Final Effect Preview

Step 1

In this tutorial, we’ll be using real units, so the first thing would be to open the menu “Customize > Units Setup > US” and choose “Standard > Feet w/Decimal Inches” as the unit.

Step 2

When you are trying to get a photorealistic quality it is very important to make sure that your object scale is accurate. This will play an important role in achieving a good render. Also, as you can see the scene is quite simple… just a small lobby (mostly modeled with boxes). Note: It is important that it is a closed room, and there are no openings for the light from environment to enter.

Step 3

Press f10, and from the “assign renderer” tab choose “Vray”. This will enable “Vray” as your renderer, and also enable Vray materials in your material editor.

Step 4

Assign a simple Vray material to all the objects in the scene, and set up basic scene lighting and render settings. This is to finalize the lighting and render settings and save time, since a plain material renders much faster than reflective and glossy materials which will be added later.

Step 5

Now to work on the lighting and render settings to achieve the final result.

Step 6

Add a Vray physical camera to the scene by going to “Create Tab > Camera > Vray > Physical Camera”.

Step 7

The settings for a physical camera are:

Film Speed (ISO) – Determines the film power (sensitivity). Smaller values make the image darker, while larger values make it brighter.

 

 

 

 

Step 8

Now to place the various Vray lights. Lights 1-4 affect the scene directly, whereas light 5 has been placed in a downward direction, and will affect the scene in an indirect (in the
form of bounced light).

 

 

 

Step 9

The basic parameters of the Vray lights are:

Subdivs - Defines the samples, or the quality of the light. 8-10 should be used for test renders, and 15-20 for final renders. Increasing the samples will significantly increase your render time.

 

 

 

 

Step 10

IES stands for “Illuminating Engineering Society”. The photometric data is stored in these files. A photometric web is a 3D representation of the light intensity distribution of a light source. Web definitions are stored in files. Many lighting manufacturers provide web files that model their products, and these are often available on the Internet. We as artists can use them to replicate the real life phenomena of light in 3d.

Go to the “Lights” tab, choose “Vray” from the drop down list, and create a “Vray ies” in the right view. Then instance it below all four steel holders.

 

 

 

Step 11

The main settings for the ies lights are:

Power - Determines how bright the light will be.

 

 

 

 

Step 12

Through the following steps, you will configure the rendering settings in Vray. Press F10, then under “Global Switches”, uncheck “Default Lights”. This will cause the default lights in the scene to be switched off. For the Image Sampler type select “Adaptive DMC”, and “Catmull Rom” as the filter. Also, change the min and max subdivs as shown.

Lastly, change the “Color Mapping” type to “Exponential”. This mode will saturate the colors based on their brightness, and therefore, will not clip bright colors, but saturate them instead. This can be useful to prevent Burn-outs in the very bright areas (for example around light sources etc).

 

 

 

Step 13

Under the “Indirect Illumination” select “Irradiance Map” and use “Light Cache” as the primary and secondary engine. Also, change the Preset to “High”, “hsph subdivs” to 50, and “interp samples” to 20.

Hemispheric Subdivs (HSph. subdivs) – Controls the quality of individual GI samples. Smaller values makes things faster, but may produce blotchy results. Higher values produce smoother images.

 

 

 

 

Step 14

With a Light Cache, the light map is built by tracing many eye paths from the camera. Each of the bounces in the path stores the illumination from the rest of the path into a 3d structure (very similar to the photon map). In the Light Cache put 1500 for subdivs and 8 for no of passes.

The Subdivs determines how many paths are traced from the camera. The actual number of paths is the square of the subdivs (the default 1000 subdivs mean that 1 000 000 paths will be traced from the camera).

 

 

 

Step 15

Your settings for the test render are done. If you hit render now, you should see the same image that was shown before. Now all you need to do is apply the materials, and increase the Irradiance Map and Light Cache samples for the final render.

