Thablanch

Having the same problem here.. multiple crashes on save, open or mat. editor, and this on random scenes.

The main benifit of using the Vray Camera is not to play with lights. You correct everything from the camera. This is usefull, 'cause in a same room, you may need different exposure depenfing if you are looking at a dark corner or looking at the windows. Also, you can just unclick the exposure toggle, and not use the physical correctness of the camera, but they are still aviable if needed. At the opposite of what stef.thomas is saying, i find it is more tweaking around of light values / HDRI with standard cameras, but then again, everybody's oppinion is different...

What about saving as .vrimg..... A little bit of manual work after, but you can extract the channels you want from there. http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/200R1/tools_vrimg2exr.htm

Vray .ies are really efficient, and render as fast, if not faster sometimes, than Vray lights. Just make sure not to une 3dsMax buildt in ies, but vray ies.

Yep.. gamma.. In 3dsMax menu Customize > Preferences > Gamma and LUT > output gamma 1.0 an not 2.2 ( if you are saving in a standard non float format like tiff, png or jpg )

There is an excellent video on Autodesk website for this.. What 2.5d snap does, exemple: Go on a TOP view, you have a rectangle on the floor and an other rectangle with a Z elevation of 50 units. With the 2.5d snap activated, always in a top view, you will move the second rectangle and snap it to the rectangle laying on the ground level. From a top view, they are aligned, but if you swivel the view a little, in a user or perspective view, you will se that they are not at the same height.. so they did "snap" on the X and Y axis, but not on the Z axis. This tool is usefull to align objects that are not on the same plane. (Align objects, in a row) Always use this tool from a flat view ( Top, bottom, left, right, front) but not from a user or perspective view

Learn about lighting, but also, look around you, if you look up, the ceiling on top of your head right now is not white, even if it was painted white.... A must read, a good start point: http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm

Usually textures comes with it when you buy pre-made collections.. Was the map folder accessible? Was it the good rendering engine? ( eg: you bought cars for Vray and using MentalRay as a renderer)

That is quite a wide question... For what is on the ground, seems to be a simple extrude. ( from the acad lines or splines drawn in 3dsMax) For the roundins buildings, a little bit of polymodeling ( rough boxes) with the turbosmooth modifier should do the job.

I never ever move at 0,0.. there is going to have some changes on that layout on the long run and I want new plans that I import to be bang on with any previous imports.. so I would for sure skip this step.. Leave the drawing wherever it was drawn.

Editable patches x2 ...

As you mentionned, do not use pure white.. I tend to put a little bit of yellow You could also use exponential / reinhardt instead of linear. This avoids the overwashed zones, but takes away a little bit of contrast.

In your material, fresnel reflections should be checked, so you'll get glass instead of mirror

That's what I ment also... The Fog "should" affect shadows as well

You can do this by following this tutorial: http://www.richardrosenman.com/project/imagesandmore/?cid=85 Hope it helps.