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This will be a multi part series. How many parts? Who knows. Depends on when I get bored. Post questions regarding this lesson. Please do not post questions that beginners should already know like "Why isn't Brazil working?". If anyone ever pm's me that question again, I'll say stop pirating software and then I'll never talk to you again. THEN I'll post your user name in my signature which is going to be my new black book. Then everyone will know to avoid you at all cost and that you ask questions that equate to an IQ of 2.7.
I'm going to cover a wide range of aspects that I use in 3ds max while rendering. You should have a basic knowledge of this program to proceed. I won't be answering questions that most beginners should know. I will answer questions pertaining to this tutorial though.
First off, I see a bunch of 'lazy' scenes. Basically they are lit generically or with HDRI and rendered with basic settings. I'll give you an analogy; Do you think there is a difference between a snap shot and a photograph? One is artistic and experienced. It captures an instance in life that absolutely pulls you into that moment in time. After viewing a photograph, you almost have a memory of that moment as if you were there. What's more, the light of that moment was on that piece of film. It was there. You physically captured that time forever. A snap shot is a disposable camera with a picture from your last Thanksgiving. That is the difference between a good render and 95% of everything else. Most goals here at SRD is to display a car. Okay, I can display a car. I can put pretty textures on the ground, create a sky light or load a HDRI, turn on FG and press render. In fact, most of you have proven you can. But it's not much to write home about. I'm not here to disrespect anyone's knowledge of anything. And it's good to feel that you can be better. I do. That's why I attend school for this and have been for years. Sucky thing is that school teaches you so much. Most is up to you.
So what's a good render? What is a render that does more then just the basics? Here:
2010-11-01_khs06 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
That photostream should inspire a little bit.
Now I'll show you how to get renderings like that. Will they be fast? In comparison to professional renders? Yes. Compared to a budget scene that plagues SRD? No.
Now here is a note, textures play a huge part in a scene. The better you render, the better you see those textures. If you don't have good textures, you will notice. What's more, models are important. A decent/poor model will trash a scene faster then bad textures (the debate is ongoing). If you can't model cars, trees, people and so forth, there are plenty of amazing free and pay-for packages out there that will take your scenes up a notch. Me? I can't model cars and people and trees. I excel environment design and architectural design. You want a sweeping vista in the Southwest, I got ya covered. Need a hanger out in space? Sure. You want a amazing accurate face and body? No way. I can't do it. Never have been able to. So I say this to remind you to realize your weaknesses and strengths. But no one should fail at rendering, lighting, textures, and so on. Rendering is as much art as science for sure. Although there is a bunch of key presses, you must use your eye. Have a final goal in mind and achieve it.
Here we go.
First off I made a very simple indoor scene with a generic standard gray material. I created a daylight system and set my render engine to Mental Ray. Everyone has a preference to how they have their render settings set up, but I am going to go through mine with you based on fact. If you read the 3ds max manual, forums, and simply do your own tests, you will realize the great things you can do with just the top part of this menu.
Now I for final render, I will have the Samples per Pixel set to 16/64. People argue that saying you only need 1/16. But let the renders decide that.
I set my Filter to Mitchell. Some use Lanzcos. I prefer Mitchell because I favor the softer image without longer render times.
I prefer my Spatial Contrast set to around .002-.004 and A set to zero.
I turn Lock Samples off because I'm not making an animation.
I turn Jitter on to help reduce aliasing.
I keep a default number for Bucket Width.
Hilbert for order
Frame Buffer set to Floating-Point 32 bits. Although you may see jaggies in very bright areas, it's only in the 3ds max render frame window. (Or thus sayeth Autodesk). If it's really a problem, set this to 16bit unless you are making a HDRI, but I feel that the light is more accurate. For instance, I like to see the sun gleam off of chrome and so forth. 16 bit won't do that.
Here is a scene that has the same lighting as a lot of scenes I've seen here. It's default FG, skylight, 1/16 render with standard settings. We have Automatic Exposure Control on. We are also using mental ray.
