3Dtotal.com - Lighting La Ruelle - 3ds Max + v-Ray

+ mental ray

This series of five tutorials will focus on the topic

of outdoor lighting and more specifically the task

of setting up different light rigs to reflect a variety

of weather scenarios. Each of the chapters will

use the same base scene as a starting point and

show a step by step guide to finding a lighting

and rendering solution to describe a set time of

day under different conditions ranging from a

damp foggy night to sunset / sunrise.

The tutorials will explain the type of lights used

and how to set up their parameters alongside

the combined rendering settings in order to

achieve an effective result. The manipulation

of textures will also be covered in order to turn

a daylight scene into night for example, as

well as a look at some useful post production

techniques in Photoshop in order to enhance a

final still.

Chapter 1 | This IssueFog/Mist at Night-Time

Chapter 2 | Next IssueSunrise/Sunset

Chapter 3 | March Issue 055Moonlight

Chapter 4 | April Issue 056Midday Sun

Chapter 5 | May Issue 057 Overcast

- Free Scene & TexturesThis download includes the original scene files and textures + the artist final scene setting up

http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_053_jan_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 053 January 2010

Environment Lighting: Outdoor Scene - Chapter 1: Fog/Mist (Damp) at Night-Time

moonlight to cascade down the stairs and spill

through the archway. There are also the many

windows and doors that I can use to add life to

the image.

The archway and stairs are central to this

image; if lit correctly they can add depth and

help to make the viewer want to ‘climb’ into the

image as I described earlier. In contrast with

a daylight scene, the shadows in this scene

should be very soft so I used MR-Area Omni

lights to light the entire scene.

The weather conditions (a foggy evening) also

generate their own light so I had to take care not

to wash the image out. However I used the fog

to my advantage, creating further depth; light

disperses through the fog creating a glowing

effect, enhancing the mysterious look I wanted

to achieve. At this stage, however I needed to

concentrate on simply getting the lighting right.

I will return to how I created the foggy look later

in the tutorial.

Setup draft renderWhen lighting any image, you can’t expect to

achieve the final result first time. In anticipation

of a lot of ‘tweaking’, I did many test renders. As

this could potentially be very time-consuming,

I setup the renderer to a draft setting so

it speeded up the render times to a more

workable rate. Firstly I assigned Mental Ray as

the renderer and used these settings for draft

renders (Fig.02).

Base lightingBy base lighting I mean natural lighting; for this

scene it is the moon and its bounce light. The

moonlight in this image is very important, I used

it to help focus the viewer’s eye into the centre

of the image and help create depth. I didn’t

Chapter 1 - Fog/Mist (Damp) at Night-TimeSoftware Used: 3ds Max + Mental Ray

IntroductionDuring this exterior lighting series I will be

covering the techniques I used to create various

time and weather conditions using 3DS Max and

the Mental Ray renderer. I will be concentrating

on describing my lighting methods rather than

any modelling or texturing that may need to be

done. I have created as much of the image as I

can in Max; leaving Photoshop ‘polish’ to a bare

minimum to achieve the final result.

For this first chapter, I will be covering setting up

a foggy and damp night time atmosphere with

the intention of making the viewer climb into the

image and want to explore the environment.

What’s up those stairs? Is there anyone in the

houses? What’s behind that door? What’s the

story here? I hope you enjoy reading my tutorial

and learn something you can apply to your own

work.

Identifying light sources Here is the raw image (Fig.01).

I’ve highlighted the possible light sources that

can be used. The most obvious of these is the

lantern illuminating the street but I also want the

http://www.3dcreativemag.com


Outdoor Scene - Chapter 1: Fog/Mist (Damp) at Night-Time: Environment Lighting

want the moon itself to be visible as I thought

it would interfere with the composition of the

image, so I kept it hidden behind the buildings.

I placed a MR-Area Omni light just behind the

archway, about halfway up the stairs. I used the

attenuation settings to give me more control

over the falloff of the light so it starts and ends

when I tell it to. You can achieve this control by

editing the attenuation settings and adjusting the

start and end values.

Here are the settings I used for the moon light

(Fig.03).

Here is an image of the placed light (Fig.04).

I also added moon light to the upper right of

the image using a MR_Area Spotlight. I gave

it a white with a light blue tint and a power of

2.0 I positioned it so it was pointing across the

surface of the wall; this also gave me a soft

shadow from the roofing tiles and helped to

pick out the bump map giving more detail to the

image.

Here is the light in the scene (Fig.05).

Here is a render of the moon lighting applied

(Fig.06).

As you can see the moonlight cascades down

the stairs and through the archway, creating

a very soft arched shadow over the cobbled

stones. It’s a little dark and flat around the front

of the buildings, even at night you get some

bounce light illuminating the shadowed areas.

So I placed another MR_Area Omni light at the

front of the scene above the buildings. This will

make the detail at the front of the building pop

out.

Here are the settings for the Night bounce light

(Fig.07).

Here is a render of all the base lighting applied

(Fig.08).

The image Is still dark and uninteresting but

once I apply the environmental lighting it will

create more life in the scene.

Environment lightingEnvironment lighting was my favourite aspect of

this tutorial. For this scene, the most important

part of the lighting comes from the street lamp

as it serves as a focal point and plays a big part

in creating the illusion of a foggy night. Before




order to bring life into the image I needed to

apply lighting to the windows and doors. I

did this in two ways: (i) by using textures to

create a self illuminating material giving the

illusion of light being cast from inside and (ii)

from physically carving out the geometry and

forming ‘fake’ rooms behind the windows and

doors and using a real light to illuminate the

scene. This technique also gives us the option

to add environmental effects such as Volume

lighting; further enhancing the lifelike look I was

trying to achieve. As I used both techniques

in this tutorial, I will outline them both so I can

demonstrate the differences.

Let’s start with the doors on the left hand side.

Firstly, I needed to cut out the door from the

geometry and create a ‘fake’ room behind it.

To do this, I created an open end box which

surrounds the doorway, making sure all holes

are welded and the geometry was solid. This

reduced any lighting anomalies that may occur

later on in the render. I wanted the light to come

from inside the ‘fake’ room and spill out onto the

cobbled stone road. I only wanted this room to

emit a small amount of light as I didn’t want it

to be too overpowering and draw the viewer’s

eye away from the archway. For this reason, I

rotated the door 10 degrees inwards to allow

just enough light to escape the ‘fake’ room.

I placed the light in the lamp itself, I needed to

setup the lamp object so it interacted correctly

with the light once added. I had to alter some of

the settings in the glass geometry of the lamp

so it didn’t cause any unwanted light interaction.

To do this I selected the glass panel object, right

clicked and selected ‘object properties’ from the

quad menu. In the window pop-up I needed to

de-select ‘cast shadows’ and ‘accept shadows’.

After making these changes, when I placed a

light inside the lamp object the glass panels

didn’t cast shadows and block out the light being

cast. The only shadows that should now be cast

are from the lamp object onto the walls and

floor, but these shadows should be so diffused

you will not notice them. I added a MR-Area

Omni light in the scene and moved it to sit inside

the lamp object, roughly where a light bulb

would normally sit.

Here are the settings I used to get the right

result (Fig.09).

Here is an image of the placement of the light

(Fig.10).

The lamplight is quite an expensive light as it

has multiple effects applied to it to obtain the

foggy effect. I will revisit this in more detail later

on in the tutorial. By ‘expensive’ I mean it took

more time to calculate the render. However as

this is the centrepiece of the lighting, I feel it is

worth the extra time for a more realistic finish.

Here is a render of what we have now (Fig.11).

Looking at the latest render you can see that it

still required more work; there was something

missing. The image still looks a little flat and

uninteresting: what was missing was life. In




Here is an image of the new geometry and the

rotated door (Fig.12).

I then place a MR-Area Spotlight in the ‘fake’

room and positioned it so it was pointing out of

the door opening.

Here is an image of the positioned light (Fig.13).

I then edited the attenuation settings to give

me control over when the light starts and ends.

I decided to use a spotlight for this because

I wanted the light to be pointing downwards

towards the street. If I were to use an Omni light

the light would also go upwards.

Here is an image of the settings I used for this

spotlight (Fig.14).

And here is a render of what we now have

(Fig.15).

At this stage, I was starting to add more life to

the image but it was still missing something so

I moved onto the windows. For the windows I

again decided to carve out a ‘fake’ room behind

and use a real light to illuminate this area. Using

the same techniques for the doors on the left I

cut out the windows and created a simple box

room. This second ‘fake’ room also keeps the

light from escaping behind the buildings.

Here is an image of the geometry after I’ve

carved the windows out of the building geometry

(Fig.16).

Note: I have only cut out the tops of the windows

because I wanted to use the self illuminating

material to light up the remaining window. This

will give the effect of something blocking the

window from the inside and help create a more

realistic ‘fake’ room. Also if I cut out the entire

window the light that escapes would over-power

the image and ruin the look.

To create a self illumination map you need to

create a black and white image of the texture,

black being not illuminated and white being

illuminated. The black and white image is placed

in the self illumination slot of the material.

For the real lights I used two MR-Area Omni

lights and placed them inside the ‘fake’ room.

