Realistically Light and Render Interior Scenes using 3ds Max and Vray
Tutorial Details
- Program: 3Ds Max, Vray
- Completion Time: 1-2 hours
- Difficulty: Intermediate
Final Product What You'll Be Creating
Discover the secrets behind properly lighting and rendering interior scenes with 3ds Max and Vray in this easy to follow, step by step walkthrough. Scene setup, modeling, texturing, lighting, and rendering for realistic output will all be discussed, so there is literally something in here for everyone!
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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!!.
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By Pratik Gulati
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very nice job
It’s very simple and can be understood tutorial. Thx!
Really good!
incredible!
And this is how a tutorial should be. Simple, clear, informative and useful in many different ways.
Well done, keep it up!
Very nice,
tnx for the tut!
Lovely, i’ve tried do this since 2006, now i can do it!!! But, to exterior vray renders, do you have something good?
ha ha ha ha ha …….
Good Stuff man, more Vray is what I say
Hey Pratik,
Good stuff
How long did it take you to render the final image.
And what sort of machine specs are you running.
Thanks
core2quad 2gb ram, final render took around 1.5 hrs
Hey Pratik,
Good stuff,
How long did it take you to render the final image and what computer specs are you running on.
Thanks
Hey Pratik, good stuff
How long did it take you to render the final image
and what computer specs are you running on,
Thanks
Love it, cheers
Very nice. the light looks so charm…thanks for tut man…
Excelente. Muchas gracias.
nossa sem palavras perfeito, vc naum tem noção de como me ajudou com esse tutorial obrigado !
it is very cool
portugues please
it well be better if it is a video tutorial , thank you
can you make this a video tutorial please,thanks
it is one of the best tutorial on the net
thanks a lot
have you any tutorial for exterior?
expeciall for glass building?
Please make video tut and provide model.
There’s been a Vray exterior tutorial here for quite a while:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/light-and-render-an-arch-viz-style-outdoor-scene-with-v-ray-and-3ds-max/
# Thank you very much!
Thank you Very very very very much…………………………..!
Sir,
please let me know What should be the system configuration for vray render .Thanks a lot
2gb ram , core 2 quad processor ,128-256 mb graphics card
can u tell me how do show rope lightning in interior projects
I must learn this program, this is soo amazing. I love interior scenes
nice ……………………….
It’s very simple and can be understood tutorial
wow………..its really nice
i have seen many tuts……….but u described it very breifly………….no doubt………the look is v coooool…..
n
d way u impart……….
wow………
thanx for this nice tut.
looking forward to a similar thing on outdoor lighting….
Pleas help me for 3d job
man, we really appreciate this great job, very inspiring and usefull because you took the time to xplain it very well,, but i really wish that we could see that on video. i think would be the best of the best.. perhaps this one , like i said, is a wonderfull job.
my email skatebuay@hotmail.com
Hi, Thanks a lot for explaining Vray IES!
nice work man but in the full room with all thinks we take light on the wall the how we control shadow.
HELLO, SIR/MAM
I M MADHURI, N DIS ROOM IS A VERY SIMPLE N ATTRACTIVE, I LIKE THIS ROOM, ITS COOL
awesome………..thnks fr da tuto……
Thz for the tutorial, it was helpful for the setting
But…..
can anyone help me?
I have do the same thing as the tutorial say,
and i hv invisble the vray light at the right hand side but the shape of the light still out of the reder image
and the Vray IES light, I can’t show the cone as the image did ,
which the Cone on the wall affected by IES Light….i can’t do it=[
Pls!!!anyone would like to give me a hand on this !!!
Thank you
Make sure you followed the tutorial and modeled everything to scale, otherwise the settings won’t work.
The IES light need’s a IES file that you need to tell it to use; you can download a bunch of IES files here:
http://www.erco.com/products/download/others/downloaddat_3992/en/en_downloaddat_dltut_1.php?aktion=nop&sprache=en&dir=40_planning_luminaire/25_ies/00005_complete
The scale is also important with the IES Light too..
Thz for the tutorial, it was helpful for the setting .nice work in Vray IES ligh
Pleas help me for 3d job
Arun Pratap Mall
E-Mail mallarun@yahoo.com
Wow what great use of Vray. i like these tutorials special for just easy 20 steps.
Thanks
i’ll would like to see tutorials on exteriors.
Thanks for a nice tutorial…
Very helpful tut.
nice…..
Very nice tutorial but there are some missing pictures. how can i get it complete in PDF format?
thank you
nice tutorials …two thumbs up……keep it up….
thanks man…i search all tutorial about vray lighting setting in the web and i found this tutorial very easy to understand and complete…
Great tutorial Pratik, but you need to gamma correct final result. The Mid-tones are way to dark.
Hey Pratik
man, we really appreciate this great job, very inspiring and usefull because you took the time to xplain it very well,,
really i like to know how to apply V-ray material from basic if you can please help me through send pdf or Video Thanks my mail ajiofis118@yahoo.com
good luck …….
Good =)