Vray Free - still not winning!!!

[cerpnjak]

I have been playing around with Vray Free and have been following the advice and setups of others but still failing to produce a decent render. I haven't got anything to post up right now but basically I have a target light as my sun, set to vray shadows, multiplier about 0.75 and orangy/yellow tint colour. I'm working on an interior scene by the way. Everything seems to be washed out and over exposed. I have blinds on the window but can't seem to get nice shadows from the blinds themselves. I turn off exposure control each time I do a render (Is there a way of turning it off for good?? every time I open up that panel it is always set to the Logarithmic control) Anyway I'm a bit confused and wondered if anyone can help

Cheers

a frustrated Pete!

[chuck]

pete-

 

if you can post your latest rendering along with screen shots of your lighting setup that would be helpful. a viewport shot with the model and lights is a good idea too.

 

are you using standard materials?

 

chuck

[cerpnjak]

All materials are standard max, with a couple of Vraymaps in the reflection slots. I can't post anything today, will have to be tomorrow now. Like I said I have just got the one light at the moment, perhaps I need some lighting inside as well??? Not sure I'll post some settings tomorrow.

Do you know if you can turn of exposure control permanently??

[cerpnjak]

OK here is a render and setup, I haven't finished off all of the texturing, just wanted to see if I could get the lighting right.

PLease advise me on what I should be doing to improve on this god awful render. I started this scene with Mental Ray and was getting some half decent results, I hope I can start to achieve some nice results with Vray too

Thanks in advance

Pete

[AJLynn]

Is there an ambient light set in the Environment?

[mahorela]

I'm not that familiar with the free version but vray has a panel called "gbuffer" something. Inside that is Vray's version of exposure control. By default it is set on linear multiply but it's best to set it on exponential for interiors. Sorry I can't be more specific as I don't have it in front of me. But that looks like the problem your having to me.

[Ricardo Eloy]

VRay Free is pretty much VRay 0.1 or so...I remember back in the early days VRay looked exactly like this.

Anyway, do you have Max's Exposure control on (Environment)? If so, turn it of.

[Jason Matthews]

I forget if the default lights effect the ambient light but turn them off in the global switches in the vray render menus. Also take a look at your color mapping. mess with the settings (linear, exponential, etc.).

[manta]

do you have a ceiling...

[cerpnjak]

Every time I do a render I make sure exposure control is turned off, however everytime I open up the exposure control it is always turned on even though 10 minutes before I turned it off??? I can't seem to turn it off permanently, i sthere a way??

 

As for Gbuffer that feature is excluded from the free version if I'm not mistaken

 

Ambient light not sure I'll have to take a look, haven;t got MAx in front of me right now but will look into it

 

Lastly there is a ceiling, it started off as box and then flipped inside out

[foxlee]

Hi

you need to take out all lighting .all you need is a very simple three light setup.

You do not have the vraylight in free so you have to create a replacement, by using a selfilluminated plane away from the camera.

Create a big plane almost size of a wall plane in the room. Add a white material with an output mat in the diffuse slot to the plane, turn up the rgb value of this and also self illuminate it. This will now act as an soft vraylight but will slow the rendering down.

also set normal daylight with vrayshadow outside to come in through window where appropriate and set environment on in render panel.

The illuminated plane is the closest you can get to the vraylight which is normally used in interiors. It will show up in reflections and in camera so place it carefully. It will automatically create soft shadow.

[Tim Saunders]

Wow, there are a lot of complicated responces here. I've got to say, way too complicated. You are on the right start. I have to disigree with several earlier suggestions. 1- don't use a self-illumniated object as a light source. All you will get are the GI effects from it, not actual shadows, and at the cost of major rendering time. Also, I'm 90% positive exposure control is irrelevant with Vray free. Try some test renders with and without to make sure. And so everyone is clear, the exposure control he is talking about is within max's environment rollout. Default is logorithmic. But like I said, I don't think it matters in Vray free.

 

I suggest changing your secondary bounce to photon map. After that, change all your materials to a single gray material. Remove any glass windows for the moment. Try turning off area shadows for the moment, because I'm not sure how large you have those set. Now run a test render. If it is starting to look more normal, try assigning one material at a time, my gues is the problem is with your white material or reflective materials. Remember that any reflective materials must use the VrayMap as the reflection map. Vray is not compatible with flat mirror or reflect/refract. Ratrace map may work, but it is not optimized for vray use, use VrayMap. If these suggestions don't work, zip the file, and let me take a look at it.

[Ricardo Eloy]

Lastly there is a ceiling, it started off as box and then flipped inside out

Just read this and...

Check if your light has 2-sided shadows on. Since you flipped a box, it means light could pass right thru the faces, since its normals are pointing to the inside. VRay materials are automatic 2-sided mats, so we kind of get used to it and forget (I do that myself) that standard mats are one-sided unless told otherwise... Check that.