For this material you must use Mental Ray.
Glowing materials are very useful to create light effects. For example a neon-light effect.
This kind of material is a light-emitting material. It will create light and shadows like an Omni Light.
Let’s check out the steps we are going to do:
1. Change in the material editor the Standard material to an Architectural -image 1-.
2. Choose the color of your glowing material in the diffuse color slot.
3. Now go to the setting “luminance cd/m2“. This setting allows you to create a material which is able to emit light. This setting is very similar to the standard “self-illumination” slot. But in the architectural material you can add a value which is much more higher than 100. The higher the value the brighter the material’s light emission.

It is very important that you enable Final Gather (in max 9 the option “SAMPLES” is called “rays per FG point”) since the glow effect and the emission of light will be possible only with this setting. The higher the number in FG Samples/ FG point the better will be the quality. Put 1 for low quality (for test renderings -Image 2-) and 250-400 for good quality.



If you go to increase the value in MAX BOUNCES -image 3- (in Max 9 it is called DIFFUSE BOUNCES -image 4-) in the Final Gather panel, you will be able to give more energy to your light effect. It is possible to illuminate an entire room by using the MAX BOUNCES setting: the indirect light that comes from the light that bounces on the walls will add more realism to the scene. But it takes much more time to render the scene. You should have additional lights anyway to achieve a perfect illumination of your interior (this kind of technique and all light settings are explained during the lessons of the Florence Design Academy).
Try to make this small experiment: Create a box, and place a sphere on top of it. Assign to the sphere a glowing material and enable all settings explained previously (don’t create any light). In the rendering you will see that the entire scene is illuminated and that the sphere is emitting light. But it is clearly visible that the illumination is not coming only from the sphere. If you don’t create any lights, 3D Studio Max will create a default light. But what if you don’t want this additional default light of 3D Studio Max because you need a very dark scene in which only the sphere is visible as a glowing object ? Let’s go on with our small experiment: Just create a mr Omni light, and disable it from the modify panel (uncheck in the beginning of the panel the slot “ON”wink
Make a new rendering. Only now does the scene behave as it has to be in reality. The only light which is illuminating the scene is the sphere.
Here below you have a sample with a room.

Image A:
Rendering of a room with a default light.
Image B:
Rendering of the same room with Architectural material assigned to the box on the ceiling. It is clearly visible that the entire room has the same illumination like before, now we can see shadows under the teapot. Since we are using a default light, the entire scene looks wrong. The light should come only from the ceiling.
Image C: exactly the same scene as scene B, but now we have created an additional MR Omni and we have disabled it. Now finally we have a realistic result. It is clearly visible that the illumination is coming from the white on the ceiling.
Image D: same scene like image C, but now the MAX BOUNCE in the Final Gather panel has a value of 3.
From this sample you can see that it is possible to illuminate a room only through this material, however I suggest to use always additional lights.
A similar effect like the architectural material can be simulated with a simple self-illuminated material on which you apply an OUTPUT where you increase the output value. But the architectural material is faster to manage.
That’s it.
I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial.
Best Regards

Author Website: http://www.florencedesignacademy.com

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This is a preview of a movie that has much motion and stutters badly – without motion blur.

Here is the same preview with motion blur.

Here is the same preview with motion blur.

Here is the final shot.
There are many things that are becoming more and more required in 3d rendering, we now take for granted ray-tracing, area shadows, global illumination, multiple choices of anti-aliasing strategies, but for film-quality productions motion blur should be a fundamental requirement of the rendering strategy.
Motion blur should be considered within the larger issue of edge quality. One thing that has changed much in the last five years is the quality and strategy of Anti Aliasing. There are still problems that are very difficult to deal with (like geometry that is much smaller than a pixel) but there are many new innovations in this arena that will lead to more “Film quality” renderings right out of the renderer.
Tip
There is a great advantage when working at film frame rate when creating animation. You have six less frames to render per second (rendering savings). This also means that for every second of compressed footage, you can devote 1.25 times more throughput (quality of compression) per frame.

