LukeC

Hi George, There is a really useful script called overscan that will do the trick for you. Alternatively if you are using VRay cameras, you can use the vertical and horizontal offsets in the cameras properties, however this is only useful for one side at a time, so I'd say overscan is your best bet.

Generally I find it takes a bit of time to find people with the correct lighting to sit right in your scene in post. You may find it possible to search stock photography websites for a similar scene or lighting scenario that matches your 3d scene. Additional to this I find it helps to put 3d people in the scene just as shadow casting objects so your photoshop person sits better in the scene.

If you have your hdr in the vray environment slot and a copy of the hdr in your background, try unticking affect background under the color mapping rollout, that should stop it from being blown out. Give it a shot - it may or may not work.

Ah - ok that gives me a better idea of your scene. It sounds to me like it is simply an exposure issue in the camera. I know it may sound silly, but have you tried pushing the shutter speed up a bit - like bring it up to about 50 - maybe more? A quicker answer to solve this I think would be just to untick the exposure check box in the vray camera properties. It sounds to me like your lighting is working right in your scene, its just your camera is under exposing it, so checking this box will disable the exposure and act the same as a standard camera. Try that and let me know how you go. You may find you'll get better results with your render by lighting your scene with a domelight with a hdri in the map slot instead of using the environment slot (like we talked about above), however this is just a bit of a side note and not relevant to your question.

Ah - in re-reading your question, I think I misread and have answered it wrong (for some reason I assumed you were using a dome light). Anyway you could try lighting your scene with a dome light with a hdri map in it. Alternatively you can put a copy of the material in your background slot and adjust its exposure in the material.

Try setting your dome light to invisible then put a copy of your background map in the Environment Map slot (press 8 on the keyboard to bring it up) with a multiplier of 1. Then in the render settings dialogue - V-Ray tab / Color Mapping rollout - untick affect background. Basically now your background is independent of your dome light and you can adjust each individually. This also will mean you get a proper alpha map as having the background visible in your dome light will just fill in the whole frame with a solid alpha. Hopefully this works for you - let me know if it makes sense.

Hi Chris, Cheers for the reply. I actually noticed this this other day and thats what I have been doing to get around it as well - although its just a bit of an annoyance all the same!

I'm not sure its a case of no one caring but not knowing what to do. I have problems with Nitrous as well - strange issues where wireframes dissapear in shaded mode and when I move a vert the model won't update until I exit subobject mode and back again. The list goes on and on. I am hoping to go through all this when I get a spare moment and try and sort it out. Will report back if I have any luck

Hi guys, I've recently run into an issue where my render elements are not being saved out when rendering a job. I am using max 2012 and vray 2.1 This is a process I have done for many years and has worked fine however it seems to have ceased working. The passes are being calculated and are visible in the VFB. It is possible for me to just manually save out these passes, however when I render a large number of views over the network it becomes a bit of a problem. Has anyone else had this issue and found a way around it? Cheers Luke

That would be a Moiré pattern. You might find that you'll have to make your tile lines thicker, or reduce/eliminate any sharpening filters you were using when rendering in Max or any sharpening you did in post. I can't really help much more then that unfortunately

hmm, given I do a lot of post work on my 3d, AO passes tend to be done in post so I may be missing something. However, it does seem a bit silly to have to apply a vraydirt to every material to get a bit of depth in the image. Id say play with the Vray AO settings in the render settings dialogue (under Global Illumination from memory). That should apply things globally without having to play with the materials. Someone might be able to give a better answer

Looking better If your including AO in your render (or rather, not comping it in post), then like ELEVATION said then adding the AO into the material is a good idea. Peter Guthrie has a good tutorial on how to do this with a vray dirt texture On a side note, with your sun (or whatever light you are using for your sun), make sure the shadow bias is set to 0. For some stupid reason this is still not the default in max. Anyway just check your light settings in the light lister (tools - light lister).

Ah sorry, that was my fault. I wasn't thinking straight this morning. For vray, if you create a vray light and change its type to dome - thats more what I meant. So basically i'd turn off all my lights (so that when it renders you get nothing but black - including any light materials), add a camera then add a dome light and adjust its intensity until I get the level of ambient light I wanted, then add a target direct light as a sun and adjust that accordingly. I use the dome light instead of the GI Environment slot in the Vray-Environment rollout in the render settings. I find it to be less noisy. for MR, I find it easy enough to throw in a daylight system and if I want an overcast day just just disable the sun or reduce its multiplier. You may also need to adjust your exposure control to suit Your vray render looks to me like it may have a gamma issue or possibly multiple lights. Like I said before, a good trick I have found is to disable all lights and build your lighting up again from scratch working from biggest lights first (env then sun, then interior lights for example), that way you dont have any mystery lights playing around in your scene. Hope that helps somewhat, I know my answers are a bit vague, just a tad busy at the moment

Are you looking to render off an AO pass that you'll comp together in post or include all together in one single render? As I generally render off a pass for comping in photoshop. I use both Vray and MR at work and to be honest I find both pretty much the same. All my scenes are lit with a dome light and a direct or sunlight depended on the scene. For Vray I use a vraydirt texture in a vray light material and adjust the dirt settings to control the size / intensity of the AO and MR I use an Ambient/Reflective Occlusion shader in a Mental Ray material as an override. Both of which with no scene lights on and my scene settings turned down for speed - you can find more detailed descriptions on google. To be honest, I wouldn't consider the way of doing an AO pass as a make or break for either engine. I'd just go with whatever you find easiest to use. As a rough personal summary, I'd say Vray has quicker renders at the cost of a slower setup and MR has slower renders at the sake of making it a bit more simple/forgiving to the user. Its a much of a muchness really. Not sure if that answers your question but its the first day back from the holidays so my brain isn't really in gear.

try having a look on scriptspot.com - I'm sure there is one that exists. If I get a spare moment I'll look at writing one. What is it you are trying to do? Keep in mind that making everything outside of the FOV non-renderable will also mean they won't be visible to reflections.