Here are the settings I used (Fig.17).

I used the light from the windows to help define

the building on the left and make sure it stands

out from the background building.




activate so I clicked ‘Fog’ and pressed ‘OK’. This enables ‘Fog’ to be

added to the Atmosphere section on the Environment Settings tab. From

this tab, I then selected ‘Fog’ to enable the options to become visible.

Here are the settings I used for the Fog (Fig.20).

The fog provides a layered effect and silhouettes the buildings, helping to

maintain the structures even in this dull weather condition.

Here is a render with the fog applied (Fig.21).

Here is a render of the image so far (Fig.18).

Here you can see the light creating an outline

of the building on the left making it stand out

from the background building. Also the variation

of colour difference from the self illuminated

windows and the real windows gives the

impression of an actual room with genuine

atmosphere inside.

Once the windows were lit in the foreground,

the building above the archway began to lack

detail and ‘got lost’ in comparison with the other

buildings in the scene. There is a window to the

right of the door. I used the same methods as

before and cut out the window and hollowed out

a ‘fake’ room behind, duplicating the same MR-

Area Omni light that was used in the other ‘fake’

rooms. I placed the light behind the window and

kept the settings the same.

And here is a render of what we now have

(Fig.19).

With the bulk of the lighting complete, it is now

time to move on to the weather!

WeatherFog is fairly simple to create and is quite quick

to render, nothing needs to be setup in the

scene in order to make this work. It’s as simple

as enabling it in the environment window.

Firstly I hit the number key ‘8’ to bring up the

Environment Settings tab. I then scrolled down

to the Atmosphere settings and clicked ‘Add’.

This brings up another window with multiple

choices of the type of effects you want to




Street Lamp Lens Effects.The street lamp is the main focus so this

needed to have more than just volume light

applied to it. I used some Lens effects to give

the impression of a light bulb glaring in the fog,

casting shadows in the atmosphere. The final

tweak was to make the light in the street lamp

give off real characteristics of a light bulb. To

get this effect I added Lens Effects to the MR-

Omni light. This is done under the Atmosphere

& effects tab of the light settings and adding a

Lens effect from the add menu, the same way

you would add volume lighting. Now that the

Lens Effect has been activated on the light we

can edit the settings in the Environment and

effects window. Here you are presented with

multiple options for effects, but for this scene I

will only add ‘Glow’ and ‘Ray’

Here are the settings I used for the Glow and

Ray effect (Fig.22).

TweakingWhat I felt was lacking from the image at this

point, was a bit of bounce light to illuminate

the doors and windows. This will add more

detail to the image and make the image a lot

more interesting. I could add bounce light in

the Mental Ray renderer but I wanted a bit

more control and to be a bit more artistic with

the bounce light rather than leaving it to be

mathematically correct. I started with the doors

on the left. I added a low intensity MR-Omni

Area light with a small attenuation to only affect

the nearby geometry. I removed shadows cast

so I didn’t get any unwanted lighting issues.

Here is an image of the settings used for the

bounce light (Fig.23).

With the tweaking completed, it was time for a

medium settings render so I could see if there

were any errors that needed fixing before taking

the plunge and setting up a final settings render.

Medium RenderI set the renderer to medium image precision

and medium Final Gather settings. At this point,

I still hadn’t enabled bounce light as it would

have dramatically increased the render times.

With the new settings I was able to see any

problems that may occur.

Here are the settings for the render (Fig.24).

I was quite happy with the medium render and

I couldn’t see any major issues. Some colour

correction needed to be done in Photoshop but

this is normal with any image; it adds that extra

bit of polish to the image.

I was now ready to go ahead and set up a high

quality render.

Final render setupThe render times for the final render will be quite

long, so be prepared to not be able to use your

computer for a day depending on how good

your PC is.

Here are the settings I used to get the final

render (Fig.25).




Here are the settings I used for Depth of Field (Fig.28).

Here is the finished product (Fig.29).

I’m quite happy with the end result and I think I achieved what I set out to

do. Hopefully it tells a story and makes you want to see what’s behind that

door or what’s on the other side of the archway. Most importantly I hope

you were able to follow this tutorial and learn something from it. I actually

learned a lot making it and enjoyed myself too. Thanks for reading and

happy lighting!

Tutorial by:

Andrew FinchFor more from this artist please contact them: [email protected]

The size of the image is quite large because

the image might be used for printing purposes

and the larger the image the better. You should

always aim to render your image for printing

purposes just in case your image gets accepted

into a magazine gallery or art book. You don’t

want to have to re-render your image at a later

stage and re-do any post work that you apply.

So with everything setup it’s time to hit that

render button for one last time.

Here is the final Image rendered straight out of

Mental Ray (Fig.26).

PhotoshopIn Photoshop I used 3 adjustment layers to

create the final image, namely ‘Levels’, ‘Colour

Balance’ and ‘Photo Filter’

Here are the settings I used for the 3 adjustment

layers (Fig.27).

I also used Lens blur to provide Depth of Field.

Using a Zdepth render element, I placed this

image in the Alpha channel of the PSD. I then

selected ‘Lens Blur’ from the effects menu in

Photoshop which adds a little photographic

realism to your image. You will notice the

highlights on the steps in the background

become over exposed and really twinkle with

these specular highlights adding to the ‘Damp’

feel we wish to achieve.


mailto:[email protected]


http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_053_jan_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip


+ v-ray


















final still.

Chapter 1 | This IssueFog/Mist at Night-Time

Chapter 2 | Next IssueSunrise/Sunset




http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_053_jan_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip



Chapter 1 - Fog/Mist (Damp) at Night-TimeSoftware Used: 3ds Max + V-Ray

Before placing a single light in 3d software, it’s

good to spend a while, looking at the scene,

and thinking, imagining a bit. The assignment is

pretty clear – fog/mist (damp), at night - that’s

the ‘prime directive’. But that is not all that

matters. Composition of the image is important,

regardless of the lighting scenario we have

to achieve – and that too can influence light

placement, strength and color. Visual style and

art direction is important also – is it supposed

to look real, photo real, stylized? Finding some

reference can suggest a few ideas about how

to achieve our task. It’s also good to think about

the technical aspects – is it going to be a still

image, or is it for animation, should it render

really fast, or maybe we have some computing

power at our disposal? But nowadays, when

the computers are fast, it’s not always that

important.

So how does all that theory work in a real life

case? Let’s take a look at the viewport capture

(Fig.01) of our scene. First important things

I noticed, were the lamp (marked red), and

cobbled street surface (marked red, as well).

The street would be a great tool to suggest the

dampness, while the lamp would make a nice

main light source, especially if it could cast a

highlight on the road surface. That lamp would

not be enough, so I’ve decided to suggest more

lamps along the street, just behind the archway

(that should give us a nice depth in the image),

marked blue. Also, I decided to light up some

windows. But which ones should I choose? The

square one facing the camera (green), or one

of the two on the right side (orange)? I don’t

want any lit windows on the walls facing the

camera (marked violet) – that would break the

composition that’s starting to form in my head,

by leading the eye towards the edges of the

image.

That still does not cover all the light that should

be in the scene. We need some ambient

lighting, to suggest we are outdoors. I don’t

mean ambient settings in the 3d software, but

rather the light coming from the environment:

sky, moon, distant city lights, that kind of thing.

In our case, it should come from above, and

slightly from the front. The way I see it, artificial

lights should be warm, the ambient neutral,

or slightly cold/blue. The final tuning of that

balance will be handled in post-production. And

we need the fog – this is crucial, without fog all

the above would give us a clear night after the

rain.

To render the scene, I’m using 3dsmax with

Vray. Recent releases of Vray contain a very

nice tool – VrayEnvironmentFog. Its main

advantage over standard max fog is that it

reacts to the light sources, just like real life fog.




That means we won’t have to fake it by using

volume lights and old-style fog – we will work

with lights, and let Vray handle the heavy lifting

of providing the atmosphere. Note of caution

here. While VrayEnvironmentFog can produce

very nice images, it also can take a long time to

render, especially when there are a lot of light

sources, not mentioning the GI. For now in the

initial steps it can stay off, we will add it later on.

First thing I usually do, is set the Color Mapping

to Exponential (Fig.02). While this isn’t probably

the most physically correct way, it has some

advantages. The way it works, is by preventing

over bright ‘hotspots’, and oversaturated color

transitions. It’s also very tolerant – it’s really

hard to whiteout the image, and the lights have

a very wide range of usable multiplier/strength

settings (but that range often ends up being

pretty high, like 512 or so, especially with the

fog on). It has downsides, too, making the

colors look desaturated, and decreasing the

contrast of the image. I actually like it that way,

because I can easily bring back the contrast

and saturation in post production, and for some

scenes it just fits – but if you don’t like it, there’s

HSV exponential mode, which better retains the

color. Generally though, I mainly use the default

setting with Linear Multiply for rendering some

additional passes such as masks.

Next thing was to set up the road

surface (Fig.03). A simple Vray material,

VrayDisplacement modifier, and we are good

to go.

