VRay Sun, Sky and Physical Camera video tut + Bonus Script!

Common Common :: Tutorials, Tips & Tricks
1

New link, kindness of Posterous from VRayElite (and this forum, of course:) )

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http://rapidshare.com/files/7478059/Part\_1.avi.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/7478062/Part\_2.avi.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/7473970/Part\_3.avi.html
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another link, one 104 megs rar.
Another “non-legit”, direct link (i was never mailed or pmd, but found them with google. the hoster is free to mail/pm me in case he wants them removed). seem dead slow here, but may prove a shortcut to some.
http://www.maxarea.com/download/video/physcam\_tut.rar
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This is the scene i used throughout
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http://www.scriptspot.com/lele/VRay\_Physical\_Mats\_Converter\_v1.1c.ms
The script to change diffuse and reflection maps and colours to a user-set value.
Please note: this is NOT a macroscript. To use it just do “maxscript->run script” and point to it.

It’s an informal talk over the mike, rather than a pro tutorial, but it should prove useful to those of you that still wonder about how these three should work, particularly for what concerns lighting intensity and distribution.

part1: intro, measurements of light intensities (standard/sun), study of material’s reaction to different lights
part2: Individual Methods to compensate for the HDR character of the sun, and my proposed workflow.
part3: Adding GI and bringing the babe home: save 250% rendertime, and get a nicer, cleaner, more balanced picture.

Please give me some feedback on this: if it’s understandable, if it makes any sense to you, if you’d like to see me quit or expand on the issues, and on which ones.

Thanks for your time :slight_smile:

Lele

P.S.: should anyone wish to host the 80-odd MB of the tuts, please pm me first. they’re meant for the forum users, not for emule, so please don’t share the files, rather share the link to this post. :slight_smile:

2

downloding right now Lele :wink:
i ll watch them tonite (i hope!)

and will lay heavy critics tomorow!
:lol:

3

Thank you Lele!

4

edit…
well…i ll watch the 1st cause i have to wait 45 minutes to dwnl the 2nd and so on… :shock:
arghhh

5

hey lele, its your voice? :smile:

going to watch now.

6

Eheh jonny, it has to be :stuck_out_tongue:

As for the downloads, aye, unfortunately it’s rapidshare: 10$ a month not to wait…
I / we can wait for a good soul, should this be worth the hassle at all :slight_smile:

Lele

7

Great videos studioDIM. Very helpfull. I understand the workflow for
sun/sky/phys cam alot better now. Thanks for taking the time to put
these together. Great work. :slight_smile:

Regards,
Mike

8

Further to what I said in MSN Lele, have a look here.

Seems totally unresticted.

9

posted them on

Will upload somewhere else as well

Lele

10

Cool.. enroute now :smile:

11

Very Cool, and really needed. Combining LWF and correct lighting and exposing is producing v good results.

I have a question about the 0.255 rgb mult. Can it be left at 0.255 or does it have to be changed for every colour?

If the vrayColour mat had a gamma correct tab, as I think Vlado has done in RC4 would this overcome things, ie just set the gamma to 2.2, and choose a colour, and perfect?

If max had the option to automatically apply 2.2 to colour swatches as it does for inport bitmaps, this whole issue would be solved?

Well done on the videos, I learnt the expression shortcut I had forgotten!

Cheers

12

It does have that option in your preferences - gamma, bitmap input gamma and affect colour sliders.

13

joconnell,
for what I know that option is missing in viz (thanx a lot autodesk, we can hope in rel. 2008), so probably the new gamma correct for vrmtl could be a useful workaround to avoid the cc plugin.

thanx lele for your tuts

a.

14

The 0.255 idea is something that popped in my head while working on preparing the video.
A trick to remember to darken the materials’ diffuse (reflection and whatnot), and do so fairly consistently and in the right-ish ballpark.
There’s no science in the number, just the luck that that one works well enough. and is visually appealing :slight_smile:
And frees us of most of the guesswork, once we have the resulting colour firmly at a quarter of its brightness, we can just go about the vray colour map picking 8bit colours at will, like we always did.


This is the same scene (whites are 64 gray, or pure white times 0.255), with some toying around to find out if i raved, or the balance is preserved with advanced materials and so on.
Maximum reflection colour was 110 (the Sphere, with no glossies).
Gargoyle specular was at 80, i reckon,SSS light intensity was at 1 (no faking, multiplying or anything…), as well as fog multiplier.
Once the scene is ready, the rest falls in our lap without more work, it seems.

Thanks for the kind words so far, glad it helps bits :slight_smile:

Lele

15

It does have that option in your preferences - gamma, bitmap input gamma and affect colour sliders.

Yeah sorry, I know that option for inport bitmaps, its an option for applying the same gamma to all colour swatches it really needs.

That would mean materialsl could be set up as have always done, and all maps/colours would be corrected auto.

16

Nice render lele - you’re right, the light does look really natural in it - I’ll have to get the videos so :slight_smile:

17

Nice one Lele!
what 'bout maps?how do u deal with them atm?

i m sticking with colorcorrect atm cause i can use it for both color or maps…
:roll:

this tuts r in the base of my concern towards the current material editor…it s very effective to preview correctly ur materials!

18

Supposing we have a well levelled map (ranges from 0 to 255), we use the simplest of tricks, say for the diffuse slot: set diffuse colour to pitch black ( 0 ), and set the map amount (under the maps rollout, the spinner by the channel name) to 25.5 to achieve exactly the same results.
You can quickly test this with a purely white bitmap: with black diffuse colour and 25.5 map multiplier it should look precisely as a vray color map set to white with rgb multiplier set to 0.255 (after all, they express the same thing when the underlying colour of the map is black 0).
Of course, not all maps are 0-255 in range, so a bit more trial and error may be needed with them to find the ideal spot.

Hope it clarifies a bit, if not keep asking :).

Lele

19

I changed the rgb value in the ouput of my maps to .25-.5 and it worked
like a champ.
Thanks again!

Regards
Mike

20

aye, that can be done of course, but has a drawback: the map cannot be instanced anymore.
If you leave the rgb mult at 1 and use the map influence spinner, you’ll be able to instance the map across different channels, and tweak each individually (less memory overhead).

Lele