Tutorial by Neoscape Artist: Nils Norgren

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Lighting is one of the most important parts in 3D visualization rendering. It brings not only the look and feel for the image, but also helps to visualize the design in reality. Unlike interior lighting where you have to spend more time to make sure every detail in the room is lit perfectly, exterior lighting is easier to set up but still challenges the artist.

1. Modeling

Here we have two blocks of buildings. This will be a very busy scene in the evening when there are a great number of highlights and shadows. Every element in the entire model is organized into layers.

2. Camera View Setup

We set up a perfect view for the scene. At this point, the overall lighting is sketched out. It is a late afternoon/dusk kind of lighting when there is still light from the sky and a slightly warm color from the sun. The scene is also lit by a lot of light coming from the retail stores, restaurants and cars on the street.

3. Texturing

All the materials are applied to the model. There is no tweaking in the materials at this point yet until the lighting is done.

All the materials in the scene are optimized by using Vray materials.
The materials have a lot of reflection and highlights. The point here is to create more highlight for the images at night time. This is one of the effective ways to give the image extra realism.
Besides that, some of the materials in the scene have Vray DisplacementMod such as the brick side walk and grass.


5. Lighting

Starting with environment light first, it is a good practice to spend some time looking for reference images or photos of the lighting. We experience the color of the sky when it is at late afternoon and find a good high-res of the sky at that moment. A lot of purple in the shadow, cooler color from the sky and warm color for the street lights; these are the things we need to aim for in the final image.
In the Environment tab in Vray setting dialogue, a sky bitmap is applied into GI and Reflection/refraction slot and leave the value at 1.0.


After that, we can go ahead and test render. At this stage, we use a very low setting for the test rendering in order to get a quick preview of the image.
_Color mapping: Exponential
_ Irradiance map and Lightcache for 1st and 2nd bounce
_ Irradiance map was set to Very low
_ Light cache with Subdivs at 200 and sample size at 0.02

Press render…

It looks very dark at this point, but the lighting is starting to show the effect of the sky.
To make the image look much brighter, simply increase the value of GI environment from 1.0 to something like 7.0, and also change the value of Exponential colormapping some.

We also add a single Target Direct Light with a blue color to simulate the light from the sky.

Do the test again to see how it changes.

This looks much brighter as we wanted. The shadow is filled with purple color and there is light coming from the sky. The render’s quality looks really bad because of the low setting. This will not affect the final image since we will change to a higher setting later on.
That should take care for the environment light. We add some more details into the scene such as street lamps and interior lights.
_ Omni light is used to create lighting for those street lamps.
_ Vray Light is used in the interior.

And here’s a quick render right after.

It’s getting there. At this stage, we focus more on details of the scene. In addition, some landscapes, furniture, cars on the street and retail stores are added.

Now, we are ready for the final render.
4. Render Setting For Final Image
For a final render image at 4000 pixel, we change the setting so that it is higher than before to bring more quality to the image.



For post work, we also rendered out the VrayRawReflection/Refraction pass, VraySpecular (you can add these passes by going to Render Elements and click on the Add button).


5. Post Work
We use Photoshop for post work. Level adjustments and Color Balance are used to improve the contrast and correct the color for the image.
A sky backdrop, landscapes and people are also added into the scene.
Reflection and Specular passes are used to add more reflection and highlight for the image to provide more realistic effects.
We also render out a Vray Dirtpass pass so we can use it in Photoshop to boost the shadow.

Some close-up details:


And there it is. The lighting for the image is completed. We got the look and feel as wanted with a lot of lighting and highlights bouncing around the scene.
I hope this tutorial will provide you a simple, yet effective way to deal with a night lighting image.