First light I’ve placed was the spherical Vray

Light in place of the main lamp (Fig.04). I

started with a very, very saturated orange. I

actually did it with the all other lights as well – I

have a tendency to use strong, colored lights

that sometimes get the better of me. That

usually gets fixed in later stages. That first light

was duplicated along the stairway, lighting up

the way into the image. It took some tweaking of

their placement and strength - finally I decided

to place them on the left wall, and add one on

the right (Fig.05).

Now it’s time for the windows. I started by

placing a Plane (default type) Vray Light in place

of the closer window on the right wall (Fig.06)

– kind of by accident really, as it was supposed

to be the other window. But that placement

gave me a nice illumination of the left building,

picking up the bump detail there, so I decided

to keep it. I did try the other window, but didn’t




like it as it lit the arch wall way too much. The

same way I lit up the little square window above

the arch (Fig.07). A little trick here. As you

may have noticed, I use double-sided lights.

It’s just for preview purposes, as it illuminates

the window behind it, giving me a clue that the

window is bright – without me having to do it ‘the

proper way’. It looks wrong, but good enough to

experiment with placing window lights, and will

be fixed shortly.

Somewhere at this stage, I’ve turned the fog on.

It took me a while to find the right settings – it’s

good to know general scene dimensions, but

it’s a case of trial and error (Fig.08). It’s worth

noticing, that the fog absorbs quite a lot of light,

making the image darker than before – and requiring some adjustment to

the lights – main light intensity was bumped up to 700.

Another solution is to adjust the exposure. To do that in Vray, we need

to use VRayPhysicalCamera, which allows us to work in a photographic

manner – setting f-number, ISO, and shutter speed, among others. I

aligned it to the original camera using the Align tool - but it still needed

some offset to match. After some attempts, I settled on the settings

pictured in (Fig.09). VRayPhysicalCamera also provides the settings for

vignetting, very handy even if it will be finely tuned during post production.

While playing with exposure, we may continue with a more photographic

approach, and change the white balance. When doing night photography,

playing with WB can give nice, rich colors in seemingly plain light (Fig.10).

I took these photos using Shaded / Cloudy settings, and tried to achieve

some of that look in the scene, even if it was a starting to look bit too

warm.

To illuminate the fog a bit, we need more light – we need the

aforementioned ambient light. But we are not going to use the Ambient

setting, nor will we use a Skylight solution. Sky will be handled by a big

Vray Light above the whole scene, colored teal (Fig.11), and one smaller

Vray Light, angled slightly towards the camera, placed just above the




Sure, but looks good, and I couldn’t achieve it

with the main lamp placed where it’s placed in

the scene. If it was a real life movie set, it would

probably be handled in a similar way by placing

a light source just so.

roof. Moonlight will be done using a standard

Max Directional light, placed above the camera.

Because I don’t want the front facing walls to

be lit too much, I built a simple shadow-caster

object, simulating the other side of the street

(Fig.12). For placing such lights, where shadow

is even more important than the light, it’s good

to use viewport shadows display. I use it for

almost all lights in the scene, but it really works

well with one or two as with any more they tend

to cancel each other out.

I didn’t want any direct light on the front facing

walls, but I wanted to suggest some world off

screen. I used three Omni lights, projecting

a quickly stitched image of tree branches, to

simulate some streetlights hidden behind the

trees (Fig.13).

At this stage with the main light sources in

place, I took the low quality rendering into

Photoshop, and started tweaking a bit. I quickly

confirmed that most of the colors were way too

saturated, producing an image that was way

too warm. Quick try with Adjustment Layers

provided the direction I should try (Fig.14). I

also noticed that the side walls could use some

specularity to accentuate the damp feeling and

that there was no nice main specular on the

street...

I proceeded to fix those things. Light colors got

desaturated and even turned slightly blue. The

light coming from the sky was now almost gray.

The lack of specular on the street was fixed

by duplicating the main light, turning off Affect

Diffuse option, and using the Place Highlight tool

to position it in the right spot (Fig.15). Fake?

The whole composition was starting to look

unbalanced, gravitating towards the right side.

I therefore added a light in the doorway down

on the street level to the left in order to balance

it a bit. There’s also an angled box, invisible to




the camera, shaping the hotspot to resemble an

open door – yet another trick here (Fig.16).

The walls were turned into a Shellac Material,

with a VrayMtl in the shellac slot (Fig.17). After

some tweaking, I achieved a nice looking, damp

wall, catching the highlight from that little square

window.

The image was starting to look quite good

now but a few tweaks were still required. The

metal railings needed a reflective VrayMtl, the

little metal roof high above the street needed

to look wet, too. But the main problem was my

‘preview’ windows. I solved that by turning the

lights to be single sided, and duplicating them.

The duplicate is way weaker, as it serves only to

illuminate the wall recession around the window.

Now what’s behind the window is another fake –

it’s simply a self-illumination map, using a photo

of a window from the outside, at night (Fig.18).

It’ll do for a still image, but it won’t hold up for

camera movement – we would need at least

some simple interior then. Fortunately we are

working with a still this time.

A few more slight tweaks remained – I

constantly find something to tweak, even if

those things are too small to write about, they

are always there. Change the hue here, by a

tiny bit, tweak the material there, that kind of

stuff. When that’s done, we can try to finally

render the image at higher resolution. This

scene is quite time-consuming to render, due

to the fog – overnight is a good idea. For test

renders, I use low resolution, fixed image

sampling, and lowered subdivs in the fog. Again,

note of caution – Fixed sampling produces a lot

of bright noise in specular areas appearing as

though there should be nice, crisp detail when

you do a full render. Much of this disappears

and gets filtered down and smoothed, providing

a much softer looking result in the end. This is

something to bear in mind and so be prepared

to do more than one higher quality render. The

image took 22 hours to render, but I used a

3-year old machine.

Most of the post-production I had already

sorted out, throwing my test renders into

that first PSD test-image. I used a few radial

gradients to enhance the atmosphere, some

color corrections to bring back the cold, blue


hues, upping the gamma a bit, overlaying some

photographic smoke images, some subtle

chromatic aberration - simple things, really,

but as always, crucial to a good looking image.

(Fig.19) shows most of the things I added. The

final image is on (Fig.20).

I’d like to point out that this image does not use

GI. Sure, it wouldn’t do any harm but it works

quite well even without it, mainly due to the fog

which adds some bright fill to the scene. Apart

from this it’s nighttime whereupon the bounced

light is way weaker than during the daytime (no

sun, no bright sky).

Tutorial by:

Andrzej SykutFor more from this artist visit:

http://azazel.carbonmade.com/

Or contact them:

[email protected]




http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_053_jan_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip

+ mental ray


















final still.

Chapter 1 | January Issue 053Fog/Mist at Night-Time

Chapter 2 | This IssueSunrise/Sunset

Chapter 3 | Next IssueMoonlight



- Free Scene & TexturesThis download includes the artist final scene set up + textures

http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_054_feb_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_02_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 054 February 2010

Environment Lighting: Outdoor Scene - Chapter 2: Sunrise / Sunset

I want to create something interesting and

imaginative for this scene, when searching the

internet you will get a lot of the more traditional

golden mediteranian sunsets. So we need to

refine our search a bit to get something more

interesting. Sunsets can be quite colourfull

depending on many factors such as; time of

year, location and weather. In my mind I’m

thinking of deep reds, purples and blues maybe

something like Russia. So I’ll do another search

for sunsets in Russia or colder locations. This

gives me a lot of useful reference to use to show

me the colours I need to get into my scene.

Identifying light sources

For a sunset environment we will need to rely on

the natural lighting to illuminate the scene. This

will mean we will need to be imaginative with the

main source of light in order to create something

interesting. There are two places I would expect

the sun to be in this image, the first is behind the

building allowing the sun light to cascade down

the stairs. This will give us a nice shadow of the

archway but the downside of this sun position

is that the rest of the image will be in shadow

and I fear will create an uninteresting image and

allow all the detail in the buildings to be lost.

Also this will restrict us and in the end restrict

our creativity. The second position for the sun

is from behind the camera pointing at the front

of building. This will give us a lot of light to play

with and keep all our detail in the buildings.

Here is the raw image in the Max view port

(Fig.01).

Chapter 2 - Sunrise / SunsetSoftware Used: 3ds Max + Mental Ray








can in Max; leaving the Photoshop ‘polish’ to a

bear minimum to achieve the final result.

Before I start lighting any scene I collect

reference for the type on lighting setup I want to

create. So I’ll do an internet search for sunsets,

this will bring up a lot of images so there’s plenty

of reference to get a good end result.



Outdoor Scene - Chapter 2: Sunrise / Sunset: Environment Lighting

The archway and stairs are central to this

image; the shadows in this scene should be

very soft so I used MR-Area lights to light the

entire scene. These lights give us the ability to

create soft diffused shadows helping to create

the illusion of the soft light being cast by the sun.

