RENDERING WORKFLOW OLIVER HESSIAN
DOCUMENT SETUP • LAYERS • BLOCKS Try to keep the layer structure clean and relevant to the seperation of materials as opposed to organising per floor or section of the building. If this is required use the sub-folders to maintain your material layers under building section layers Save your file before the export process as it is cleaner to deal with blocks in 3ds Max if they have been exploded. Use the command “SelBlockInstance” to select all blocks then “Explode” repeat this to ensure nested blocks are included. Select all unnessecary curves and delete using “Selcrv”
EXPORT Select all geometry and use command “Export”
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EXPORT SETTINGS • DWG • CAM METRIC • NO OF POLYGONS When saving the filetype choose DWG from the list.
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You will then be asked what export scheme you would like to use. Select CAM Metric. Select the Edit Scheme button to open window 2 and check that the export surfaces and export meshes are both set to Meshes and close.
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Select OK from window 1 and window 3 should appear. This is how refined your mesh will be. For orthogonal geometry this can be kept at the minumum however as soon as you’re dealing with curved geometry this should be increased to halfway or above to prevent excess facetting. NOTE: • Complex surfaces are sometimes better exported in the .sat format. • Remeber to undo your file or revert to the saved to retain your blocks.
3DS MAX This is what you should see when opening 3ds max Design. Select New Empty Scene if you’re just starting out.
UNIT SETUP 1
• CUSTOMIZE • UNIT SETUP • METRES In order to ensure that your model comes in at the correct scale you need to ensure that 3dsMax unit setup is correct. Select “Customize” from the top menu. Select “Unit setup”
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In Window 1 you can leave the display units as generic. Select “System Unit Setup” In Window 2 make your units Meters and press OK to exit all the menus. NOTE: This should only need to be done once as your settings should save to your computer.
IMPORT Select the 3dsMax icon in the top left and select import from the menu. Find your exported file and open. Window 1 should open, be sure to check the re-scale option from the menu. Otherwise use the settings here.
CLAY MATERIAL 1
Select the Material Editor Icon from the toolbar If your default material library looks like this then your materials are setup for Mental Ray rendering and will not work with Vray. In order to setup a Vray Material you will need to select the button that in this example has Arch&Design on it This will open Window 1. Browse down the Materials tab to Vray and select VrayMtl. This is your base for the majority of Vray materials.
CLAY MATERIAL 1
To edit the colour of the material select the slot next to Diffuse in the material window. This will open Window 2. To open a Material preview window (window 1) double click the small icon in the material library slot.
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APPLY MATERIAL Select all geometry (ctrl-A) and then with the Clay material slot selected press the “Assign Material to Selection� button. This is good practice as it ensures that there are no unsupported materials in the file
VIEWPORTS • ALT-W To reveal the default viewport setup use the shortcut Alt-W, this allows you to toggle between an individual and multiple viewports. Go to the Top viewport to draw the ground plane in.
GROUND PLANE So the building isn’t floating in space we’ll model a ground plane. The simplest way to do this is to select the Plan tool in 3dsMax’s “Create>Geometry>Standard Primitives” menu. Once Selected go to the plan view and click drag a rectangle. The dimensions of this are then editable immediately below the Plan button. Should you need to come back to edit these dimensions they can be reached from the “Modify” tab (next to Create at the top) Once finished apply the Clay material to the plane.
DAYLIGHT To create a daylight system in the “Create” tab find the far right button called “Systems” Select Daylight from the buttons and in the plan view Click-drag and you’ll see a compass, once you release the mouse button a sun will then stretch out. Don’t worry about the position of North or how high the sun goes as you can edit this in the option below. If you’re sun is in the way of your building just amend the Orbital scale at the bottom.
LOCATION
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To give yourself accurate solar conditions set your project location. This is set by clicking on the “Set Location� button which opens Window 1 and navigating to your desired location or you can input longitude and lattitude for more accurate data.
VRAY SUN & SKY
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Next you need to adjust the settings for the Daylight system to match Vray. Go to the “Modify” tab
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Under the Daylight Parameters select VraySun from the first drop down. Then you need to uncheck the Skylight box, highlighted in Window 2
CAMERAS To set up your renderable viewpoint you need to place a camera in the scene. This is best done in the top view. In the “Create” menu select Cameras and where it says Standard drop down to Vray. This will reveal the option to create a VrayPhysical Camera.