Author: Neoscape Artist: Hao La
Author Website: http://www.neoscape.com/

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Mattes are used to aid in the isolation and selection of specific areas of an image for post-processing in a paint or compositing package. The term matte describes a template one uses to delineate an area, similar to how artists use molds to mark an impression to be manipulated. In Photoshop, any grayscale image loaded as an alpha channel or a clipping mask can be used as a matte, ready to be color-corrected. 3ds Max offers the flexibility to create mattes associated with 3D, such as Alpha, Object & Material ID, and Z-depth. It also offers the ability to create more specialized mattes such as RGB mattes, Normals, RawTotalLighting, and other Custom mattes that target specific areas to be adjusted in post-production.
Alpha / RGBA Mattes:

The simplest matte is the Alpha, which is usually the negative space around the 3D scene. In this living room rendering, the alpha matte is the area outside of the windows where the background view, a 2d image in this example, is dropped in.

Living room rendering

Area outside of the windows is the alpha matte
Creating RGBA mattes, or renders comprised of the primary red, blue and green colors, allows one to render three or four mattes at a time. We created RGB mattes for our Living Room scene to isolate the floor, rug, ceiling and walls – all within a single rendering.

In 3ds Max, simply create standard materials with primary colors in the self-illuminated slot.

These colors are used as mattes in Photoshop by loading the color channel as a selection.
Render Passes as Mattes:

To enhance the airy feeling of light as it recedes in depth, or atmospheric perspective, the final Living Room rendering utilized several additional render passes as mattes.

Z-Depth pass
The Z-Depth pass was used as a selection to color-correct the black and white values in the scene from the front of the space near the camera to the rear where light is streaming in through the windows.

Normals pass
Similarly, selections created by targeting specific color ranges in the Normals pass give an artist the flexibility to color-correct based on facing angles. In the Living Room the normals pass was used to highlight the sofa area. The faces facing upwards were isolated and color-corrected to enhance the sheen on the fabric.

The RawTotalLighting pass is used in a similar way, for instance, to tint lighting effects from light sources or to enhance / dull their effect based on the falloff of the 3d light source.
Custom Mattes:
Since there are countless ways to create selections in Photoshop, custom mattes can be created to target specific areas. Every grayscale or color rendering contains information from which to create mattes. The task of targeted color-correcting begins by thinking about how it is best to isolate that area to be corrected, whether it is based on its geometry, facing angle, proximity to light, color, or other parameters.

Custom rug as main feature
In our last example, a simple hotel corridor has a custom rug as a main feature, and the colors needed to match the real-world sample. Due to the color effects from global illumination, the rendering did not match and color-correction was needed. To make matters more difficult, the carpet pattern was irregularly shaped and the three colors within the pattern needed to be corrected separately. The colors couldn’t be isolated easily in Photoshop in the 3D rendering because there were differences in light and shade as the carpet passed through several areas with different illumination and color bleed. A custom matte was created to help isolate the colors by rendering the diffuse map in the self-illuminated slot.

The flat evenness of this utility rendering allowed colors to be selected separately based on the color range, such as the aqua colored inner border.

Compositing Minded:
For a recent project, we had a match moved shot where we filmed on green screen a woman walking up a set of stairs with our camera on a crane following her up. We then wanted to composite her into a scene where she would be walking up a 3d staircase instead.

Before rushing in and starting to render out pieces that will be used as mattes, let’s take a step back and assess the problem at hand. Brute force tells us that whatever 3d objects are between the camera and where we want to place our woman will need to be rendered as mattes.

But what if there are certain objects that exist both in front of our subject and behind them? Now we will need to go into the actual geometry and start separating faces, which is not really a great approach. Also, the actual stair thread will need to be treated in this same way where the bottom and side faces will be turned white to occlude our subject while the top of the thread would remain black. Depending on how complex your scene is, these steps can be quite time consuming. Only if there was another way…
By taking a different approach, the same end result can be achieved with much less effort. Instead of turning some objects white and some objects black to be able to render out mattes, what if we turned all of the geometry in our scene black and then put in a white card that exists only where we want our woman to go?


With this, we don’t have to break up any geometry. It also allows us to be able to reposition our subject to a different part of our scene without having to reassess which objects are occluding them.
While a more traditional approach would use objects that are rendered white to occlude something, this approach uses the white area of a render to include something. By thinking from this point of view, you can sometimes save yourself a great deal of time.

