution of light will be visually slightly different. Due to the fact that the luminescent layer is irradiated by ions with a certain frequency (and in old lamps with a frequency of 50 hertz) and due to the peculiarities of our vision, the light intensity will decrease faster than from a source with a filament (this applies only to the visible image, physically , over a certain period of time, the weakening of light is quite normal).

So, let's increase the attenuation:

Pre-render with normal settings:

let’s set the attenuation to 50% (I didn’t find any information about the exact values, but using the example of the Soviet LB’eshka, testing showed exactly that)

It would seem that you can simply reduce the brightness at the source, but when using ready-made source profiles from IES, it is more convenient and the calculations are more correct:

Incandescent lamps:

Incandescent lamps also have an additional effect of changing light with distance, but it is expressed in a shift of the source spectrum to the red region:

To enable this effect, you just need to check the box:

for example, I slightly increased the attenuation value to have a more visual effect:

preliminary render with a light temperature source of 4000K:

and attenuation is enabled:

examples of scenes using these source types

In this scene, the emitters are not involved in the rendering process, but the highlights on the surfaces still correctly account for the presence of sources:

in the second scene of an object like “public MeZho”, the sources are visualized and imitate the surface of lamps:

Photometric Web

In the real world, the flow of light from lamps is extremely rarely uniform, due to the fact that the lamp bulb itself is a lens, and, as a rule, the flow is changed by reflectors and additional optics in the lamp.

For example, here is a photo of the first light source I came across at lunch:

to create such a picture of the light flux, you need additional constructions near the source, or drawing a map for the “Projector Map”, which requires additional time and distracts from the creative process.

They will simplify the procedure for creating light sources, using the type Photometric Web:

When you select this type in the source settings, a scroll will appear to select a settings map:

By clicking on the file selection button, a dialog for selecting a map will open:

The “IES information” section provides a diagram of the propagation of light on the “web” and information about the light source.

IES files can be downloaded from the Internet; as a rule, lighting equipment manufacturers present such maps, or you can find interior design archives. There are also IES generators with which you can create your own sources.

After applying the IES map, the light source icon takes on the source configuration:

in the Photometric Web settings there are parameters for rotation along three axes; these settings are relevant when the source is different from a point source. If the source is, for example, linear, and the card has a complex configuration, then the method of positioning the card becomes relevant:

In the figure at the right source, the map is rotated 90 degrees in Z.

Here is an example of applying a map to a point light source to simulate a lamp

Once upon a time, during 3D Max 6.0, I had a problem with simulating road lighting with car headlights. Then using IES would save me a lot of time.

With the help of IES's juice you can simulate not only individual light sources, but also groups of sources; in fact, this is their widest application.

For example, ceiling lamps consist of several fluorescent lamps and are additionally divided into several cells by reflectors. To simulate such a light panel, it is enough to create one light source and apply the desired map to it. The description of the card describes in sufficient detail the parameters of the light and what generates it. IES files can be opened with Notepad.

For example info:

IESNA:LM-63-1995/GPA22-3t

Photopia 1.10 PHOTOMETRIC REPORT

L.A. LIGHTING MFG. CO.

GPA520-3-2TH-S9

2X2, 3-LAMP, T-BAR, 9 CELL PARABOLIC.

FO17/31K

17 WATTS T8 FLUORESCENT LAMP

indicates that they are simulating a panel of 3 fluorescent lamps with a power of 17 watts, enclosed in 9 parabolic cells.

An example of simulating LSD lamps with two separated lamps:

On the wall you can clearly see the darkening under the light source, which gives rise to a stiffening rib between two lamps as part of the entire lamp.

Well, that's all I wanted to tell you about simulating artificial light. Perhaps I missed something, because I write about those things that I use in my work and what is relevant in my opinion.

In this tutorial we'll look at the basic principles of setting up interior lights and creating a global illumination effect in Mental Ray. We'll also look at some problems that can arise when lighting a textured scene, and how to solve them.

To complete this tutorial, we will first need to create a room.