The weather conditionsThe weather changes the lighting in the

environment so we need to think about what

kind of weather we want. I think an almost clear

sky with thin whispy clouds high in the sky and

near the sun. As the sun is behind us we will

get a nice glimps of blue at the top of the image

from the small amount of sky that is visible. This

will add a lot to the final image. I will add some

slight environment fogging to give us some

atmosphere and add depth to the image making

the end scene more believable and realistic.



of a lot of ‘tweaking’, I did many test renders. As

this could potentially be very time-consuming,

I setup the renderer to a draft setting so it

speeded up the render times to a more workable

rate. I set the render size to 360*480 and in the

inderiect illumination tab I set the Final Gather

to draft and the bounce light to 0. This will allow

me to render out as quickly as possible.

Sun lightFor the sun light I will use a MR-Area Spot light

and point it down the alley way I set the sunlight

multiplier to 3 and enabled area shadows this

would give us a soft shadow. And gave it a warm

red/orange colour.

Here is an image of the position of the light in

the scene (Fig.02).

Here is a render of what we have so far with just

the sun light applied. (Fig.03).

I like the colour of the sunlight being cast but I

feel it is to over powering and the whole scene

is washed out and un interesting. A good way

of adding interest to a scene is to add shadows

this serves two purposes. One being it will break

up the mass of light being cast over the scene

adding some interest. Second it will create the

illusion of a environment behind the camera

further adding realism to the image. This is a

very simple process and gives us a lot of reward

so is well worth doing.

I started by creating two simple boxes and

positioning them just behind the camera so

they’re not rendered, but must be in front of the

main sun light in order to cast shadows in to

the alley way. I will then do a quick test render

to see what the shadows look like and if there

position is suitable. With some tweaking in the

position of the boxes I was able to get them

in a good enough location to cast some nice

shadow effects across the front of the building.




As you can see this immediately adds a whole other life to the scene and

improves the image so much. Everything is looking good so I moved onto

the tweaking stage.

Adding specular highlightsTo add more of a punch to the lighting I need to add some bounce light

and specular highlights to simulate the sun reflecting back at the camera.

I like the position of the sun light and the way the shadows get cast. So

I don’t want to alter this to get good bounce light, so I will add some MR-

Area Omni lights with a small radius to add that little bit of extra punch to

the surface.

Firstly I will add a small Omni light to the curb with the same colour as the

sun light I will alter the Omni lights attenuation settings in order to get a

gradual falloff to the light this will help make it look natural. The settings I

used for this are: ‘Near Attenuation’ – End 0.07 and ‘Far Attenuation’ Start

0.07 End 0.4

Here is the position of the light (Fig.07).

The boxes are very simple at the moment and it shows in the render so in

order to get something a little more interesting I will add some extra faces

to the boxes and create a simple siloette of a typical building shape.

Here is a perspective view of the whole scene with my fake simple

buildings positioned correctly. (Fig.04)

Here is a render of the newly placed shadows. (Fig.05).

Now that the background shadows are in place a new problem occurs

to me. The shadows are to dark and black. If this was in the real world

the shadows would be lighter and the blueness of the sky would add

a blue tint to the shadows. So to solve this problem I simply added a

Mr-Area Omni light in the middle of the scene and about half as high as

the buildings. I gave the light an intensity of 0.7 and a bluish colour. This

light would effect the whole of the environment not just the shadows. This

shouldn’t be a problem as it will give us a sort of global ambience effect.

Time for another test render.

Here is a test render of the scene so far (Fig.06).




options allow you to include or exlude objects

from the lighting cast by this Omni Light. So I

will check the “Include” option and select the

‘Back Window’ object. This will include only the

window object and exclude everything else from

this light. The window will now receive a strong

specular reflection from the light giving us the

illusion of the sun light reflecting off the glass

and into the camera.

I like the way the sun hits the blue shutter

windows on the top left of the image but again

it’s not strong enough for me so I will use the

same technique and place a MR-Area Omni

light with a larger attenuation setting this time

and placed it just in front of the doors. The

settings I used for this are: ‘Near Attenuation’ –

End 0.25 and ‘Far Attenuation’ Start 0.36 End

0.6

The wall above the archway is strongly lit. This

will cause the area to be almost self lit by the

light bouncing off the walls. But at the moment

I feel the shadows are quite dark here and the

building on the right hand side needs to be a

bit brighter where it joins the back wall. So I will

place a MR-Area Omni light with a larger radius

than previously used and place it just in front

and above of the white concrete patch. The

intensity will be a bit lower because the wall is

already getting the full force of the sunlight and I

don’t want to over power this area to much.

Here is an image of the position and settings

used for this light (Fig.08).

The street lantern is fading into the background

a little so in order to make this stand out a bit

more I will add some specular highlights to the

metal. So I placed MR-Area Omni light with a

very small radius in front and just above the

lantern this will add a specular highlight to the

metal lantern and hopefully help make it stand

out more.

Here is an image of the positon of the light

(Fig.09).

Lastly I would like to add more specular

highlight to the window on the back wall. If I use

the same technique as previously used I will

add to much light to this area. As I mentioned

earlier this area was already at risk of being to

exposed. So I used a little trick to effect the

window only. Going into editable poly mode

and selecting the window poly’s only I detached

them from the main building object and named

the new object ‘Back Window’ I then placed

a MR-Area Omni light in front of the window. I

edited the Attenuation settings to get a falloff

of the light being cast I wanted it to fade as it

hit the side walls. With the light still selected I

clicked the exclude button in the lights General

settings tab. A new window will appear with a list

of all the objects in your scene, and an option

at the top saying “Include” or “Exclude” These




added a ‘Colour Balance Adjustment layer’ and

brought out the reds and blues a little more as

these were the most important colours in this

Render, it’s easy to over do it at this stage and

get carried away but be careful not to stray

away from the Colour setup we had in mind

at the beginning of this project. I then added a

little ‘Depth of Field’ to give us photorealism.

I achieved this by putting the Z-depth render

Now that we have everything we need we

can import them into Photoshop and start the

polishing stage.

Photoshop compositeI used a ‘Levels adjustment layer’ to bring

out the darks and highlights a little more this

adds a lot of quality to your image and is an

important stage of the polishing process. I then

After adding those little tweaks it’s time for a

medium sized render to give us a clearer picture

of what the final render will look like and show

us any problems that may need resolving before

we start a final render.


and medium Final Gather settings. I still haven’t

enabled bounce light yet as it would increase

the render times. I increased the size of the

render to 800*600 With these setting I was able

to see any problems that may occur.

Here is the medium render (Fig.10).

I was quite happy with the medium sized

render and I couldn’t see any major issues.

Some colour correction needed to be done in

Photoshop but this is normal with any image; it

adds that extra bit of polish to the art work.

I was now ready to go ahead and set up a high

quality render.

Final render setupHere are the settings used for the large final

render (Fig.11).

I shall use Alpha and ZDepth render elements

and composite them in Photoshop to help me

get the best image possible.

So with everything setup it’s time to hit that

render button for one last time!

Here is an final out come from the Mental Ray

renderer. (Fig.12).


element into the Alpha channel of the image

and in the effects menu added a Lens Blur and

set it to use the Alpha channel. After adjusting

the settings I was able to get a realistic effect

again be careful not to over do it. The good thing

about Lens Blur is you can add specular blur to

your highlights in the image further enhancing

the photorealism we want to achieve.

Here it is, the finished product. (Fig.13).

ConclusionI set out to create a sun set scene and I think

I achieved that. I wanted to create something

a little more exciting than the more traditional

sunset scene. I liked the colours that come with

this particular scenario and think it helped bring

the image to life. I’m pleased with the end result

and hope you found this tutorial useful.

Tutorial by:

Andrew FinchFor more from this artist please contact them:

[email protected]



http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_054_feb_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_02_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip


+ v-ray


















final still.


Chapter 2 | This IssueSunrise/Sunset

Chapter 3 | Next IssueMoonlight



http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_054_feb_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_02_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip



Chapter 2 - Sunrise / SunsetSoftware Used: 3ds Max + V-Ray

Before placing a single light in a 3d software,

it’s good to spend a while, looking at the scene,

and thinking, imagining a bit. The assignment

is pretty clear - sunset/sunrise - that’s the

‘prime directive’. But that is not all that matters.

Composition of the image is important,



placement, strength and color. Visual style, art

direction is important as well – is it supposed

to look real, photo real, stylized? Finding

some reference can suggest few ideas, how

to achieve our task. It’s also good to think

about technical aspects – is it going to be a still

image, or is it for animation, should it render

really fast, or maybe we have some computing

power at our disposal? But nowadays, when

the computers are fast, it’s not always that

important.

So how does all that theory work in real life

case? Well, there are two most obvious (and

easy to recognize) ways of showing a sunset.

In the first one, the sun is behind the camera.

The shadows of the buildings, especially off-

screen ones, can become a very important

element of the scene. Because there are parts

of the image in warm sunlight, and some in the

cooler shadows, there can be quite a lot of color

variation (Fig.01), and the contrast isn’t very

high. Second approach, we are looking at the

sun – there’s a lot of bright light, things are shiny

(because of the glancing angle of the sun rays),

there are nice, long shadows, and the overall

contrast can be quite high, but there can be little

in a way of color variation (Fig.02). Both ways

differ in mood quite a bit - of course, you can

choose somewhere in between – it depends on

the scene, and on the story you want to tell.

