Using V-Ray Lighting and Ambient Occlusion for Interior Architectural Visualization
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When lighting a space remember that the goal is not to see everything, but to make
it look attractive and inviting. In this tutorial you’ll learn some of the
basic steps using V-Ray lighting and ambient occlusion passes in Mental Ray to achieve
realistic and appealing lighting effects for interior architectural visualization.
You’ll see how to create lights for interior lights, as well as how to address lighting
from outside the scene. You’ll also see how to progressively enhance the lighting
in a scene, as well as how to use ambient occlusion and also assemble all the passes
in Photoshop.
Let’s get started
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Tools Used:
- 3D Studio Max
- V-Ray
- Mental Ray
- Photoshop
Final Image Preview:
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Before we get into lighting I want to go over the render setting I normally use
when rendering in 3DS Max 2009 with V-ray 1.5
Environment Settings:
Press 8 on your keyboard to bring up the “environment and effects” window. Go to
the exposure control tab and choose “Logarithmic Exposure Control” Then go to the
“Logarithmic Exposure Control Parameters” and change the brightness to 67.0 and
contrast to 100.0 all other parameters can be left as they are. This is a way to
get brighter more saturated colors when rendering while also using less intensity
on your lights. |
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Test render settings:
Press the F10 key to bring up the “render setup” window. Click on the “common” tab
then go down to Assign Renderer and assign V-Ray for the Production renderer. Refer
to the image for the test render settings I use. |
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Let there be light:
Once you have a space built and all the textures applied, begin to light the scene
in stages, almost as if you walk into the space and begin turning lights on in related
groups.
Stage 1: Lighting fixtures
Any Lamps, Chandeliers, cove lights, down lights or Vray Light materials should
be rendered first to see the result. In this scene the general lighting for the
space was light panels on the ceiling. I used a warm colored Vray light material
set to 0.3 for this. I also have a background image of a city at night that you
can see outside of the windows, I used a vray light materials for this as well also
set to .3
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As you can see room is already filled with a dim light and the chairs directly below
the lights are brighter than the rest of the space. This good start so let’s move
in to the next stage.
Stage 2: Outside light
If your scene has windows it’s very important to cast some outside light into the
space. Most of the renderings I do have a moody night time feel. Generally I use
vray light and cast a blue light inside. Create vray lights for each window with
these parameters.
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The result is decent but I forgot to do something, any time you have windows and
you want light to pass through them you must change the object properties. Select
the windows, right click then go to object properties. Uncheck both cast and receive
shadows, click “ok” and try another render. |
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Stage 3: Light from view point into the space
This is something I do to make the foreground of the render bright as well as brighten
the space a little more. Create a vray light positioned behind your camera view
to cast light into the space. The same vray light settings should be used as the
outside lights except for the color. Change it to a light yellow then do a render
to see the result.
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Stage 3: Light from view point into the space
This is something I do to make the foreground of the render bright as well as brighten
the space a little more. Create a vray light positioned behind your camera view
to cast light into the space. The same vray light settings should be used as the
outside lights except for the color. Change it to a light yellow then do a render
to see the result.
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