In the projection window Top create a spline Rectangle. Select it and go to the tab Modify command panel. Select a modifier from the list of modifiers Edit Spline. In a scroll Selection click on the button Spline(the red curve is like this), and then in the scroll Geometry click on the button Outline and in the window Top move the spline outward a little. Now again from the list of modifiers select Extrude and extrude a three-dimensional object of suitable height from the spline. These will be the walls.

Now make a floor and ceiling from a regular plane.

Next we will cut out the window. Create Box. Position it in the wall so that all corners stick out from the wall. Select it and in the category drop-down list Geometry tabs Create command bar select line Compound Objects. Click the button Boolean, then, in the scroll that appears, click on the button Pick Operand B. Select a wall object in any window. Set the type of operation B-A. The window is ready, as is the stage itself. Although no! Add a couple more objects to the room for beauty. It will be something like furniture. Apply regular standard gray material to the walls, ceiling and everything else.

Place your camera indoors and focus it properly.

Point a light source out the window mr Area Spot.

Set up the light source. When working with photons, the parameter is of great importance Hotspot in a scroll Spotlights Parameters light source. These parameters must be adjusted as accurately as possible to the size of the window through which light enters the room in order to avoid the loss of photons, the maximum number of which depends on the size of your PC’s RAM. Since the window is rectangular in shape, it means you need to specify the shape Rectangle and adjust the cone to the size of the window. To make it easier to change the direction and cone, switch in one of the windows to the view from the light source. In a scroll Area Light Parameters check the box On and specify the type of ambient light Disc with a dispersion radius of 40. Although, you can set a much larger value. I have never observed a sharp outline of a window opening in the shadow when no sunlight enters the window. From this we can draw conclusions. If you want the sun's rays to shine through the window in your scene, then setting blurred shadows will be a big mistake. The situation is different when the light is from heaven.

With the creation of the scene everything seems to be done. Send the scene to miscalculation. It's dark isn't it? It's time to figure out global illumination in Mental Ray. Opening the window Render Scene, select as visualizer mental ray. Go to the tab Indirect illumination and in the scroll Caustic and Global illumination in the GI block, check the box Enable. Visualize the scene. Almost nothing has changed. You can't do without fine tuning.

So, let's start setting up the lighting of our test scene. Set value Maximum Sampling Radius equal 4 . The Radius value is the photon search radius. It is the search radius for photons, not the size of the photon! From a computer graphics point of view, photons have no size. The absence of the Radius checkbox means that the photon search radius is approximately 110 parts of the scene. Maximum Num value. Photons is the number of samples to calculate the illumination of a point. Meaning Average GI Photons set equal 10 000 . As you already understand, the GI Photons value determines the number of photons of light sources; it is this number of photons that is stored in the photon map. The Decay value determines the attenuation with distance, a physically correct value of 2 is considered. The Global Energy Multiplier value is a kind of regulator with which you can control the overall illumination of the scene.

The Trace Depth value sets the level of reflection and refraction of surfaces in the scene. Photon Map—installation of a photon map. Please note that some resulting parameter values ​​may differ depending on the coordinate system. This applies to all parameters that specify dimensions, distances, radius, etc. We consider all values ​​in Inches, and not in millimeters or meters, etc.

Visualize the scene again.

Bright spots of light with a radius of 4 indicate that photons are being generated, that the photon search radius is 4 inches, and the presence of large unlit black areas in the scene indicates that there are not enough photons for the given scene. We change the number of photons from 10,000 to 500,000.

It's getting better, but it's still dark and noisy. There are two ways to get rid of noise and make the lighting more intense. To reduce noise, you can further increase the Average GI Photons value, but this will increase rendering time, and you will not achieve excellent results. Average GI Photons values ​​are limited by PC memory capacity and you will not be able to use very large values. The second option is to increase the photon search radius, which will lead to a smoother picture. But then the secondary shadows will be calculated ugly, which will not look natural at all. The best option is to adjust these values ​​so that there is no noise and the shadows are normal. Now that's a good image.

Here I used Average GI Photons = 1,500,000, Maximum Sampling Radius = 13, and Global Energy Multiplier = 6500. In fact, the picture is still terrible. Highlights appeared due to the Multiplier value being too high. This can often be seen in galleries, when interior images show window sills, window frames and, sometimes, ceilings. This is wrong!