There are similarities, too. In both cases, sun

is our main (key) light source. Sky acts as a

fill – but the ratio between the two is different.

This looks like a great candidate to use Vray

Sun&Sky system as a base of our light setup, at

least at first glance. While it should work for the

first scenario, it may not be flexible enough for

the second one – in that particular scene. The

arch at the end of the street blocks the horizon,

(Fig.03, marked red) and whole scene would be

in shadow... unless we try something else.




Let’s start with the first approach.


Vray, with GI turned on. I most often use

Irradiance Map for first bounce and Brute Force

for the secondary bounces – that is the default

setting, which works for me in most cases

(Fig.04 – preview setting). Detailed settings, like

number of bounces, or Irradiance Map size of

course vary over time – low quality for previews,

higher for final rendering. For still images, as

in this case, I try to use fastest (lowest) setting

possible, while still getting acceptable result.

For animation, the Medium Animation setting is

usually safe, flicker free option. I also use a hint

of global Ambient Occlusion to add some detail

to shadowed parts of the image.

Next thing I did was setting the Color Mapping

to Exponential (Fig.05). While this isn’t probably

the most physically correct way, it has some

advantages. The way it works, it prevents

overbright ‘hotspots’, and oversaturated color

transitions. It’s also very tolerant – it’s really hard

to whiteout the image, and the lights have a very

wide range of usable multiplier/strength setting

(but that range often ends up being pretty high,

like 512 or so, especially with the fog on). It

has downsides, too, making the colors look

desaturated, and decreasing the contrast of the

image. I actually like it that way, because I can

easily bring back the contrast and saturation in

post production, and for some scenes it just fits

– but if you don’t like it, there’s HSV exponential

mode, which keeps the colors better. Generally,

though, main use I have for default, Linear

Multiply, is rendering some additional passes,

like masks.

Then, I’ve set up the road surface (Fig.06).

A simple Vray material, VrayDisplacement

modifier, and we are good to go. I also added

some reflections to the windows (using blend

material, VrayMtl for the windows, and a b&w

mask). Metal parts, like railings and lamp also

use shiny, reflective VrayMtl.




Now it’s time to create the sun. Let’s choose VraySun. The pop-up will

appear, asking about adding VraySky in the Environment slot – I hit

OK, since I’ll need it. Next I switched VraySky to manual sun node, and

pointed the newly created VraySun as the sun node (Fig.07). To have a bit

more control, I used two variants of the sky – one for lighting, using Vray’s

environment override, and one to be visible. The difference is in the sun

intensity multiplier.

To position the sun, it’s good to display shadows in the viewport

(Fig.08). That way I can see the shadows in real-time, and finding a

nice composition is really fast... but wait, there’s nothing that could cast

shadows on our street. It’s easy to fix – just draw few skyline-shaped,

angular splines, and extrude them a bit, then place roughly where the

other side of the street would be, and tweak from there (Fig.09). Here I

chose the to have a nice, lit path into the image, and dark shapes on both

sides.

Before rendering anything, I created VRayPhysicalCamera, so I could

control the brightness of the scene in more intuitive way (as I have a

bit of photographic experience). The settings pictured on (Fig.10) took

some trial and error to get them right – generally, if the scene is more-

or less build in real world scale, the settings that would work if we were

to take a photo of that scene in real life, are a good starting point. The

Vignetting option is quite useful here, darkening the corners of the image,

and focusing the viewers’ attention at the central part of the image. I also

adjusted the sun brightness, and size, to get nice, soft shadows.




Let’s see what we’ve got (Fig.11). Not that bad, but could be better – I’d

like some more blue in the shadows, and some more light in the central

part of the image. I added a big blueish Vray Light above and to the front

of the scene (Fig.12). This gives more color variation, and, as it is, looks

more like a sunrise, - but it’s easy to go back into sunset territory, with few

tweaks in post-production. Another, smaller light further along the street

(Fig.13) lights up the arch wall, which was bit too dark for my taste. I’ve

also added a small light behind the arch, so there’s no big flat dark spot in

the center of the image (Fig.14).




Now, let’s take the image into Photoshop,

and see what we can do with it. Using Curves

Adjustment Layer, I brought down most of the

blue/violet from the shadows, giving the whole

image a warmer tone (Fig.15), played with

vignetting, and some glows, and here’s the final

result: (Fig.16). All in all, this wasn’t too hard,

was it?




The second scenario is bit more tricky. Let’s

start with the scene I’ve just finished, and

remove all lights except the sun. If I set the

sun where I want it, and render, the colors are

all wrong – cold, blue, instead of war browns

and oranges. Simply the sun is too high to

have proper warm color (Fig.17). If I swap the

VraySun for the standard Directional Light, I

can have full control of its color. I replaced the

VraySky (the one doing the lighting, in Vray

override tab) with a HDR photo of a sunset

(To be honest, the scene would probably work

even without it, as its effect is subtle, and most

of the lighting will be done by hand. Still, it’s

some starting point.), bumped up the Primary

Bounces multiplier, played with AO settings, and

Vray camera settings (Fig.18) - and the colors

start to look right, but the scene is way too dark

(Fig.19). The walls of the street are in shade...

as they probably should, but I’d like them to

catch some light, so I put a squashed, spherical

Vray Light under the arch (Fig.20). The right

wall has a slightly reflective material (added as

a Shellac to the base shader), so there is a nice

detailed pattern there.

Another light was placed above the roof, to

throw some back-light on the wall on the right

(Fig.21).




Yet another, quite big one, placed above the

street, simulates the light coming from the

sky (Fig.22) - but it’s not enough, so there’s

another, even bigger one above the camera,

facing the scene, providing some fill light on the

forward-facing parts (Fig.23). Using big area

lights has some advantages – you can add light

coming from certain direction, but without sharp

shadows, which would clutter the image, and

without a very characteristic in CG, point/spot

light distribution, which is not always desired.

Besides, it works like a big softbox/bounce in

real world, either in photography studio, or on

a movie set. The downside is rendertime, and

sometimes noise, if the sampling of the shadows

is not good enough.

Before final rendering, I tweaked the backlight

above the roof a bit – less saturation, bit more

intensity, and rotated it a bit – no big deal,

really. There’s another problem here – a light

bleeding in the corner. To fix that, I could

use higher quality Irradiance Maps, or try to

use Detail Enhancement - at the expense of

rendertime – but as the image will be rendered

in high resolution, the settings I have now,

should be enough (at high resolutions, even

the low Irradiance Map settings provide enough

information to get a clean rendering). Actually,

I’ve lowered them even more, but that required

some slight fixing to be done.

What the scene lacks is some atmosphere – I

left that for the very end, for the postproduction

stage. I rendered a Zdepth pass, and added

slight fog in Photoshop (Fig.24), along with

some other simple tweaks. - and the final image

looks like (Fig.25).

Seeing those two approaches, we can draw

some conclusions. The automatic Sun/Sky

system is a great starting point, and in some

cases, it’s probably good enough by itself. But

as good as it is, it is not always flexible enough,

and some scenes will greatly benefit from few

well placed additional lights – and some will

have to be lit mostly by hand – which is not that


hard, once you have a clear direction of what

you want to achieve. And that’s where some

research can be very helpful.

Tutorial by:



Or contact them:

[email protected]




http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_054_feb_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_02_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip

+ mental ray


















final still.


Chapter 2 | February Issue 054Sunrise/Sunset

Chapter 3 | This IssueMoonlight

Chapter 4 | Next IssueMidday Sun



http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_055_mar_2010/tutorial01/tutorial_01_03_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 055 March 2010

Environment Lighting Outdoor Scene - Chapter 3: Moonlight

tutorial in this series you can see I used interior

lighting to help pick out detail within the image

and help tell a story, which is the most important

step of creating any art work. If an image

doesn’t tell you a story or give you something

then what is the point of it? So I will again use

the moon light to illuminate the scene but to add

character I will use the internal lighting.

Identifying Light Sources I want the moon light to come from behind the

buildings and hit the right wall of the alley, this

would give me a nice shadow from the roof

tiles to add some interest. I would like to add

some ‘fake’ environment off camera to give

me more points of interest similar to what was

covered in the previous tutorial. Instead this

time I wanted something more organic so I

went for tree shadows across the face of the

buildings on the left and right. Because the

moon light was coming from the rear a natural

shadow of the trees would not be possible, to

get round this you can use street lights that are

again off camera but cast enough light so the

tree shadows can be cast into the scene. For

the interior lights I will use the same process as

the previous tutorial ‘Foggy and damp’ where

I carved out ‘fake’ rooms and placed a light to

simulate an interior light source.

Here is the Image before any lighting has been

applied. (Fig.01)



of a lot of ‘tweaking’, I setup the renderer to a

Chapter 3 - MoonlightSoftware Used: 3ds Max + Mental Ray










When I think of moon lit I automatically think of

a full moon with no cloud cover. As with most

urban night scenes you can’t just rely on the

moon light to light your image. Using the first



Outdoor Scene - Chapter 3: Moonlight Environment Lighting

draft setting so it sped up the render times to a more workable rate. I set

the render size to 360*480 and in the indirect illumination tab I set the

Final Gather to draft and the bounce light to 0. This will allow me to render

out as quickly as possible.