 

 

 

Step 16

Now to texture the scene (actually it’s quite simple). The basic parameters that will be used in materials are:

Reflection Glossiness – Controls the sharpness of the reflections. A value of 1.0 means perfect mirror-like reflections; lower values produce blurry or glossy reflections. Use the Subdivs parameter below to control the quality of the glossy reflections.

The shader for the tiles on the base is a simple vray material with a de-saturated texture in the diffuse and a noise map in bump.

 

 

 

Step 17

The wood rack is also made of a Vray material with slight reflections and glossiness.

 

 

Step 18

The material for the wall is again just simple cream and black colors with no reflections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 19

The shader on the wall on which the paintings are hanging is made of steel and white wall. The wall part also has a grainy texture assigned to it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 20

Your scene is now textured! You can add any other props or objects you like to fill up the scene. The above rendering settings are good for test renders, but for production quality you will need to increase the samples for the image sampler, Light Cache, and Irradiance map.

 

 

Step 21

Here is the final result! Hope you learned something new!!.

 

Related posts:

1. Create a Photorealistic Car Render using 3DS Max and Vray
2. Learn How to Create a Light Rays Custom Effect from Scratch

For this tutorial, I used “Dodge Viper”, but these steps will let you can achieve similar result using any high-rez car model.

Final Effect Preview

Step 1

In order to achieve similar results as above, you need to model a detailed and clean car. If you don’t feel like modeling, you can use a pre-made model too. Another important step is to find a good HDRI image and a matching back plate. I got one at www.hdrilocations.com/freesample.php, but you can also do your own research to find a good HDRI and back plate, as there are plenty of them available on internet. When you are done with collecting your models and HDRI, fire up 3DS Max and import/ merge the car model into a new 3DS Max scene.

Step 2

Create a long plane in the TOP viewport. Position the plane so that it lies under the wheels and acts as a road.

Step 3

Make sure your perspective view is selected, and go to “Views > Viewport Background > Viewport Background” or (Alt+B). Click on "Files" and load the background image. Use selected settings while loading a background image.

Step 4

Go to the TOP viewport again, and create a standard Target camera. Don’t worry about it’s position and settings, I will explain this later.

Step 5

All good back plates contain information about f-stop number, iso, and other important settings. All we have to do to match some of image parameters with the camera we have just created. So right click the image, and under “properties”, go to “details” and scroll down until you see the “Camera” roll out menu. Currently we will match only the "Focal Length" parameter. As you can see, the back plate image has a "Focal Length" value of 45.

Step 6

Back in 3DS Max, go to "Camera Settings" and and change the "Lens" settings to 45. Also, change the perspective view to your camera (C).

Step 7

Now, we need to match our perspective with the background image. There are several ways to do that, such as camera tracking etc. I, personally find those methods too complicated, so i use the method of trial and error. What i do is try to match the perspective of road with the background image using camera tools such as "Orbit Camera" and "Pan"(Mouse Middle Click). If you think the car is too small then you can use"Dolly Camera" as well. When you are satisfied with your composition, right click the camera, and go to "Camera correction modifier". Click on "Guess", and it automatically sets the correct perspective. After couple of minutes of experimentation, my viewport ended up like this.

Step 8

Our scene preparation is now done, so let's get on with the materials and texturing. Assign a "shellac" material to the car body. Under the "Base and Shellac" material option, use "VRayMtl", and put a value of "100" under "Shellac Color Blend". Go back to the Base material and use the settings shown below.

A Shellac allows you to superimpose one material over another, with the base material being underneath and the shellac material over it. The "Shellac Color Blend" box controls the amount of shellac that gets laid over the base material, and the Subdiv value control the smoothness of material. The more subdivs you have, the material will look noise free in the render, but this will of course increase the render time.

Step 9

For the car body color, go to "Car Color", under Shellac material options, and use the following settings. I decided to give the car body a deep red color, so I used a Falloff gradient under "Diffuse" slot from light red to deep red. If you want a Black carpaint, for instance, then you can simply replace the light red with Grey, and the dark red with black. I have also used Fresnal reflections this time. Fresnel describes the way a surface's attributes change depending on the view angle.