Despite the fact that the photon map method gives the most physically accurate results of scene lighting, the number of photons to obtain high-quality lighting with a minimum photon search radius should be too large. Modern PCs and a 32-bit operating system will not allow you to calculate such a number of photons.

The most realistic, competent lighting in interiors is provided by the combined use of photons and Final Gather. What does it represent Final Gather? A hemisphere of unit radius is constructed above the point and rays are emitted through the surface of the hemisphere in random directions. The more such rays, the more accurate the calculation and the less noise. In practice, the number of rays is the number of samples in Final Gather. For each ray, the intersection with the nearest surface is found. The beam is processed. No further ray tracing is performed. Final Gather's ray tracing depth is always one. I recommend using only one Final Gather in scenes using HDRI maps in global environments or exteriors.

And so we turn it on Final Gather and set the values ​​as in the figure. But first return the values Average GI Photons = 10000.

Checkbox Preview serves for quick calculations in low quality. Visualize the scene.

As you can see, there is noise, but not as much as when Final Gather is disabled. It is enough to increase the value Average GI Photons to 200000 And Samples in Final Gather with 50 on 500 , and you get a very acceptable picture.

Apply textures. I used standard materials and Max bitmaps (*. jpg). Visualize the scene again.

Not a very pleasant sight? Here! Now is the time to talk about the problems that can arise when using Mental Ray GI. As you have already noticed, in the scene there is quite a strong transfer of color from the walls and floor to the ceiling, and indeed to each other. This effect is called. You can fight this in different ways. For example, controlling color bleeding using photon shaders. But I think the following is the best option. We calculate the photon map and Final Gather in the scene with gray material, as in Figure 9, and save it to a file. Next, we assign the necessary materials to the scene objects and render by loading photons and Final Gather from the file. To be honest, I don’t understand why the developers didn’t make the color bleeding option as, for example, in the finalRender renderer.

Let's see it through to the end. Here is a picture rendered using this method.

For the sake of example, I threw a couple of models of chairs with a carpet and one wall into the scene. I am not an interior designer and this is not a competition entry, so please do not criticize me for such an incomprehensible attempt at arranging furniture.

A good picture without glare on the window and with uniform lighting and only one light source. Some might argue that the stage is a bit dark. Stop! Where have you seen a well-lit room in reality through such a small window? Don't overdo it with the light intensity. This is where overexposure appears and the scene looks unrealistic. A well-lit scene is when it is not bright and without flare, when all objects and angles in the camera’s field of view are clearly visible. To properly illuminate the scene, use the SkyLight light source.

Finally, I want to give some tips that will help you avoid mistakes in your work with Mental Ray.

1. Never make walls, floors and ceilings with zero thickness! Mental Ray will simply ignore rotated wall normals and let light into the room as if it were an open space. This is also true for other visualizers.

2. Use SkyLight for illumination. To add illumination, realism and highlight window openings located in the shadow area, SkyLight is best suited. In large interiors with many windows, instead of a skylight in window openings, you can use a photometric light source - TargetArea.

3. I recommend using only “native” materials in all external visualizers. This applies to Mental Ray to a lesser extent because both standard and tracer and architectural materials work quite well in Mental Ray. But, despite this, only the use of “native” materials, which include DGS material, mental ray, Glass (physics_phen) and Lume shaders, gives the most physically accurate and correct results. When using (in interior scenes using photon maps) mental ray material in the Photon slot, you must use a photon shader. When used in the Surface slot - DGS materiala, in the Photon slot it is better to use DGS material Photon. When using Lume shaders in the Surface slot, for example, Metal(lume) in the Photon slot, it is better to use Photon Basic.

4. Photon rendering, Final Gather and rendering progress can be monitored visually by turning on the Mental Ray Message Window.