Moon LightI used a MR-Area Spot light for the moon light and pointed it at the right

wall of the alley way. I set the multiplier to 3 and enabled Ray traced

shadows this would give us the harder edged shadow that you would

typically get from a strong moon lit night. I gave the light a light blue

colour.

Here is an image of the position of the light in the scene (Fig.02)

Here is a render of what we have so far with just the moon light applied.

(Fig.03)

Ok it’s not very interesting at the moment but it doesn’t need to be, we just

need to concentrate on getting the moon light to look good then we can fill

the scene out and create a nice composition.

For the tree shadows I used a projection spot light, this allows you to add

a texture to the light, this texture will then cast light. So I used a black

and white image of a tree silhouette (Just do a internet search for tree

silhouette and you should be able to find a good black and white tree

texture). The white areas of the image will be lit and the black area will




With such a strong moon llight you would get

some bounce light lightening up the shadowed

areas so I placed a MR Area Omni light higher

up in the scene and towards the front of the

alley way. I gave this light a very low power of

be in shadow. You then place that image in the

projection map slot located in the ‘Advanced

Effects’ tab of the light settings. I pointed this

light at the wall on the right hand side and gave

it a yellow/orangey tint this gave the illusion of

a street light casting the light. I then duplicated

the light and pointed it at the wall on the left

hand side.

Here is a perspective view of the whole scene

with my fake tree lights. (Fig.04)

Here is a render of the newly placed tree

shadows. (Fig.05)

I’m happy with the tree lights and the moon light

but the shadowed areas are a little too dark.

0.1 and a grey/blue tint giving us the effect of

the night sky brightening up the dark areas.

Here is a render of the image with just the

natural lighting applied.. (Fig.06)

I’m now happy with the environment lighting so I

moved onto the interior lighting to add life to the

image.

Adding the Interior LightingFor the interior lighting I used the same methods

as described in the first chapter of this series

of exterior lighting. I carved out ‘fake’ rooms

and hollowed out the window panes so the

lights inside can escape the rooms and help to

illuminate the street.

I decided I would light the top floors only for

this image because not only do we have the

street lamp lighting the alleyway we also have

the tree projection lights on the walls and I don’t

want these to get washed out as they serve a

purpose of setting the mood for the image.




the alley way. The light had a power of 2 and

had the same colour as the first light.

Here is an image of the position of the lights

(Fig.09)




I created a simple box that is open ended and

made sure it surrounds the window area. I then

cut out the window panes using the window

texture as a guide. I used this technique for all

the lit windows and doors.

Here is an image of a ‘fake’ room and cut out

window panes (Fig.07)

I used a MR_area_Omni light in all of the fake

rooms, then duplicated them into all the other

rooms keeping the setting the same for now. All

the lights have an orangey colour and slightly

different powers. The doors upper left of the

image have a power of 7.0 this is the most

powerful light as its closest to the camera and

quite full on facing the camera. The windows

upper right have a power of 5.0 again quite

bright as it’s close to the camera. The light in the

small window on the back wall has a power of

3.0 so slightly lower again as it’s getting further

away also as it is supposed to be a little side

room the light inside would not be too bright

anyway. And lastly the light in the door on the

back wall has a brightness of 2.0 as the opening

in the door is quite large the amount of light that

escapes the fake room will be quite high so a

lower power will help maintain the escaped light.

So with all the lights set up accept for the street

lamp lets do a quick render to see how this

looks.

Here is a render of the scene so far (Fig.08)

For the street light I used 2 Omni lights, the

first light had a very small radius, just enough

to include the interior of the street lamp object.

This light would help to illuminate the inside

of the lamp to give the illusion of a light bulb.

This light had a power of 20 and had a lighter

orangey colour. The second Omni light was

placed outside the street lamp and had a larger

radius but a lower power this would act as the

light being cast from the light bulb illuminating




subtle enough to give the impression of clear

sky but not grab your attention away from the

street. So after a quick search on the internet

for a night sky I found a good image with just

the right amount of stars. So I placed this on

a layer behind the rendered image and scaled

it in place to get the desired effect. Once I’m

happy with the sky I flattened the image so I’m

only working with the one layer. I do this so it’s

simpler for me to edit the image.

I used a ‘Levels adjustment layer’ to bring out

the darks and highlights a little more this adds a

lot of quality to your image and is an important

stage of the polishing process. I then added a

‘Colour Balance Adjustment layer’ and brought

out the blues and greens a little more this would

help to convince the viewer it was night time. I

then added a little ‘Depth of Field’ to give us a

photorealism look. I achieved this by putting the

Z-depth render element into the Alpha channel

of the image and in the effects menu added

a Lens Blur effect and set it to use the Alpha

channel. After adjusting the settings I was able

to get a realistic effect but be careful not to over

do it, it’s easy to over blur the image and ruin

the effect so subtlety is the key at this stage.

Photoshop CompositeThe First thing I will do in Photoshop is import

the render element ‘Alpha Channel’ to the alpha

channel of the rendered image. This cuts out the

geometry from our render and leaves us with a

empty sky area. At the beginning of this tutorial

I said I wanted a clear sky so a good way to

get that point across is to have stars visible.

I don’t want there to be to many stars, just


render to 800*600 With these settings I was

able to see any problems that may occur.

I was quite happy with the medium sized

render and I couldn’t see any major issues.

Some colour correction needed to be done in

Photoshop but this is normal with any image; it

adds that extra bit of polish to the art work. I was

now ready to go ahead and set up a high quality

render.

Final Render SetupHere are the settings used for the large final

render (Fig.10)




So with everything set up it’s time to hit that


Here is the final out come from the Mental Ray

renderer. (Fig.11)



polishing stage.


The good thing about Lens Blur is you can add

specular blur to your highlights in the image

further enhancing the photorealism we want to

achieve.

Here it is, the finished Image. (Fig.12)

ConclusionIn conclusion I feel I managed to create a good

moon lit environment using different lighting

techniques to create the desired mood and

atmosphere. I hope this tutorial was easy

enough to follow and help you to create some

great lit environments. See you in the next

tutorial.

Tutorial by:


[email protected]



http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_055_mar_2010/tutorial01/tutorial_01_03_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip


+ v-ray


















final still.



Chapter 3 | This IssueMoonlight

Chapter 4 | Next IssueMidday Sun


http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_055_mar_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_03_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip



Chapter 3 - MoonlightSoftware Used: 3ds Max + V-Ray

Before placing a single light in a piece of 3d

software, it’s good to spend a while, looking

at the scene, and thinking, imagining a bit.

The assignment is pretty clear – moonlight

is the ‘prime directive’. But that is not all that

matters. Composition of the image is important,



placement, strength and color. Visual style and

art direction is important as well – is it supposed

to look real, photo real, stylized? Finding some

reference can suggest a few ideas, how to

achieve our task. It’s also good to think about

technical’s – is it going to be a still image, or is

it for animation, should it render really fast, or

maybe we have some computing power at our

disposal? But nowadays, when the computers

are fast, that’s not always a problem.

Creating a moonlit scene can be tricky. There

are few reasons for that:

- We don’t often see moonlight at work. Sure, full

moon nights with clear sky are common enough,

but light pollution is even more common. Street

lamps and other man-made light sources are

much stronger, and at night, it’s those that are

most visible. Even in the countryside, you’ll most

likely see a glow from the nearby city or village.

So pure moonlight is a rare sight.

- At night, human eye sees much less colors

than film or digital sensor can see. Hence, what

we see, and what we can photograph, can be

two different things.

- If we try to photograph a moonlit scene, and

use long enough exposure time, we’ll get an

image looking almost like daylight, with tell-tale

arcs left by stars, as the earth rotates. That kind

of image, while it can be quite interesting, may

not be instantly recognizable as moonlit night.

- Well, its night, its dark – we have to be careful,

or the image will end up dim and low-contrast,

with no depth and no colors. Not a very nice

prospect.

So what can we do to, if we need moonlight?

Then same thing the filmmakers do, when

shooting a night scene – create the feeling, the

impression of moonlit night, using some well

known visual clues.

- Color palette is crucial – dark, often almost

monochromatic, usually cool (most often in

muted gray-blue hues, sometimes muted green

shades as well), with few strong highlights.

Saturation is usually quite low.

- Key light is quite strong, but is usually placed

at an angle, or even at the back – strong back

light is quite characteristic here. Having the

moon in the frame nicely motivates said back

light.

- Also worth noting, such light will be at gazing

angle to many surfaces in the scene, and will

catch a strong highlight on the shiny ones.

Special case of such surface is water – it

can reflect the moon in a really beautiful way,

and, being very bright, can help balance the

composition, acting as a visual ‘counterweight’

to the bright moon face.

- Shadows are important. The Moon usually

produces sharp shadows, unless it’s covered

by clouds, which can soften the shadows quite

a bit.

- Fill is quite weak, so by contrast, the highlights

seem brighter. For characters, a warm fill might

work well.

- Atmosphere (fog, mist, smoke) can be very

useful, allowing us to use silhouettes of the

objects – but its usage depends on the required

mood. You can achieve quite striking images by

working with silhouettes alone.