NASTY! It looks like a out of date disco party with all those light disks. Lets go ahead and get something going. I have deleted the ole' standby skylight and created a daylight system. I set the sun and sky to MRsun and MRsky, respectively. I set the shadow softness to 2 and quality to 16. (32 is better).
Much better, but you can see the wall under the window looks a little dirty. You may think that boosting render quality settings or boost the light would fix this. Actually what we need is Global Illumination (GI). Now I'm going to turn on GI with my basement settings. What I mean is that I start GI with 20000 photons with a radius of 1'. I then move to 5' and so forth. I slowly creep up the photons. The goal is to not see blotchy shadows and no color difference. No light disks really and just a nice smooth image.
What you are really seeing are 20000 photon disks at 1’ in radius. There are really two approaches to getting a good GI solution from this point. You can keep the radius at 1’, and increase the Average GI Photons per Light to crazy high numbers. This could give you a smooth result with nice detailed soft shadows, but can take a very long time to calculate. Rather, I prefer to increase the radius size until they overlap large enough to get a smooth result. Then I turn up the Average GI Photons per Light, but not so high to make my GI calculation times go through the roof. There is no one solution.
Now all we have done is introduced the daylight system and added GI. Let's add an object to the room and texture it up. I'm going to show you the difference in 1/16 render settings and 16/64. I'm also going to show you AO passes combined with a beauty pass. K? Let's move on.
Here is two objects I have placed in a scene. A cube with a God awful wallpaper and a chrome ball (Dedicated to Lance Armstrong). Now I'm going to show you texturing with a UV map. What we are going to do is set up our materials in the material panel. Such as reflection and so forth but alter it's layout on the model (without unwrapping it) using the UV map modifier under the Modify tab.
When you create your materials and edit them to your satisfaction (That's another tut), apply them to the model and while the model is selected, open your modify tab and select UV Map. Now you can set the texture size, what kind of object it's on (how you want it to fit), and rotate, scale, etc. This is helpful when your texture won't fit and you don't want to unwrap it on a basic shape like a building, roof, ball, table, etc. Also if that one material is going to go on different objects in your scene and it needs to adjust for each object.
Now I'm going to adjust the texture and load a better chrome metal texture. I use the Pro Materials for metals and actually loads of materials. The Pro Mats are amazing and deserve a look and in depth use. Very powerful with little tweaking.
Now another MR shader I like is Arch and Design. More options then the Pro Materials thus in my opinion a little more powerful but needs a more competent handler to make good materials. But I have made my metal material and adjusted the UV map settings for the box. Very easy. Now we don't have much light in the room, so we are going to pull more in with a MR Sky Portal. You need to make the light slightly bigger than the opening you want to push light through. What this light does is get light from outside and blow it through the window. It doesn't make the scene accurate, but it does a good job lighting things up when you don't want to use photometric lights (Lighting is another tutorial). You then place the light barely outside the window with the arrow pointing into the room or structure. Set the options how you desire and go from there.
Now that we have a decent scene, lets do a final (beauty) render then an Ambient Occlusion render.
We will create a material and click standard and then select "Mental Ray Material". Under surface, choose Ambient/reflective Occlusion. Put 3 feet under max distance. Now open your render settings panel and select the processing tab. Enable Material Override and drag the new mental ray AO material to the empty box. Now turn OFF TURN OFF TURN OFF FG, GI, and your exposure settings.
I have used these render settings for my final render with both the beauty pass and the AO pass. I used the draft setting for FG and my previously mentioned settings for GI.
Here is my exposure settings.
I like to use Logarithmic or mrPhoto. But I prefer Logarithmic. These settings I have found to give the most realistic lighting and exposure results. If you want to know more about it, take a photography class or google it. Maybe surprise us all and read a book.
You can save the AO pass as a JPG. But ALWAYS save the beauty pass as a .tif image. Compile them in photoshop like this; Put both images together in 2 seperate layers. Put the AO picture on top. Set it to multiply. I then Put a VERY gentle wave form in curves for the beauty layer. I then flatten and add the unsharpen mask. I set it to 30%/3.0/0.