Step 10

For the windshield material, apply a VRayMtl to the windshields, and use the settings shown below. Note: The reflect parameter controls the reflection of the material. Black means the material will not reflect anything, and white means it will reflect everything in the scene. The refract value gives transparency to the material where white means 100% transparent, and black means 100% opaque. Also, I used a small picture of a Rainbow gradient under the Diffuse slot, you can find a similar one using Google.

Step 11

For the tire material, apply a VRayMtl and check "BRDF" as "Ward". The BRDF parameters determine the type of the highlights and glossy reflections.

Step 12

For the rims material, apply a VRayMtl using the settings shown. The reflection glossiness controls the parameters of specular reflections in vraymaterial. The lower the value (0.45-0.75), the blurrier the reflections. Also, if you use less values of reflection glossiness, you need to crank up the subdivs, as blurry reflections produce more noise in the render.

Step 13

Now, assign a "Matte/Shadow" material to the road, so that it catches the shadows from the VrayLight and HDRI. Open the "Material Editor", click on "Get Material", select "Matte/Shadow" from the list, and apply it to the road. Use the default settings of the "Matte/Shadow" material.

Step 14

Time to use the HDRI to light up the scene. Press "M" to open the material editor window, and click the "Get material" button. Another window of "Material/Map Browser" will pop up. Select "Bitmap" from the list, and load the HDRI from the browser.

Step 15

Go to the "Lights" menu, select "vray" from the dropdown menu, and create a "VrayLight" above the car using the following settings. You will need to adjust the multiplier value according to your scene. In my scene, a multiplier of "1.5" worked perfectly.

Step 16

Position your "Vraylight" so that it sits on top of the car.

Step 17

Open the "Material editor" again, and drag the HDRI into the "Use texture" slot of the VrayLight .

Step 18

Press "F10" to open the Render Setup window. In the V-Ray Menu, go to "Global switches", and uncheck "Default lights". Under "Image sampler", select"Adaptive subdivison", and select "Mitchell-Netravali" as the Antialiasing filter. Under the Environment tab, check"Reflection/refraction environment override", and drag in the same HDRI that you applied on the VrayLight. Under the color mapping rollout, select "Exponential" as the type, check "Sub-pixel mapping", and also "Clamp output", leaving the "Clamp level" at 1.0.

Below is an explanation of the settings:

Clamp output: If this is on, colors will be clamped after color mapping. In some situations, this may be undesirable (for example, if you wish to antialias hdr parts of the image too). In that case, turn clamping off.

Use the following render settings:

 

 

 

Step 19

Now, lets render our first image. Press "F9" for quick render. As you can see, it's not quite as it looks in the Final result, so lets tweak some more settings.

 

 

 

Step 20

Press "M" to open the material editor window, and select the same Bitmap material containing the HDRI file. Now here is the tricky part. We need to adjust the position of HDRI till we get good illumination and reflection on the car body….and there's no other way to do this except Render, Render, and Render!

After hitting several renders, my bitmap parameters came up like this:

 

 

 

Step 21

So, here is the final render from 3DS Max. As you can see, it is still slightly different from the finished image. Don't worry, we will improve the render in Photoshop in next step!

 

 

 

Step 22

Fire up Photoshop, and open the previous render. Add some warm tones using "Color Balance". Press shortcut"Ctrl+B" or go to "Image>Adjustments>Color Balance". Adjust the sliders according to your needs. I used the values of "+16, 0, -13". I also added some headlight glow using a plugin called "Knoll Light factory", and adjusted some levels to get a nice brightness/contrast to the image. You can also add some cool lighting effects and try different post treatments using any other plugin or in photoshop itself.

 

 

 

Conclusion

This concludes the tutorial. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new. If you are unable to understand any step, please feel free to post a comment, and i will try to explain it as best as I can. Thanks for your time!.

Related posts:

1. Realistically Light and Render Interior Scenes using 3ds Max and Vray