5. Adjust the lighting in the scene by assigning a gray material to all objects. Remember that textures and materials tend to hide GI imperfections. And only after you find the optimal GI settings in the scene, assign materials to objects, adjusting the materials to the lighting, and not vice versa. Remember also that in Mental Ray, photon shaders have a direct effect on the lighting in the scene and if you want them not to affect the overall lighting set up in a scene with a gray material, set the photon shaders to the same parameters as they were when setting up lighting in a scene. Now let's talk about radii in Final Gather. Max Radius is the distance between points for which GI (global illumination) is calculated. The smaller the distance between the points, the more accurate the calculation and the more time it will take. Min Radius is the distance used in illuminance interpolations and extrapolations of intermediate points. In practice, to obtain normal quality, GI Min Radius should be 10 times less than Max Radius. Increasing the radius values ​​leads to a decrease in the quality of secondary shadows, while decreasing them leads to more accurate rendering of GI and, as a result, an increase in rendering time. The smaller the radii, the greater the number of samples you have to set in Final Gather. The number of samples required for anti-aliasing with the above radius values ​​ranges from 500 to 3000 depending on the scene. More the better. But you shouldn’t get too carried away with increasing this value, since the rendering time will increase significantly.

Hi all! Today we will continue to delve into the intricacies of 3D modeling. In the last lesson we learned about polygonal modeling and texturing. Today we will pay more attention to lighting and visualization. In today's lesson you will learn:

• Work with texture maps
• Install light sources
• Render a scene using Mental Ray
• Create splines

So, let’s open the model we created in previous lessons, select all its components and combine them into a group. To do this, select the item in the main menu - "Group > Group" and click ok.

Grouping

Now we can work with the model as a single object. Let's leave the stool alone for now, we'll come back to it later. For visualization, you need to set up the scene, that is, the environment, so that the model does not hang in the air. Let's use a spline (line) for this. You can find them all in the same right panel by clicking on the button in the form of a circle with a square ( Shapes).

Let's select an object - "Line", switch to the left view and draw an L-shaped polyline. To draw polylines, you need to click the mouse at the beginning of the line, move the mouse to another point and click again, when the desired line is drawn, click the right mouse button. To correct irregularities, press “1” on the keyboard and move the points of the line as necessary. It should look something like this:

Let's return to the perspective window and apply a modifier to the line - "Extrude" with meaning "Amount" equal to 10000mm and place it exactly under the stool.

Place the objects so that the stool stands at the intersection of the thick grid lines, as in the screenshot below:

Now let's convert our L-shaped squiggle into "Edit Poly", and combine all its faces into the first smoothing group (Remember the last lesson).
We’ll immediately assign her a new white material. See screenshot:

The scene is ready, let's move on to the visualization settings. The first step is to reassign the render from standard to "Mental Ray". Open the render settings by clicking on the button "Render Setup" or "F10" on the keyboard, at the very bottom of the “Common” tab we will find the stack "Assign Renderer". Click on the first ellipsis (Production) and in the window that appears, select "mental ray renderer".

We assign mentality as the main one)

We won’t touch the render settings for now, but let’s move on to the lighting. Light sources can be found to the right of the splines. In the drop-down list, select the item "Standard" and create a light source - "mr Area Spot".

Place it above the object, moving it to the side. To see the position of shadows in real time, you need to switch from display mode - "Shaped" to mode "Realistic". Screenshot below:
Make sure shadows are turned on in your light settings.

Turn on shadows

Now let's go back to the render settings. First of all, let’s increase the size of the displayed resolution in the tab "Common". To begin with, I recommend setting it to 800*600, and before the final visualization you can increase it further.

See also the screenshots for other settings:

The quality of the future picture

Final Assembly - Global Illumination Simulation

After visualization we will see the following:

Somehow not very...

Not bad, but could be better. The shadows are too sharp; to fix this, let’s increase the radius of the lamp several times using the “scaling” tool (discussed in the first lesson) and visualize again:

Better, but not the same

This is much better, but the wood looks unnaturally smooth. Well, this can be easily fixed. First you need to create a relief map. This can be done, for example, in Gimp.
Open the original texture in the editor and apply the “threshold” tool to it. Of course, not the best option, but fast.

Tool - “Threshold”

Something like that

Returning to 3d Max, let's move on to the settings of the material for the stool, which we created in the last lesson. There at the bottom we find the stack - “Maps” and in it, opposite the “Bump” item, click on the button with the inscription: “None”. In the window that opens, select “Bitmap” and specify the black and white version of the texture. Leave the texture settings unchanged and return to the basic material settings. Set the “Bump” value to 20.