Here is my AO pass to be compiled in PS with the beauty pass
Here is the Beauty Pass (notice the difference between these settings and the settings at the beginning of the tutorial. 16/64 is the way to go. The shadow gradients are great and there is little to no grain in the image.
Here is the two compiled with my photoshop settings that I stated.
Hope you learned something.
I'm going to cover a wide range of aspects that I use in 3ds max while rendering. You should have a basic knowledge of this program to proceed. I won't be answering questions that most beginners should know. I will answer questions pertaining to this tutorial though.
First off, I see a bunch of 'lazy' scenes. Basically they are lit generically or with HDRI and rendered with basic settings. I'll give you an analogy; Do you think there is a difference between a snap shot and a photograph? One is artistic and experienced. It captures an instance in life that absolutely pulls you into that moment in time. After viewing a photograph, you almost have a memory of that moment as if you were there. What's more, the light of that moment was on that piece of film. It was there. You physically captured that time forever. A snap shot is a disposable camera with a picture from your last Thanksgiving. That is the difference between a good render and 95% of everything else. Most goals here at SRD is to display a car. Okay, I can display a car. I can put pretty textures on the ground, create a sky light or load a HDRI, turn on FG and press render. In fact, most of you have proven you can. But it's not much to write home about. I'm not here to disrespect anyone's knowledge of anything. And it's good to feel that you can be better. I do. That's why I attend school for this and have been for years. Sucky thing is that school teaches you so much. Most is up to you.
So what's a good render? What is a render that does more then just the basics? Here:
2010-11-01_khs06 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!
That photostream should inspire a little bit.
Now I'll show you how to get renderings like that. Will they be fast? In comparison to professional renders? Yes. Compared to a budget scene that plagues SRD? No.
Now here is a note, textures play a huge part in a scene. The better you render, the better you see those textures. If you don't have good textures, you will notice. What's more, models are important. A decent/poor model will trash a scene faster then bad textures (the debate is ongoing). If you can't model cars, trees, people and so forth, there are plenty of amazing free and pay-for packages out there that will take your scenes up a notch. Me? I can't model cars and people and trees. I excel environment design and architectural design. You want a sweeping vista in the Southwest, I got ya covered. Need a hanger out in space? Sure. You want a amazing accurate face and body? No way. I can't do it. Never have been able to. So I say this to remind you to realize your weaknesses and strengths. But no one should fail at rendering, lighting, textures, and so on. Rendering is as much art as science for sure. Although there is a bunch of key presses, you must use your eye. Have a final goal in mind and achieve it.
Here we go.
First off I made a very simple indoor scene with a generic standard gray material. I created a daylight system and set my render engine to Mental Ray. Everyone has a preference to how they have their render settings set up, but I am going to go through mine with you based on fact. If you read the 3ds max manual, forums, and simply do your own tests, you will realize the great things you can do with just the top part of this menu.
Now I for final render, I will have the Samples per Pixel set to 16/64. People argue that saying you only need 1/16. But let the renders decide that.
I set my Filter to Mitchell. Some use Lanzcos. I prefer Mitchell because I favor the softer image without longer render times.
I prefer my Spatial Contrast set to around .002-.004 and A set to zero.
I turn Lock Samples off because I'm not making an animation.
I turn Jitter on to help reduce aliasing.
I keep a default number for Bucket Width.
Hilbert for order
Frame Buffer set to Floating-Point 32 bits. Although you may see jaggies in very bright areas, it's only in the 3ds max render frame window. (Or thus sayeth Autodesk). If it's really a problem, set this to 16bit unless you are making a HDRI, but I feel that the light is more accurate. For instance, I like to see the sun gleam off of chrome and so forth. 16 bit won't do that.
Here is a scene that has the same lighting as a lot of scenes I've seen here. It's default FG, skylight, 1/16 render with standard settings. We have Automatic Exposure Control on. We are also using mental ray.
NASTY! It looks like a out of date disco party with all those light disks. Lets go ahead and get something going. I have deleted the ole' standby skylight and created a daylight system. I set the sun and sky to MRsun and MRsky, respectively. I set the shadow softness to 2 and quality to 16. (32 is better).