Download Scene File:
Scene File [4.78MB]

Author: Matt Richardson & Cary Ng
Website: http://www.neoscape.com/

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Software Used: Autodesk 3dsmax & VRay Advanced 1,5 RC3 for 3dsmax 9

This tutorial explains how to set up sunlight and VRay light to light up a building’s interior.

Approach to Render a Scene with VRay

The approach I used to render this scene is: Firstly, use a single SunLight to simulate the outdoor light. In this case, the outdoor sun light is the main light source. Test render the scene and add a VRay light to add additional light and shadow to the scene. The VRay light is used to simulate the light from outside to give small objects some shadow because the Sunlight and Environment lighting will not give shadows to small objects.

Steps to Set Up the VRay Render

Step 1: Go to Create tab -> System -> Sunlight, to create a sunlight system. Then, place the Sunlight outside of the building as the image shows:

Step 2: Set up the Sunlight parameters: Set the shadow type to “VRayShadow”, set “Multiplier” to “3.0″, “Color” to White.

Step 3: Set up the VRay rendering parameters in Renderer tab by pressing F10.
First, under “V-Ray: Image sampler(Antialiasing)”, set “Image Sampler” type to “Fixed”, and turn “Antialiasing Filter” on, type to “Catmull-Rom”.

Tips for selecting “Image Sampler” types:
1. Use “Fixed” when the rendered scene requires a lot of blurring effects such as Depth-of-Field.
2. Use “Adaptive subdivision” when the rendered scene does not require any blurring effects such as Global Illumination, Reflection and Refraction, Area Light/Shadow, Transparency).
Step 4: Under “V-Ray: Indirect Illumination(GI)”, tick the box before “On”. It will enable VRay GI. Set “Primary bounces” -> Multiplier to “1.0″ and “Secondary bounces” -> Multiplier to “0.5″. Set the “Secondary bounces” to “0.5″ will prevent the scene being too bright because we will set up the Environment as well for Skylight. If the render result is too dark, you can always increase the “Secondary bounces”.
Under “V-Ray: Irradiance Map”, “Built-in presets” -> set “Current preset” to “Low”. It will reduce the test rendering time dramaticly. Under “Options”, tick the box after “Show calc. phase”. This option will show you differenct phases while you are rendering, so you can quickly spot problem areas before the render finishs.
Under “Mode”, set “Mode” to “Single frame”.

Step 5: Under “V-Ray: Environment”, turn on “GI Environment (skylight) override”, set the color to blue (R=173, G=208, B=255), set “Multiplier” to “4.0″. This setting will override MAX’s default environment settings. If this option is not turned on, MAX will use the default settings for skylight.

Below shows the differenct phases of the render:
Phase 1:

Phase 2:

Phase 3:

Step 6: As you can see, the render is too dark. And there is some antialiasing problem as well in the edge of the sun light area. We will change some settings to eliminate the problem.
First, go to “V-Ray: Color mapping”, set “Dark multiplier” to “2.0″, it will give the dark area more light.

Second, go to “V-Ray: Image sampler(Antialiasing)”, change “Image sampler” type to “Adaptive subdivision”. And go to “V-Ray: Adaptive subdivision image sampler”, set “Min. rat” to “-1″ and “Max. rat” to “2″.

Third, got to “Create” tab and create a “VRay Light”. This light will be used to simulate light coming from outside and gives small objects some nice shadows. Check out VRay Light settings with the image below.

Fourth, select Sun Light system and go to “VRayShadows params”, tick the box before “Smooth Surface Shadows”.

Fifth, change VRay render settings according to the image below. Note, set the “Secondary bounces” Multiplier to “1.0″ will increase the brightness of the bounced light.

Final Render Result:

[Download Scene File:]
The scene file includes: .MAX file for 3dsmax 9.
Download Scene File [226KB].

Original Ideas From: Osmosis Studio Sydney nsw@osmosis.com.au

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