When looking at a night scene, we kind of

expect to find some of the above properties.

We are used to them, by years of watching

the movies or paintings (just take a look at

‘nocturne’ paintings by Grimshaw or Turner -

(Fig.01), compared to actual photos). And if we

want our setting to be instantly recognizable,

and visually attractive, it’s often good to keep

them in mind.

Now let’s take a look at our scene (Fig.02). No




above ‘rules’ are more like guidelines than law,

and you can bend or break them, if you know

what you want to achieve.


Vray, with GI turned on. I most often use

Irradiance Map for first bounce, and Brute

Force for the secondary bounces – that is the

default setting, which works for me in most

cases (Fig.03 – preview settings). Detailed

settings, like number of bounces, or Irradiance

Map size of course vary over time – low quality

for previews, higher for final rendering. For

still images, as in this case, I try to use fastest

(lowest) setting possible, while still getting

acceptable result. For animation, the Medium

Animation setting is usually safe, flicker free

option. I also use a hint of global Ambient

Occlusion to add some detail to shadowed parts

of the image.

One of the first things I usually do is setting

the Color Mapping to Exponential (Fig.04).

While this isn’t probably the most physically

correct way, it has some advantages. The way

it works, it prevents over bright ‘hot spots’,

and over saturated color transitions. It’s also

very tolerant – it’s really hard to whiteout the

water surface here and only a tiny piece of the

sky. We could try to use moon as a back light,

but it could only reach a tiny part of the scene,

with most of it left in the dark. That could work,

but I’d like to try something else. Something like

a light coming from the side, filtered through the

tree branches, with slightly soft shadows. Not

much in a way of interesting silhouettes to play

with, so some direct light will be needed. And as

its light that’s important here, not atmosphere,

the fog will be very subtle. As you’ll see, the

image, and the lights have a very wide range of

usable multiplier/strength setting (but that range

often ends up being pretty high, like 512 or so,

especially with the fog on). It has downsides,

too, making the colors look desaturated, and

decreasing the contrast of the image. I actually

like it that way, because I can easily bring back

the contrast and saturation in post production,

and for some scenes it just fits – but if you don’t

like it, there’s HSV exponential mode, which

keeps the colors better. Generally, though,

main use I have for default, Linear Multiply, is

rendering some additional passes, like masks.

The scene needed some preparations – adding

VrayDisplacement to the street surface, some

reflections to the windows (using blend material,

VrayMtl for the windows, and a b&w mask).

Metal parts, like railings and lamp also got a

shiny, reflective VrayMtl.

Before rendering anything, I created

VRayPhysicalCamera, so I could control the

brightness of the scene in more intuitive way (as

I have a bit of photographic experience). The

settings pictured on (Fig.05) took some trial and

error to get them right – generally, if the scene

is more-or less build in real world scale, the




settings that would work if we were to take a photo of that scene in real

life, are a good starting point. The Vignetting option is quite useful here,

darkening the corners of the image, and focusing the viewer’s attention at

the central part of the image – here, I used it very sparingly.

I started lighting by setting up the fill (Fig.06) – in this case, a HDR image

of a night city. In nicely introduces some subtle color variation. We need

to add some geometry to block it from the front, though – as in real life,

where buildings on the other side of the street would occlude some of the

sky.

Next in line was the moon. It took some tries to find a nice angle, but the

time it takes can be shortened by enabling Viewport Shadows display

(Fig.07). The Moon is a standard blue-colored directional light, with Vray

shadows, and hotspot tweaked to the scene size. I used a tiled black and

white image of tree branches in the projection slot (Fig.08). The projected

image is blurred a bit, to match the real shadow softness. Notice how

nicely the bump mapping on the walls work – that’s one of the benefits of

light angled to the side (or raking light, as it’s sometimes called).

And as a last tweaks, I added an area light behind the arch, above the

stairs, so they catch a nice subtle highlight, adding a bit of depth to the

scene (Fig.09), and increased main light multiplier a bit. I was considering

adding some man-made light source, like a window-light or the street

lamp, but in the end, I decided against it – it would have lessened the

impact of the moonlight in the scene.

In post production, I did some subtle color correction, adding some red

and green to the shadows, and blue/cyan to the highlights – it works quite

well, even if it’s the opposite of what I’d do on a ‘normal’, daylight image.

I also added a hint of fog using Zdepth pass, some highlight glow, some

grain, and a tiny amount of chromatic aberration – simple tweaks, really

(Fig.10).


As it turns out, achieving a moonlit scene was

quite easy, with just two light sources and some

GI (Fig.11 – final image). While technically

simple, that kind of scene requires some

pondering and a bit of ‘cheating’ – I tried to think

about our scene as a movie set, not only as a

real street late at night.

Tutorial by:



Or contact them:

[email protected]




http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_055_mar_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_03_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip

+ mental ray


















final still.




Chapter 4 | This IssueMidday Sun

Chapter 5 | Next IssueOvercast


http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_056_apr_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_04_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip

www.3dcreativemag.com Issue 056 April 2010

Environment Lighting Outdoor Scene - Chapter 4: Midday Sun

play an important part in this image, for midday

the shadows need to be very sharp and at a

steep angle to give the illusion of the sun being

almost directly above you. I also imagine the

sky to be a bright blue with no cloud cover. This

blue sky will just show through at the top of the

image adding a nice spot of color. A problem

that we will need to overcome will be the intense

light from the sun washing out the color of the

buildings and removing the detail from the

textures and bump maps.

Identifying Light Sources

There are 2 main sources of light in this image.

The main one being the sun light and the

second being the bounce light reflecting off the

walls and filling the dark shadowed areas with

light. For the sunlight I will be using the daylight

system to create a realistic looking sun and use

a HDR map to help create the secondary light

source.

There will be no artificial light in this scene as it

is the middle of the day any interior lighting will

not be visible.

Here is the Image before any lighting has been

applied. (Fig.01)

Setup Draft RenderWhen lighting any image, you can’t expect to


of a lot of ‘tweaking’, I setup the renderer to a

draft setting so it speeds up the render time to

a more workable rate. I set the render size to

360*480 and in the indirect illumination tab I set

the Final Gather to draft and the bounce light to

Chapter 4- Midday SunSoftware Used: 3ds Max + Mental Ray










For midday sun I think of baking hot weather,

sunlight bouncing off surfaces creating hot spots

on the walls, and windows to show the intense

light being cast by the sun. Shadows will also



Outdoor Scene - Chapter 4: Midday Sun Environment Lighting

Here is a render with the default daylight system

settings. (Fig.03)

0. This will allow me to render out as quickly as

possible.

Sun LightThe sun is created using the Daylight system.

This is located in the Create tab under systems.

When you click on Daylight system you will

be asked if you want to change the exposure

settings. I clicked yes for this to give us better

results in the final render. In the viewport you

click and drag a compass, then when you

release the mouse button the sun is created and

you can position it quite high above the scene to

simulate the high midday sun.

Here is an image of the viewport containing the

daylight system (Fig.02)

If you hit render now you will get an

uninteresting image but we are using the default

settings. We need to alter many settings to get

the desired effect, I will start from the top and

work my way down the properties of the daylight

system.




Nonphysical Tuning

Red/Blue Tint - 0.3

Saturation – 1.0

Skylight ParametersMultiplier – 2.0

Sky Colour – Check ‘Use Scene Environment’

(we can now add a HDR map to the background

in the ‘Environment and Effects window).

Image of settings (Fig.04)

I got to the settings above by tweaking the

values and test rendering until I was happy with

the shadows, the color of light and the power

of the light and bounce light. We also need to

change the settings in ‘Exposure Control’ to get

a better render. This can be accessed by going

to ‘Rendering/Environment in the menus or by

pressing ‘8’

Here are the settings I used in this window:

Common ParametersCheck ‘Use Map’

I then added a HDR map in the map slot. I

chose a bright sunny day map, they can be

found quite easily if you search for them. I did a

search for sunny HDR map and downloaded the

one I liked the look of. I can’t show it because of

copyright issues but you should be able to find

one easily.

Note; This HDR image will now be rendered in

the sky. Don’t worry about this, you can use an

Alpha channel render element to ‘Cut Out’ the

HDR sky and paste in our own nice blue sky.

Exposure ControlSelect from the drop down menu – mr

Photographic Exposure Control

MR Photographic Exposure ControlCheck Photographic Exposure

Image Control

Highlights - 0.25

Daylight ParametersSunlight - mr Sun

Skylight – Skylight (This option allows us to use

a HDR image for the GI)

Position – Manual (This allows us to move the

sun to where we need it)

MR Sun Basic ParametersMultiplier – 5.0

Shadows – On

Softness Samples – 24

Inherit from mrSky – Unchecked

Midtones – 1.0

Shadows – 0.2

Colour Saturation – 1.0

Whitepoint – 5400 Kelvin

Vignetting – 4.0

Physical scale

Check Unitless – 25000

Image of setting (Fig.05)

Because the sun and environment is out of

scale according to the real world we need to

scale down the properties so we get a more

accurate calculation of sun light I found a

‘Physical Scale’ of 25000 worked well for this

scene.