Much better, but you can see the wall under the window looks a little dirty. You may think that boosting render quality settings or boost the light would fix this. Actually what we need is Global Illumination (GI). Now I'm going to turn on GI with my basement settings. What I mean is that I start GI with 20000 photons with a radius of 1'. I then move to 5' and so forth. I slowly creep up the photons. The goal is to not see blotchy shadows and no color difference. No light disks really and just a nice smooth image.
What you are really seeing are 20000 photon disks at 1’ in radius. There are really two approaches to getting a good GI solution from this point. You can keep the radius at 1’, and increase the Average GI Photons per Light to crazy high numbers. This could give you a smooth result with nice detailed soft shadows, but can take a very long time to calculate. Rather, I prefer to increase the radius size until they overlap large enough to get a smooth result. Then I turn up the Average GI Photons per Light, but not so high to make my GI calculation times go through the roof. There is no one solution.
Now all we have done is introduced the daylight system and added GI. Let's add an object to the room and texture it up. I'm going to show you the difference in 1/16 render settings and 16/64. I'm also going to show you AO passes combined with a beauty pass. K? Let's move on.
Here is two objects I have placed in a scene. A cube with a God awful wallpaper and a chrome ball (Dedicated to Lance Armstrong). Now I'm going to show you texturing with a UV map. What we are going to do is set up our materials in the material panel. Such as reflection and so forth but alter it's layout on the model (without unwrapping it) using the UV map modifier under the Modify tab.
When you create your materials and edit them to your satisfaction (That's another tut), apply them to the model and while the model is selected, open your modify tab and select UV Map. Now you can set the texture size, what kind of object it's on (how you want it to fit), and rotate, scale, etc. This is helpful when your texture won't fit and you don't want to unwrap it on a basic shape like a building, roof, ball, table, etc. Also if that one material is going to go on different objects in your scene and it needs to adjust for each object.
Now I'm going to adjust the texture and load a better chrome metal texture. I use the Pro Materials for metals and actually loads of materials. The Pro Mats are amazing and deserve a look and in depth use. Very powerful with little tweaking.
Now another MR shader I like is Arch and Design. More options then the Pro Materials thus in my opinion a little more powerful but needs a more competent handler to make good materials. But I have made my metal material and adjusted the UV map settings for the box. Very easy. Now we don't have much light in the room, so we are going to pull more in with a MR Sky Portal. You need to make the light slightly bigger than the opening you want to push light through. What this light does is get light from outside and blow it through the window. It doesn't make the scene accurate, but it does a good job lighting things up when you don't want to use photometric lights (Lighting is another tutorial). You then place the light barely outside the window with the arrow pointing into the room or structure. Set the options how you desire and go from there.
Now that we have a decent scene, lets do a final (beauty) render then an Ambient Occlusion render.
We will create a material and click standard and then select "Mental Ray Material". Under surface, choose Ambient/reflective Occlusion. Put 3 feet under max distance. Now open your render settings panel and select the processing tab. Enable Material Override and drag the new mental ray AO material to the empty box. Now turn OFF TURN OFF TURN OFF FG, GI, and your exposure settings.
I have used these render settings for my final render with both the beauty pass and the AO pass. I used the draft setting for FG and my previously mentioned settings for GI.
Here is my exposure settings.
I like to use Logarithmic or mrPhoto. But I prefer Logarithmic. These settings I have found to give the most realistic lighting and exposure results. If you want to know more about it, take a photography class or google it. Maybe surprise us all and read a book.
You can save the AO pass as a JPG. But ALWAYS save the beauty pass as a .tif image. Compile them in photoshop like this; Put both images together in 2 seperate layers. Put the AO picture on top. Set it to multiply. I then Put a VERY gentle wave form in curves for the beauty layer. I then flatten and add the unsharpen mask. I set it to 30%/3.0/0.
Here is my AO pass to be compiled in PS with the beauty pass
Here is the Beauty Pass (notice the difference between these settings and the settings at the beginning of the tutorial. 16/64 is the way to go. The shadow gradients are great and there is little to no grain in the image.
Here is the two compiled with my photoshop settings that I stated.
Hope you learned something.
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