Environments/background

[Michael Mlynek]

hey guys,

sorry for double-posting, i guess my question should have been posted in this section.

As said i am pretty new to 3ds and vray, so i am doing some experiments in order to learn it, right now i got stuck with the environment and background:

I use a hemispheric map, that is black on the lower half, first i dropped it into the environment tab, then realized that i cant figure how to move the texture down so i wouldnt see the black lower half, so i created a hemispherical object with the texture in a VrayLightMtl. I fear though that this hemisphere is emmiting light and washes out the colors of the scene.

How do i get the material on the sphere with "selfillumination"?

 

My next problem is the horizon, how do i get some nice fog towards the horizon? (or blur) as said i am pretty new to max.....

My 2nd idea is to add some kind of skyline to the back, have to think about it how to do it best...got some ideas for me?

Thanks in advance, hope you guys can help me.

[Michael Mlynek]

ups, sorry the image has not been uploaded, here it comes

[Scott Schroeder]

For the background, I'd use the texture on the hemisphere as you are doing. You can either use a good old standard material with 100% self illumination or the vray light material. The key to use either one is setting your object NOT to generate GI, in fact you can check it off visible to GI all together. This way Vray will not treat it as a light source.

 

The second question part is a little bit more dicey. There are several ways to achieve this. You can play with the depth of field in Vray and use the physical camera. That could take some time which you may or may not have. The easier solution is to take your image into something like Photoshop and manually add in the blur and fog yourself. This may not be the most accurate, but it's the fastest.

[nivvu]

same as elvis....

 

cheers... :-)

[Michael Mlynek]

Thanks a lot for the feedback, now i decided to continue on my testing.

I got that far, tell me what you think and what might be better. This is the first mood i was rendering, will do some more with other hdrs

[jophus14]

Apply a camera correction on your camera to get those building vertically parallel. Looks nice, but the background really desaturates the image and the reflection in the windows display a different sky.

[Michael Mlynek]

Thanks a lot for the input, its my first vray exterior, so i wonder do you guys use different hdr or panos for the environment and reflection and gi? Since i cant scale em much (new to max aswell) and this time it fitted (its the same pano as instance in environment and thus in the reflection).