Vray Tutorials |
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This is a free tutorial!
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HDR Images in Vray |
Before you start
This tutorial assumes you have a basic Vray and 3DS Max knowledge, and an official Vray copy. I used version 1.47.03 while making the tutorial.
You have to be able to create Vraymaterials, load maps in the material editor, open the render settings dialog etc... This tutorial also uses of Vray GI, I will not explain these settings in this tutorial. Check out the other tutorials on my site for that.
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step1: Basic settings
First, open 3D Studio Max... Make sure you set Vray as the production renderer. For test rendering, lower the output size to 480*360px. This is the easiest way to speed up rendering while testing!
Go to the global switches rollout and turn off 'default lights'. We don't want the default lights to interfere with our lighting, since this will be based only on the hdri map! |
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step2: Anti Aliasing settings
I always render with the Adaptive QMC image sampler (see screenshot) because this allows for great control over every aspect in the scene with only a few mouse clicks.
Also turn off the anti aliasing filter, this speeds up things too. Only use one of these filters if you can't get good enough AA on fine textures or very small details. |
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step3: Create the testscene
Make a small testscene which you want to render. Start with something simple! I made a cylinder with a max teapot on it :-) |
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step4: First render test
Hit render and enjoy a black picture! If it's not black you forgot to turn off 'default lights' in step1.
The reason for this is quite obvious, there is no light in the scene, so it's completely dark. |
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step5: Let there be light!
Go to the Environment rollout and turn on both GI and environment overrides. Leave them at default colors. Hit render again, you'll see it is still black! |
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step6: Let there be GI light!
When using the Vray skylight option, you need to enable GI to make it visible. The sklight is treated as first bounce GI light, it's not a direct light as for example a max spotlight or Vray area light.
So open the Indirect Illumination rollout and enable GI ('On' checkbox). |
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step7: Render again
If you hit render now, Vray will start calculating the GI coming from the skylight, and after that the actual rendering will start. This can take a while on slow machines!
Shadows are very diffuse because of the skylight. Light is coming from all directions with equal strength, so there are no directional shadows. |
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step8: Speed up rendering
The default irradiance map settings are too slow for test rendering, so we will speed things up by making some adjustments.
First I lowered the secondary bounces to 0,8 (GI rollout). Then choose 'custom' in the preset list to have full control over the settings. Fill in all the other settings like I did (click image on the right). The most important are Hsph subdivs and the min/max rate. |
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step9: Helpfull settings
Also change the render region division to 32*32 in the system rollout (good for small resolution images only!).
Check the frame stamp box and delete everything except the render time part.
Render again if you want to, notice how fast it renders now! |
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step10: Create Vray materials
It's always best to use Vray materials if you can, they will render faster in many cases, and the chance of incompatibility is reduced.
Make a very light grey VrayMaterial for the groundplane, and a fresnell reflective one for the teapot. See my settings in the image on the right for the reflective material. |
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step11: Render
After you created and assigned the new materials, hit render to see the result. Notice that the grey groundplane looks blueish, this is because of the light blue color of the skylight. |
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step12: Play with environment colors
Make the skylight light yellow, and the reflection white with a 2,5 multiplier. Render again and notice the colour change and the stronger reflections in the teapot. |
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step13: Load HDRI map
In the material editor, click the blue get material button and choose VRayHDRI from the list. |
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step14: HDRI settings
Click the browse button and locate a hdri you downloaded from my website. All these HDRI maps are in 'mirrored ball' format. So check the mirrored ball option in the HDRI parameters.
Many free hdri maps are unwrapped (they look like an unwrapped globe), you need to set the type to spherical environment for these map types. Some are 'angular maps' (=light probes, like the old hdri's on devbecs website), so check angular map if you're using one of those. |
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step15: Assign HDRI map
You can simply drag and drop this hdri map onto the 2 environment slots in the Vray environment rollout. Make sure you choose instance method!
What you did now is telling Vray to use the map for skylight and reflections instead of the color swatches. The multipliers have no effect anymore now! |
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step16: Render
Hit render! Skylight is now calculated according to the hdri map, also reflections are coming from the HDRI environment.
Notice the longer rendertimes when using hdri for lighting.
The lighting is a bit too strong. In the Vrayhdri parameters, lower the multiplier to 0,9 and render again. You'll notice there will be no blown out area anymore.
Play with the horizontal rotation to get the reflections and lighting to appear the way you want. |
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step17: Final settings
- Set output size to 640*480.
- Change Irradiance map settings according to image on the right.
- Change the QMC Samplers noise threshold to 0.001
- Change the region render division back to 64*64px
Hit render and wait! These are high quality settings that are always good, but usually you can get away with lower ones to speed things up. |
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step18: Final Rendering
Click the image to see the final rendering at 640*480 resolution. |
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Notes:
If you want the hdri to show up in the background too, simply drag the map onto the 3ds max environment slot. |
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