Let's also add some highlights. Settings in the screenshot:

Before the final render, we will increase the image size and quality:

Improved quality

Now you can make yourself some tea, since you will have to wait quite a long time)). The result is visible at the beginning of the lesson.
Quite a decent visualization for a beginner Autodesk 3ds Max user. We can say that the foundation has been built and now you can begin to dive into all the intricacies of 3D modeling.

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Hi all. My name is Maxim Ganzha, today after numerous requests from my friends, I finally decided to write a short article about how I create my interiors. We'll look at one of the latest works with crazy lighting and amazing composition =), which I did in MentalRay.

"Livingroom"

Have you ever wondered why some works attract more interest on forums than others? I'll tell you a little secret. It's all about beautiful lighting and strong composition. We will talk about this, as well as many other things, in this article. =)

I think we will skip the modeling process, otherwise the article will be very long and tedious. So let's go!

1. Setting up and adjusting lighting.

In order to get started, first of all you need to open the scene and select the Mental ray render from the list of available renders.

We open the scene.

Go to render settings F10, In the "Assign renderer" tab, click the "Choose renderer" button and select Mental Ray.

After we have selected the render, Mental Ray shaders and materials will become available in the materials and maps browser. Select the "Arch & Design" Material and configure the RGB diffuse color as follows, about 0.8 0.8 0.8 and the rest of the settings in the screenshot. I would also like to note that you should not forget to include “AO” in your materials. With this setting the shadows will look more realistic. and the darkening characteristic of real light will appear in the corners. I always set “Max Distance” to about 3 meters (distance from floor to ceiling).

Open the render settings. In the "Translator Options" tab, turn on the Eneble checkbox for Material Override and throw our prepared gray material into the slot. This will ensure that all objects in the scene are painted with the same material. This will make it easier for you and your computer to adjust the lighting. The rendering will be fast and time-consuming. We will look at the materials of all objects in the scene later.

After assigning a gray material to all objects, we must create a "Daylight System"

create and place the sun; it’s okay if it shines in the other direction. go to the system settings and, as shown in the figure below, check the “Manual” box, after that we can set the sun as we please without adjusting the time and date. Place the sun as shown in the picture.

When creating a daylighting system, 3ds max will offer us to set “mrSky” as the environment, we agree and move on.

After we installed the daylighting system, we move on to the windows. You need to put “mr Sky Portal” in them; it is located next to the photometric lamps.

press the button and set it as shown in the figure below.

As you noticed, the portal is directed with an arrow in the wrong direction. We need the arrow to point into the room. To do this, simply click the Flip Light Flux Direction checkbox. And everything will fall into place as in the picture below. =)

We select our portal, hold down the "Shift" key and move it to the left to the second window. 3ds max will offer us a copy type. Select "Instance"

Finally they turned on daylighting. Now we just have to configure it. Press "F10" and turn on Final Gather (FG) Global and Illumination (GI). The settings are shown below. I also turned on the FG & GI checkboxes and reduced the quality of the FG Precision Preset.

We set the image resolution to 450 by 338 and make a test render.

Press key 8 and in the "Environment" settings in the "Exposure Control" tab set "mr Photographic Exposure Control".

Click render and see what we got =)

The following exposure settings correspond to this render:

As you can see, nothing remarkable happened. The light is dim and ugly. In order to create beautiful lighting, we will have to tweak the exposure control a little. Then I remembered that I wanted to use artificial light. Turn on the floor lamp next to the sofa. The sun would obviously interfere with this and I turned it off. Go to the Daylighting System settings and uncheck "On" in the "mr Sun Basic Parameters" tab.

Now press the “8” key again and set up the exposure control as shown in the figure below.

And this is what we got.

Well, that's a completely different matter. The light became like daylight. =)
Now let's start setting up the floor lamp lighting. For artificial lighting, I like to use photometric lights. Choose this lamp:

And we put the light bulbs in the floor lamp in place as shown in the pictures below.

In the lamp settings, turn on the shadows "Ray Traced Shadows" In the "Shape/Area Shadows" tab, set the disk with a radius of 30 mm. Turn on the "Light Shape Visible Rendering" checkbox and set 64 samples. These settings will allow us to achieve beautiful realistic shadows from the lamp.

