Help! HDRI Reflectance!

[jujubee]

I have an image which uses HDRI- the problem I had was that the base and the floor was reflecting too much light to the point of being white-washed- as well as emitting light back into the surroundings. I played with the rgb output for stones on the ground in order to get it darker- and hence more 'natural.' But this was a somewhat tedious process of re-rendering and testing. There isn't any specular settings applied to the stone map. Is there any other way to go about reducing how much an object/mat is effected by an HDRI image? Also, is there any way to control the global illumation (indirect) for that specific object?

Here's a copy of my image at the current state- there's some significant amount of work I still need to do:



www.lunarstudio.com

[dejaVu]

You might want to try Exponential or HSV Color Mapping to adjust exposure settings. This will help reduce the blowout due to high dynamic lighting.

[jujubee]

Perhaps I'm just too new at this, but I have no clue what type of lighting/mapping you're referring to. How would one apply this technique to HDRI? last I checked, I couldn't adjust exponential lighting values for the an HDRI map. You can adjust the white clamp if you have the splutterfish i/o plugin in setup- but I only wanted to change the lighting for a particular object/mat- not for the entire scene.

Maybe you know something I don't. If so, please be kind enough to go into more detail. For now, I guess my question remains...

[jujubee]

Ah- I see a switch under G Buffer/Color Mapping. Nothing for HSV Color mapping, just linear (default) and exponential. Does this just act to clamp the brightest and darkest points in a rendered image? There's also no way to adjust the brightness of a partiicular object through color mapping- now your methods effects the entire scene correct?

Also, you don't by any chance know of a way to stop an object/mat from being radious?

[RErender]

For HSV you'll need to update to the latest version, the answer to your other question is in either the system rollout/object settings or the material wrapper both of which give you the ability to adjust GI receive and generation.

[jujubee]

Ah. Thanks for the input.

The second option under object properties- I take it that it falls under Advanced Lighting. Now I assume that this falls under "Radiosity-only Properties." Would I knock out the "Diffuse (reflective and translucent)" check-box or the "exclude from regathering"? I'm not quite sure what the "exclude from regathering" option does.

I thought the Radiosity-only section would apply to the built-in Max Radiosity solution (which I must add is painfully slow...)

[RErender]

hehe, for a second I thought I stopped at the wrong forum regathering...:P

Not those properties, they don't work with V-Ray. I meant in the render dialogue. On the "system" rollout you will find a button "object settings..." there you can adjust the GI on a per object basis, the second method is to use a VRayMtlWrapper around a material to adjust GI per material.

[jujubee]

Thanks man. That's exactly what I was looking for. That information is so good to know. I knew someone out there had to know about these things. I had a bear enough time learning 3dsmax on my own without anyone there to help me out. Let alone, the sub-settings of vray can make one piss their pants. All these terms can be confusing, and manuals more often than not are written for advanced users. You don't know how much I have to thank you!

[RErender]

Anything for an angel glad to help.