CAMERAS Select VrayPhysicalCamera and go to the top view In plan Click+Hold where you want the camera to be and drag to where you want to aim the camera. This by default will be at 0 height as you can see in the Left viewport.
CAMERAS To see what the view is from this new camera go to one of you other viewports, in this case the bottom right. In the top left of each viewport are 3 menus. Select the second which is the title of that view and a drop down appears. Select Camera and then choose the Camera you have set up. This view will then display that Camera
CAMERAS 1
In order for you to see an accurate version of this view you will need to see it in proporion to your render output ratio. This is displayed as a “Safe Frame” and can be actuvated in the same drop down menu. So in this case select VrayPhysicalCamera001 and then toggle the “Show Safe Frame” option. This is deirectly related to the render output which can be found in the “Render Setup” window (Window 1) Controlling the position of the camera can be done in a number of ways. With the Camera Viewport active (shown by the yellow line) There are a seperate set of controls just for the camera in the very bottom right of the screen From the other viewports you can also select the camera and target separately and move with the 3dsMax move tool highlighted in the top left of the toolbar.
CAMERAS 4
Some of the most helpful features on Vray Physical camera: • Focal Length - the lower the number the wider the angle of the lens • Vertical Shift - Allows you to make perspective correction when using a wide angle lens looking up or down to keep the verticals straight • F-stop - aperture of camera like a real camera. The lower the number the wider the aperture therefore more exposure • Shutter speed - works the same as a real camera, the bigger the number the faster the speed. • Film speed (ISO) - same as real camera and easiest way to correct over/under exposure. The higher the number the more sensitive to light.
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SETTINGS
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There are a lot of settings....
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Highlighted the important bits that have changed:
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1. Output size: changes the size of your render output. 2. Adaptive DMC: adjust this in balance with light source and material subdivisions to refine render times vs output quality (noise). 1:1 values for min & max will produce quick but rough renders etc. 3. Colur mapping: Change this to Reinhardt and leave the gamma values as the are and use Sub pixel mapping and Clamp output to prevent light blotches. 4. Global Illumination: Turn on and option to render in Ambient Occlusion can be helpful 5. GI Bounces: Subject to debate but using Irradiance map and Light Cache produces accurate and quick renders. 6. Irradiance map setting: Use presets for quicker vs more accurate renderings. 7. Light Cache settings: High subdivisions and smaller sample size = less noise but longer render times. 8. DMC Sampler: Use as shown or for more explanation on subdivision/samples/dmc go to GrantWarwick.net 9. Dynamic Memory Limit: Increase from default for complicated scenes 10. Render Elements: Add from a wide range
of options however these are the basics. Recommend always having ExtraTex, Z-Depth and Wire Colour 11. ExtraTex Render Element: This ouputs a seperate ambient occlusion pass but needs a VrayDirt material loaded into the hightlighted slot. 12. Z-Depth Render Element: Outputs a pass communicating distance from the camera in a scene so therefore should be adjusted for each view. This number normaly being the furthest object in the scene
VrayWireColourRender Pass
AMBIENT OCCLUSION For the Extra Tex Render Element setup you will need to load a material into the slot that Currently says “Map#393371 (VrayDirt) To do this select the rectangle which will bring up the Material/Map Browser. Scroll down to Maps>V-ray>VrayDirt Once this is loaded in, to edit the settings of this texture we need to see it in the Material editor.
ExtraTex Render Pass
AMBIENT OCCLUSION 1
To get the VrayDirt Material into the Editor all we need to do is drag it from the Render element window into an empty slot in the Editor. Once you let go of the material you’ll see Window 1 pop up, select Instance (this means anything you do to one will affect the other) You’ll then see the VrayDirt settings in the editor panel. The only settings you should need to change are the Radius and Subdivisions. Radius depends on the scale and distance of your scene but essentially is how far the dirt texture spreads. For an interior scene this might be best aroun .5-1m where as for urban projects it could be between 3-6m This then sits on a multiply later in Photoshop to add some depth the scene.
OUTPUT There are 2 different places your render can appear when using Vray. Vray has its own render window called the “Vray Frame Buffer” (VFB) If the highlighted option is checked the render will appear like shown and you can toggle through the render elements where it says “RGB Colour” To save out all the elements select the multiple drives next to the normal save symbol. There are many formats you can save you images to however if you want the embedded alpha channel to be preserved then .tiff or .tga formats are best. An alpha layer seperates what is your model from the background, enabling you to drop in your own image behind in Photoshop
OUTPUT If you don’t have the “Enable Vray Frame Buffer” checked your render will come out in the 3ds Max Default render preview screenm shown on the left. If you have render elements these will appear as separate windows. These can be automatically saved in the Render Setup Window, just select Files and choose a location and file name and upon completion the render and elements will be saved.