Let's see what happened.

We see that the light from the lamp is white. But I would like to make it more like a simple light bulb. To do this we need to lower the temperature of the light. We also see that the light is too intense. With such a shutter speed of the camera and such daylight, it should practically not be visible. and he is like a spotlight for us. =)

Open the settings of the photometric lamp again and adjust the temperature with intensity.

Let's see what happened:

This is what we need. Perfect light! I don't know about you, but I really like it. And for whom is the play of orange light with blue a win-win option in architectural visualization? =)

I would like to add some special effects. To do this, go to the render settings, and in the "Camera Effects" tab, turn on the "Output" checkbox. DefaultOutputShader (Glare), take the shader with the mouse and throw it into the "Material Editor", after which 3ds max will offer us the copy type. We check "Instance" and click " ok".

Behind the windows, as in the figure below, we place a “plan” object, which will play the role of a background.

In the settings of the “plan” object, turn off the checkboxes as follows.

And assign it the material "Arch & Design"

Once again we press the render button and see what we got. =) For quick calculation, I assigned a gray material to all objects except the background.

Well, we got a good picture. A slight haze from the glow effect gives the picture a lively atmosphere. You can stop with the render settings and start looking at the materials.

2. Setting up materials.

It's time to look at the most basic materials that I used in this scene. Let's start with the most interesting thing.

Carpet.

As you can see from the mesh, the geometry is very simple.

The carpet used a simple material "Arch & Design" with the following parameters:

Diffuse map.

The following texture was used in "Displacement".

Sofa.

The sofa mesh is quite complex. On this model I used two materials. Fabric and wood on legs.

Let's look at the fabric material first.

We put the “Ambient/Reflective Occlussion” shader into the diffuse slot and place two fabric textures of the same type in it. The only difference is that one is darker than the other. The settings are in the picture below.

The following parameters are ambient occluded and bump.

now wooden legs.

In the diffuse I used a simple parquet map. The settings are in the picture below.

bump settings.

Coffee table.

The material and mesh of the coffee table are as follows.

with glass everything is simple, select the material “Arch & Design” and select the finished material from it as shown in the figure below.

Magazines.

I wanted to make “Arch & Design” a glossy magazine, I didn’t really bother with the material settings. Therefore, I used simple glossy plastic.

log grid.

the settings look like this.

I colored the pages with the same material only with white in Diffuse color.

Newspaper girl.

The newspaper rack itself is made of varnished wood. I decided to paint it with "ProMaterials" Hardwood.

Newspaper grid.

Promaterial Hardwood settings.

I also used a second material to paint the newspapers themselves and made it matte.

newspaper material settings.

Flower.

At this stage I used the same, my favorite material "Arch & Design".

You can see the settings in the pictures below.

Curtains.

I had to experiment a little with the curtains. And finally I came to this option.

Mesh curtains.

In the diffuse as shown in the picture below, I naturally used the texture of the fabric. Also, don’t forget about the AO parameter. =)

Walls.

I wanted the walls to be made from old plaster, which was later painted. And this is what I got, my favorite “Arch & Design” again.

On the wall the map looks like this.

The reflection settings look like this:

Parquet material (floor covering).

Settings.

Floor lamp.

I used three materials on the floor lamp. These are a lampshade (material is fabric), a stand (material is metal) and an electrical wire (material is plastic).

Let's start with my favorite material "Arch & Design" - this is the fabric on the lampshade of the floor lamp.

It's pretty simple. Diffuse color, slight transparency and bump. We will see this in the settings in the pictures below.

To make the metal rack material I used ProMaterials: Metal.

Floor lamp plastic wiring material ProMaterials: Plastic/Vinyl

I would also like to recommend you one resource that is directly related to Mental Ray materials. He helped me more than once. Thanks to those who founded the site. http://www.mrmaterials.com/

That's probably all, we're done with the materials. Now we can discuss composition.
3. Final render settings.

It's time to increase the render settings and make the final render. In the picture below you can see the settings.

Turn on the render and wait =)

4. Composition.

There are 10 rules of composition that are worth learning.

