Outdoor contrast and shadow

[Stjerne]

Hey,

I am quiet new to the mental ray but has done architectural renderings for some years now for mostly student and research purposes. However starting up the mental ray in 3dsMax 9 provides me with some basic challenges.

 

When I do the renderings as an outdoor rendering of a building on a harbour front, it comes out pretty bright (somehow good) however with nearly no contrast and no specific shadows - that is you can't for instance see the direction of the sun. Even I add a couple of lights e.g. Mr Area it gets a bit more brighter, but still no real shadows (ray traced).

 

I am using the Mental Ray with mostly A&D materials and FG. I tried in the beginning also with GI and and Caustics but this created a totally white image where you could hardly see the buildings even turning down the illumination (only the outer building surface exposing caustics).

Also I have read through tons of posts on e.g. Gamma Corrections, Log Exposure Control etc. but still it doesn't work with GI - a bit better with FG.

My settings for the lights are mainly a Mr Sun and Sky - however changed the sky to a Skylight instead of Mr Physical Sky as everything went pretty bluish (even taking away the background image).

Log Exposure control on 70 brightness, 80000 scale and with exterior daylight on.

I haven't really been getting into the shaders yet (heard that you could add something to the light), but might be more basic things to adjust first.

 

Must be something I missed...

 

Thanks,

Stjerne

[Justin Hunt]

Keep the mrsun and Sky at 1. To tone down the blue tint of the sky drop the saturation.

 

Exposure contol try bright 60, dark 50, mid 1 physical scale 80000 and turn exterior on.

 

Start with the preset of draft for the FG settings.

 

Apply Arch and Design shaders to the objects.

 

If its still too bright then drop the bright values of the exposure control.

 

JHV