Now that I'm not the only one who uses Vray and 3ds Max here, I figure it would be beneficial to help you guys out a bit and get you on the right track.
This is a semi lengthy process setting up Vray correctly and doing the composite work, but you'll get the cleanest renders possible. This is a tutorial on how to take multi-pass layers of a rendering and composite them into a single image, similar to how you would create an HDRI photo, only with depth, reflection, and ambient occlusion. Not to mention this is the process you'll likely be going through working at a professional company if you plan on doing this sort of stuff for a living.
So let's get started.
Open whatever scene you're working on in 3ds Max (I'm using 2009 64-bit) and change your default renderer from scanline to Vray from the Render Setup menu.
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----
My scene is a simple room I made at work, yours can be anything.
So the first thing you should do is make sure all of your materials are Vray materials, not Standard ones. I won't go into detail on how to make realistic Vray materials, save that for another time.
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----
Next is your lighting setup. This part is CRITICAL if you want things to look good. In this scene I use a 3 point lighting process, using 2 Vray lights, and a Vray Sun
----
Again, won't go into detail on lighting, some other time.
Here's the juicy stuff though, open your Render Settings menu and go to the Vray tab.
----
These settings make for crisp, believable images even at lower resolutions.
Next go to the Indirect Illumination tab.
----
These settings are good for what you're probably doing. The Irradiance map settings can be turned up a bit higher if you're going to be working on a very large scale, but it increases render time by a ton, and doesn't make it look much better, so very low is fine.
Next head over to the Render Elements tab.
----
This is going to actually render 3 different passes at once, each on a different layer, and one combined.
Go back to your Common tab and make sure you have the right render dimensions and make sure you specify where to save the image(s)
----
I use .tif for the initial files, but you can use jpgs or png's as well.
You might want to turn your dimensions down from mine as well, I likely have a much faster computer than you do.
Go ahead and render your scene, and when it's finished, head back into 3ds max. It's time to make an Ambient Occlusion pass.
Open your materials and click on a new slot.
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Open the material browser and tick the "Incompatible" checkbox on the left.
Select Arch & Design
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Turn your reflectivity of this new material to 0, then scroll down to its "special Effects" rollout. Tick the Ambient Occlusion box.
----
Sweet, now we need to apply it to everything in the scene, there's an easy way to do that without messing up your materials for everything. Open your Render Settings menu and go to the Vray tab.
----
Tick the "Override mtl" box, and then drag your newly created material into the empty override mtl box.
Go back to the render elements tab and remove the other elements. (this is important otherwise they will overwrite your old ones)
----
----
Go back to your Common tab and change the file name to something else, so you don't overwrite anything.
----
Render!
When it's done, open up PhotoShop (I'm using CS5)
File > open > wherever you saved your renders.
Open all of them.
Use your original render as your base file, and then begin layering the other files on top of it. You don't need to use the Z-Depth pass at this time, just the ambient occlusion, and Raw Reflection.
----
The original render looks good and all, but it's still lacking a tad in the realism and contrast department, using levels or curves and other methods in photoshop can't bring you the effects that this method will.
Choose the Raw Reflection layer, and change its blending mode to "Overlay" and bring its opacity down a ton. What this layer is doing is creating sharpened and enhanced reflections in all of your reflective materials, bringing a lot of vibrance and life to them.
Do the same for the Ambient Occlusion layer, but change its blending mode to "Multiply", for my scene an opacity of about 30% works well. This layer enhances the shadows and indirect lighting on your scene, it darkens shadows and adds a warmer ambiance to the scene.
Here's my high-res final result.
feel free to ask any questionsssss!
I'll talk about using the Z-Depth map in a second post here or something.
This is a semi lengthy process setting up Vray correctly and doing the composite work, but you'll get the cleanest renders possible. This is a tutorial on how to take multi-pass layers of a rendering and composite them into a single image, similar to how you would create an HDRI photo, only with depth, reflection, and ambient occlusion. Not to mention this is the process you'll likely be going through working at a professional company if you plan on doing this sort of stuff for a living.
So let's get started.
Open whatever scene you're working on in 3ds Max (I'm using 2009 64-bit) and change your default renderer from scanline to Vray from the Render Setup menu.
----
----
My scene is a simple room I made at work, yours can be anything.
So the first thing you should do is make sure all of your materials are Vray materials, not Standard ones. I won't go into detail on how to make realistic Vray materials, save that for another time.
----
----
Next is your lighting setup. This part is CRITICAL if you want things to look good. In this scene I use a 3 point lighting process, using 2 Vray lights, and a Vray Sun
----
Again, won't go into detail on lighting, some other time.
Here's the juicy stuff though, open your Render Settings menu and go to the Vray tab.
----
These settings make for crisp, believable images even at lower resolutions.
Next go to the Indirect Illumination tab.
----
These settings are good for what you're probably doing. The Irradiance map settings can be turned up a bit higher if you're going to be working on a very large scale, but it increases render time by a ton, and doesn't make it look much better, so very low is fine.
Next head over to the Render Elements tab.
----
This is going to actually render 3 different passes at once, each on a different layer, and one combined.
Go back to your Common tab and make sure you have the right render dimensions and make sure you specify where to save the image(s)
----
I use .tif for the initial files, but you can use jpgs or png's as well.
You might want to turn your dimensions down from mine as well, I likely have a much faster computer than you do.
Go ahead and render your scene, and when it's finished, head back into 3ds max. It's time to make an Ambient Occlusion pass.
Open your materials and click on a new slot.
----
Open the material browser and tick the "Incompatible" checkbox on the left.
Select Arch & Design
----
Turn your reflectivity of this new material to 0, then scroll down to its "special Effects" rollout. Tick the Ambient Occlusion box.
----
Sweet, now we need to apply it to everything in the scene, there's an easy way to do that without messing up your materials for everything. Open your Render Settings menu and go to the Vray tab.
----
Tick the "Override mtl" box, and then drag your newly created material into the empty override mtl box.
Go back to the render elements tab and remove the other elements. (this is important otherwise they will overwrite your old ones)
----
----
Go back to your Common tab and change the file name to something else, so you don't overwrite anything.
----
Render!
When it's done, open up PhotoShop (I'm using CS5)
File > open > wherever you saved your renders.
Open all of them.
Use your original render as your base file, and then begin layering the other files on top of it. You don't need to use the Z-Depth pass at this time, just the ambient occlusion, and Raw Reflection.
----
The original render looks good and all, but it's still lacking a tad in the realism and contrast department, using levels or curves and other methods in photoshop can't bring you the effects that this method will.
Choose the Raw Reflection layer, and change its blending mode to "Overlay" and bring its opacity down a ton. What this layer is doing is creating sharpened and enhanced reflections in all of your reflective materials, bringing a lot of vibrance and life to them.
Do the same for the Ambient Occlusion layer, but change its blending mode to "Multiply", for my scene an opacity of about 30% works well. This layer enhances the shadows and indirect lighting on your scene, it darkens shadows and adds a warmer ambiance to the scene.
Here's my high-res final result.
feel free to ask any questionsssss!
I'll talk about using the Z-Depth map in a second post here or something.
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