1. Contrast.

ms_Dessi

How to attract the viewer's attention to your render? There must be contrast in the frame: a lighter subject is photographed against a dark background, and a dark one against a light one.

2. Accommodation.

Morro

Important plot elements should not be placed randomly. It is better that they form simple geometric shapes.

3. Balance.

Objects located in different parts of the frame must match each other in volume, size and tone.

4. Golden ratio.

The golden ratio was known back in ancient Egypt; its properties were studied by Euclid and Leonardo da Vinci. The simplest description of the golden ratio is that the best point to position your subject is approximately 1/3 of the horizontal or vertical edge of the frame. The placement of important objects at these visual points looks natural and attracts the viewer's attention.

5. Diagonals.

FeodorIvaneev

FeodorIvaneev

One of the most effective compositional techniques is diagonal composition. Its essence is very simple: we place the main objects of the frame along the diagonal of the frame. For example, from the top left corner of the frame to the bottom right. This technique is good because such a composition continuously leads the viewer’s eye through the entire picture.

6. Frame format.

Morro

FeodorIvaneev

If the rendering is dominated by vertical objects, use the vertical frame format. If the objects are horizontal, take horizontal shots.

7. Shooting point.

FeodorIvaneev

The choice of shooting point directly affects the emotional perception of the photo. Let's remember a few simple rules: For character rendering, the best point is at eye level. For a full-length portrait - at waist level. Try to frame the frame so that the horizon line does not divide the photo in half. Otherwise, it will be difficult for the viewer to focus on the objects in the frame. Adjust the camera angle at the level of the subject, otherwise you risk getting distorted proportions. If you look at an object from above, it appears smaller than it actually is. So, when drawing a character from the top point, you will get a short character in the render.

Dmitry Schuka

Our brain is accustomed to reading from left to right, and we evaluate a photograph in the same way. Therefore, it is better to place the semantic center on the right side of the frame. Thus, the gaze and the subject of shooting seem to move towards each other. When building a composition, always take this point into account.

9. Color spot.

If there is a spot of color in one part of the frame, then there should be something in another that will attract the viewer's attention. This could be a different spot of color or, for example, an action in the frame.

10. Movement in the frame.

Alexander1

If you decide to draw a moving subject (car, cyclist), always leave some free space in front of the subject. Simply put, position the subject as if it had just “entered” the frame, rather than “exiting” it.

Let's stop at the composition and start post-processing the render.

5. Post processing.

Now it's time to do a little post-processing on the resulting image. I usually always resort to this in my daily work. Since some things are still easier to achieve in Photoshop than by means of rendering. So what do we have =)

If you look closely, the capabilities of Mental Ray are very wide; the picture requires practically no effects. But it's still worth adding a few lens effects. To give the feeling of a real photograph.

It seemed to me that the picture lacks a blue glow effect around the windows, so we open our render in the excellent Fusion program and apply the glow effect to the existing image. In common parlance, we attach the “SoftGlow” node to it

click polygon and outline the window as shown in the figure below. Thus, we drew a mask in fusion on which the glow effect will be applied.

Now click on the SoftGlow node and configure it as follows.

we will have a pleasant glow near the windows.

add the SoftGlow node again and apply the effect to the entire picture. Set it up as follows so that the entire picture has a slight blue glow.

turn off the Red, Green and Alpha checkboxes and move the Gain slider a little to the right. The picture below shows both options. Left before, right after applying the effect.

Close Fusion and open the image in Photoshop.

in photoshop we open the image with the Magic Bullet Photo Looks plugin... and apply the Anamorphic Flare effect with the following settings

a very beautiful glow characteristic of a real camera appeared. Next, apply the Vignette effect and add a slight darkening along the edge of the picture, the settings are also shown in the lower right corner.

Let's add a very interesting effect called Shutter Streak, which adds small rays from the bottom and top of our picture.

now my favorite step =)
Add the Chromatic Aberration effect and configure it as shown in the picture below.

with a high resolution picture it will almost not be visible, but it will still add realism to the picture.

Press the button

and save the image.

Here's what I got.

So my lesson has come to an end, I want to wish you all good luck and fast renders. Always yours Maxim Ganzha.

Lesson taken from 3dmaks.com