With all the settings done we need to change

some things with the HDR map. With the

Environment and Effects window still open click

and drag the .hdr map into an empty slot in the

material editor and click ‘Instance’




Here is a before and after of the textures

(Fig.07)

I hit render once more with the medium settings

to check that texture were now displaying

correctly. I was quite happy with the medium

sized render and I couldn’t see any major

issues. I was now ready to go ahead and set up

a high quality render.

Final render setupHere are the settings used for the large final

render (Fig.08)




So with everything set up it’s time to hit that


CoordinatesCheck Environ and change the Mapping to

‘Spherical Environment’

This will wrap the .hdr image around the scene.

Image of settings (Fig.06)

So with all that done it’s time for a medium

render and a check for any issues before we

start the final large render.





render to 800*600. With these settings I was

able to see any problems that may occur.

From the medium render I was able to see a

problem. The Colours are being washed out

by the intense light being cast by the sun. The

red archway doesn’t stand out next to the beige

and brown walls that surround it. This shouldn’t

be the case, being a red wall it needs to stand

out. Also the blue shutters (upper left) are over

exposed in places and washing away the blue

colour. I think all of the textures could do with

some touch ups in Photoshop, a simple levels

adjust would do. The Levels adjustment brought

out the detail and darkened the texture, now

when the intense light hits the walls the textures

won’t be lost.




ConclusionI am happy with the final outcome for this

render. I feel I have achieved a hot sunny day

with plenty of ‘hot spots’ and was able to keep

the colour in the textures from being washed

out under the intense light from the sun. The

blue sky adds a nice touch to the composition.

I tried a new approach to lighting in this tutorial

than the others, I normally stick to mr-Area omni

lights and mr-Area spotlights for my lighting rigs,

but I wanted to show the daylight system and I

thought a sunny day would be the best time to

show off what it is capable of. I hope you have

learned something new from this tutorial and I

really enjoyed making this one.

create Tutorial by:


[email protected]

now it was transparent. I then created a new

layer underneath the render and filled with a

nice sky blue colour.

I then applied the following adjustment layers:

Levels – To enhance the darks and whites.

Color Balance - Give the image a slight bluish

tint to replicate the blue sky GI.

Curves – Enhance the whites more to get an

over exposed look on the sun bleached wall.

Lens Flare – 105mm Prime, very low opacity

and placed on the corner of the metal roof to the

right of the green door above the archway. To

give the illusion of the sun reflecting of the metal

surface, and to further convince the viewer that

it is a baking hot day.

Here it is, the finished Image. (Fig.10)

Here is the final out come from the Mental Ray

renderer. (Fig.09)



polishing stage.

Photoshop CompositeWith this image there wasn’t much Photoshop

work that needed doing because the lighting

was just right for the time of day, and with the

color correction done in the textures earlier on,

only a minimal amount of post work needed to

be done.

I started with the sky, because the HDR map is

visible in the render we need to get rid of this. I

created a layer mask and pasted in the Alpha

render element, this ‘Cut Out’ the HDR sky so




http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_056_apr_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_04_3dsmaxmr_scenefiles.zip


+ v-ray


















final still.




Chapter 4 | This IssueMidday Sun

Chapter 5 | Next Issue Overcast

http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_056_apr_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_04_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip



Chapter 4- Midday SunSoftware Used: 3ds Max + V-Ray

This month’s assignment is midday sunlight

– the kind you could see every day, if you are

lucky. But since it’s so common sight, we’ll

have to be careful not to make it too plain. Of

course, if you are working for a client/director,

they may have another vision, but I’d like the

image to look good, maybe stylized a bit instead

of plain, but realistic. The stylization I have in

mind lies in color correction – I like the colors

of old film photos, like those on the (Fig.01),

so I’ll try to incorporate some of that look in

our image. It comes from many sources – from

using Lomo camera, which was my childhood

toy, way before becoming hip ;), from processing

your film in wrong chemicals (so-called

cross-processing), or from the film itself, often

producing some color casts/distortions. This has

little to do with the 3d part, and a lot to do with

post-production, so more on that later.

Lighting-wise, midday sunlight is pretty simple,

strong sun as a key light, blues sky, leading to

blue-tinted, hard-edged shadows. That’s it...

well, not yet. Composition, as usual, is most

important. The mentioned hard shadows can

be pretty intense, creating shapes of their own.

Those shapes can either hurt the composition,

becoming a distraction, or help it, guiding the

eye to the focal parts of the image. Fortunately,

it’s easy to try various sun positions quickly.

Besides... those shadows quite often shouldn’t

even be blue – neutral colors may work as well,

depending on the situation.

This case is a great occasion to use Vray sun &

sky system – that’s what it’s made for. It should

give us a good looking, but ‘neutral’ generic

image. I’m using it in tandem with GI. I mainly

use Irradiance Map for the first bounce and

Brute Force for the secondary bounces – that is

the default setting which works for me in most

cases (Fig.02 – preview settings). Detailed

settings like number of bounces, or Irradiance

Map size of course vary over time – low quality

for previews, higher if the scene requires it. For

still images, as in this case, I try to use fastest

(lowest) setting possible, while still getting

acceptable result. For animation, the Medium

Animation setting is usually safe with the flicker

free option. I also use a hint of global Ambient

Occlusion to add some detail to the shadowed

parts of the image.

One of the first things I usually do is setting

the Color Mapping to Exponential (Fig.03).




While this isn’t probably the most physically

correct way, it has some advantages. The way

it works is it prevents over bright ‘hotspots’,

and oversaturated color transitions. It’s also

very tolerant – it’s really hard to whiteout the

image, and the lights have a very wide range of

usable multiplier/strength setting (but that range

often ends up being pretty high, like 512 or so,

especially with the fog on). It has downsides

also, making the colors look desaturated, and

decreasing the contrast of the image. I actually

like it that way, because I can easily bring back

the contrast and saturation in post production,

and for some scenes it just fits – but if you don’t

like it, there’s HSV exponential mode, which

keeps the colors better. Generally though the

main use I have for default, Linear Multiply, is

rendering some additional passes, like masks.

The scene needed some preparations – adding

Vray Displacement to the street surface, some

reflections to the windows (using blend material,

Vray Mtl for the windows, and a black & white

mask). Metal parts, like railings and lamp also

got a shiny reflective Vray Mtl.

Before rendering anything I created

VRayPhysicalCamera, so I could control the

brightness of the scene in a more intuitive way

(as I have a bit of photographic experience).

The settings pictured on (Fig.04) took some

trial and error to get them right – generally, if the

scene is more-or less built in real world scale,

the settings that would work if we were to take

a photo of that scene in real life, are a good

starting point. The Vignetting option is quite

useful here, darkening the corners of the image,

and focusing the viewer’s attention at the central

part of the image.

Now it’s time to create the sun. Let’s choose

Vray Sun. The pop-up will appear, asking about

adding Vray Sky in the Environment slot – I hit

OK, since I’ll need it. Next I switched Vray Sky

to manual sun node, and pointed the newly

created Vray Sun as the sun node, and tweaked

the parameters a bit (Fig.05). Decreased

Turbidity means more blue sky, and adjusting

the intensity allows me to tune the balance

between sun and sky light.

To position the sun, it’s good to display shadows

in the viewport (Fig.06). That way I can see

the shadows in real-time, and finding a nice

composition is really fast. I chose to place the

sun almost directly above the scene, so the road

surface is brightly lit (Fig.07).

If we look at the rendered image, we see that

front facing walls are too bright, making the




image look flat. The easiest way to darken them

is by placing an object invisible to the camera,

to occlude some of the skylight (simulating the

buildings at the other side of the street) (Fig.08).

Now comes the time for final rendering and

post-production. I already did some tests on a

low-res preview – which is something I really

recommend doing. It’s easy to spot problems,

and fix them, before rendering the high-res, and

wasting many hours if it’s wrong in some way.

What I want to do is to add a bit more contrast,

and shift the highlights towards green, and

shadows towards magenta. I did it by using

Curves in Photoshop, and shaped the curves

for each of the R, G, and B channels separately,

as well as the default RGB one. (Fig.09) shows

the curve shapes. I did some other mostly

localized adjustments, some highlight, some

glow and grain, etc – pretty standard fare. As

an afterthought, I decreased the saturation of

the yellow highlights a bit, to get slightly more

neutral image. (Fig.10) shows the final image.

For situations like this, the built-in Sun & Sky

system works great, and saves a lot of time. Of

course, there may be a need to supplement it

with additional lights - but here, it’s just enough.

There’s a caveat, though – images done that

way tend to look quite bland and similar to each

other, so it’s good to customize the settings a

bit, and do some post-production magic to add a

personal touch – treating the rendered image as

a raw material rather than final image..



Or contact them:

[email protected]





http://www.3dcreativemag.com/tutorial_resources/issue_056_apr_2010/tutorial01/tutorial01_04_3dsmaxvray_scenefiles.zip

3Dtotal.com - Lighting La Ruelle - 3ds Max + v-Ray

Documents

Transcript of 3Dtotal.com - Lighting La Ruelle - 3ds Max + v-Ray