HDRI An alternative or compliment to a daylight system is to use an HDRI map. This essentially lights the scene using a dome that imitates the sky and a light source in that sky. This can be effective for animations where you want to render in a sky or to get more realistic reflections from the sky. To do this go to the “Create� tab and across to Lights. Select the drop down menu highlighted and select Vray. From this menu select Vray Light and the right menu should appear. In the Type drop down select Dome.
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HDRI In the Top view place the VrayLight. This can be anywhere as the Dome in the viewport is only indicative. To assign a sky map to this dome light you need to select the “Modify� tab Scroll down until you see the Texture section. Select the rectangle that says None. This will open the Material/Map Browser (Window 1). From the Maps>Vray menu select VrayHDRI.
HDRI To edit the HDRI settings we need to drag the texture into the Material Editor. Select Spherical from the Mapping type drop down menu as shown. You can then browse to an HDRI map you have saved You can then use the Horiz Rotation to control where the main light is coming from. If you’re using in combination with a Daylight system these should line up otherwise you’ll have 2 shadows.
HDRI In order to view the HDRI in the viewport the texture we have created needs to be loaded into the Environment slot. This is reached via the “Rendering� toolbar at the top of the page. In the environment map slot there is currently the map that is loaded in by default when creating the Daylight system (VraySky). Drag the HDRI texture from its slot onto this box and select Instance.
HDRI To view this in the viewport we need to adjust the Viewport settings in the Camera viewport. Select the third menu in the top right of the Viewport which describes the view style of the viewport, scroll down to Viewport Background and select Environment Background. The viewport should then look like this:
TEXTURES 1
From the Clay base you can create most of your materials. To start drag the Clay material into the next slot over and rename it to Timber1. Select the empty box next to the Diffuse colour swatch. This should open the Material/Map Browser. Scroll down to Maps>Standard>Bitmap and select OK Browse to the relevant texture for the map as in Window 1
TEXTURES This texture should then display on your preview sphere. Once you apply this material to an object in the scene you can then see this texture in the viewport if the “Show Shaded Material in Viewport” Button is pressed. This is just below the Material slots There are a few things that can stop this from working check these: • Check Viewport button is on • Uncheck use Real-World Scale in the bitmap menu • Uncheck use Real-World Scale in the UVW map options (see over page)
UVW MAPPING In order to correctly scale a texture on an object a UVW map modifier if required. In order to apply this you must select the object that you have applied the material to and go to the “Modify� tab . Scroll down the drop down menu until you find UVW Map exactly as shown here as there are a few options. This will apply the modifier into the objects stack with the settings shown below. In most cases a Box mapping will suffice, the dimensions of which can be filled in here. Another useful option is if you have already succesfully mapped a portion of material and want the same again or materials to line up you can Acquire the settings by using this button and selecting the previous object in the viewport.
BUMP MAPS Bump maps allow a texture to appear 3 dimensional without having to change the geometry it’s applied to. This is achieved by loading a greyscale map and Vray interprets the values from black to white as crevices or peaks in the material. In this example you can see the concrete texture with and without the bump map and the textures relating to the bump map and diffuse map. Bump maps are loaded in the same way as the diffuse maps. You select the empty box next to the Bump map, highlighted here. To reach this section scroll down the material editor to the Maps section. A shortcut for this sometimes is to just drag the diffuse map into the bump map as it analyses the light to dark properties so doesn’t need to be grayscale to become a bump map.
Bump map
Diffuse map
SLATE EDITOR The Slate Material Editor is an alternative to the traditional Compact Editor which we have been using so far. You can toggle between the two from the Modes menu in the top left of either editor. The slate editor allows you to see all of the connections and settings in one window instead of jumping up and down between layers of settings. The bottom right of the window here shows the normal settings window you would see in the Compact, however you only have to double click on one of the other maps or materials to bring up the settings of that component. In this example I have 2 bitmaps references in. 1 is for the Diffuse of a concrete texture and the other is for the bump map. These are then adjusted and then plugged into the various slots making up the overall material. The Material/Map Browser is embedded into the left so that components can be dropped onto the canvas.