PR E SE N TATION SE R IE S a concise guide in x rendering
Before we begin... these are simply a few tips help you along the way with your modelling & rendering adventures. You can only learn so much by example, so feel free to stray away from these tips and experiment! Have fun! And remember: breathe. The solution could be right under your nose. So sit back, relax, and don’t worry; you’ll do just fine. all the best, d
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IN THIS GUIDE... STEP 1
Setting up your sun
STEP 2
Turning your sunlight into a sun
STEP 3
Letting your environment shine
STEP 4
Placing (and Saving) your cameras and render!
In this guide you will need: Rhino V-Ray for Rhino
PROTIP:
Before we start rendering, it’s easy to be enamoured with flashy, textured materials. Be warned! If you use too many, it will crash your render (and your program). But, if you still want it all, just head over to your V-Ray Options , and under ‘Displacement’, change ‘Max Subdivs’ from 256 to 1.
PRE-STEP
Something you should know beforehand
Since this tip doesn’t really fit into other places, I’ll put it here. Rendering with an Infinite Ground Plane gives you an endless landscape that you can put your project on. However, you cannot put a mapped texture on the Infinite Ground Plane. There’s no limit to the amount of ground planes you can have! 3
STEP 1
Setting up your sun
Setting up a sun is easy! A V-Ray Sunlight is essentially a glorified Directional Light . V-Ray Sunlights have specific colour-embedded qualities, while regular Directional Lights are exactly their namesake: a light with one direction. So, to make a sun, click the V-Ray Sunlight Button. A dialogue will quickly follow:
Uncheck the ‘Control sun position manually’ box. This cause a couple of options to spring up right then and there: Date and Time: You can manually adjust for the day, month, year and hour of your sun. Location: A world map in this option makes it easy to find your site and location. Can’t find the major city it’s on? Just type in the Longitude and Latitude below. When you have your sun, you can place it anywhere. And I mean anywhere. Just be sure to keep track of where it is when you render.
PROTIP:
When doing multiple renders with different lights (say day and night), be sure to delete the light altogether before starting the next one. Even hiding the layer the sun light is on doesn’t work. Not quite sure why this is... oh well. 4
STEP 2
Turning your sunlight into a sun Now that your sun is ready and in place, it’s time for an environment. Hit ‘Options’ In your ‘Options’, scroll through the different tabs until you find ‘Environment’. Click it and these two options will appear...
GI (Skylight): This can take your directional sunlight and turn it into a bona-fide “Sun” Background: This option can take your directional sunlight (or an image) to project a background for your renders.
Click the little ‘m’ on the right hand side of this option. A dialogue will appear. On the left hand side, under ‘Type’ open the drop-down and select ‘Sky’. The dialogue will immediately transform and will give you a whole slew of options. What you need to focus on is the ‘Sun-light source’ button up top. Just click it! A pop-up will follow, and select the light that’s yours. Hit ‘Apply’ and that’s it! Sun installed!
PROTIP:
At this point in your model, a sunlight will over-expose your renders. Be sure to check the ‘physical camera’ button under the ‘camera’ tab in your options. If you’re a photographic connoisseur, this is for you! The settings are just like the real thing.
Here’s our progress! Not bad, if you ask me. As you can see, our shadows aren’t black; they’re a softer shade of sky blue. It’s all part of the atmosphere now, which leaves the backdrop to fix up.
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STEP 3
Letting your environment shine Back to V-Ray Options, under the ‘Environment’ tab, you can click the little ‘m’ to the right of the ‘Background’ options. If you select ‘Sky’ in the drop-down under ‘Type’ you can apply a plain blue background like your Skylight; but we’re here not to be plain, so below are 3 methods of producing a background:
Using an HDRI file or Using a Panorama
Creating a Backdrop
PROTIP:
Keep in mind that using an HDRI file is the primary method of creating a backdrop, while the other two work just as well. Use the other methods if you absolutely cannot find an HDRI file. Panoramas work just as well, while Backdrops only work in one view. Remember ‘Emmisive Materials’?3 Simply create a brand new Emmisive Material with your backdrop as the texture. The intensity of your material will vary depending on other rendering factors. Another method is to just use a regularly textured material without emmisive properties. Under the introduced ‘Environment Dialogue, select ‘Bitmap’ for type. Be sure to select ‘Environment’ under the UVW category. For HDRI select Mapping: ‘Mirror-Ball’ For Panorama select Mapping: ‘Spherical’ Under the Bitmap category, select the file by pressing the ‘m’ button next to ‘File’. For HDRI you must find a file with the extension .hdr1 For Panorama the best result is done with an ‘Equirectangular panorama’ image file.2 Once you have your files, hit ‘Apply’. Hit render for the exciting news! The effect is the same for both methods.
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V-Ray has a few stock .hdr files under its ‘Materials’ Directory. Literally Google “Equirectangular Panorama” to find these images! Please refer to the ‘Custom Materials’ Guide for further detail Please refer to the ‘Texture Mapping’ Guide for further detail I literally google ‘Sky’ and used the first appropriate image
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Next, apply that material to a flat surface and give it an appropriate texture mapping.4 Presto, backdrop finished!5
STEP 4
Placing (and Saving) your cameras and render! Now that your model is super awesome and ready to render, it’s time to set up a few cameras for rendering. First, right click on ‘Perspective’ and select the last option ‘Viewport Properties’. A dialogue will appear: Several options are now at your whim, like the name, the type of projection, lens length, and even location of your camera. Parallel projection works well for Isometric drawings as it omits the use of converging perspective lines where, well, ‘Perspective Projection’ is pretty self explanatory. The lens length determines the amount of distortion in a camera view. The lower the lens length, the higher the distortion.
PROTIP:
You can set up your view in two ways: the classic, “I’m too lazy to be bothered to use my keyboard” way where you orbit around with your mouse wheel until you find a right spot, or you can type “Camera” then “Show” in your commands to set it up orthographically.
I’ve set up a perspective view at 35mm, and to not lose this view I’ve spent so long setting up, I should save it. Right-click on the word ‘Perspective’ again, but this time, to “Set View” and then to “Named Views...” for a dialogue: Press ‘Save...’ for another pop-up to name your view. Give it a name, any name, and hit ‘OK’ when done. There’s no limit to the amount of cameras you can save, so save to your heart’s content! And don’t worry, orbiting after you’ve saved your view won’t affect the perfect shot you’ve set up. Simply right-click on ‘Perspective’ again, roll back over to ‘Set View’ and it will show your custom shot under ‘Named Views...’ And there you have it. Rendering in a (very small) nutshell. Like always, experiment is key. This program is a lot more enjoyable when you can do what you please!
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