Interior lighting help

[dcastellano]

I am completely new to vray....and trying to render out some images for my thesis defense in 2 weeks (okay maybe not a smart thing to do, but I thought I would try). I can always go back to the scanline renderer for max.

 

Since this is an adative reuse of an old mies building, most of my renderings will be interior. Based on other forums and posts, I have used gi with an hdri map (multi 1.0) and my first test was to add planar v ray lights to the outside of my windows(the south wall I allowed shadows and I didnt for the north side of the building. The default multi, was 30 and the first test seemed a bit blown out, then I decreased them to 15, then 10. I know I need to add a few more lights to the interior, but I am open to suggestions for the type of light and multiplier? Also, I used materials from Vray materials and the steel columns and beams are really grainy. Anyone have a better steel material?

 

I'm attaching some images for reference, they are at the lowest resolution and are pretty lousy (try not to laugh), but my even my test images we're taking forever to render out.

 

Any suggestions for lighting/materials? I'm using vray 1.5 educational advanced. Also, is there any value to the vray camera?

 

 

Any guidance would be appreciated!!!!!

[moodo]

a lot of ways lead to a result. after i have read the tutorial from gus capote published in the 3d world mag issue 101 i tried this workflow and i must say its easy to handle and provides very good and convincing results. and hear is how it work .

1. enviroment gi multiplier up to 2.5

2. for the gi calculation irr map and light cache

3. for the primary lightsource he uses a vraysphere instead of the vray sun because you have more control. the multiplier here is 4 with a slightly yellow hue for example rgb 238,211,168 and a huge radius to achieve soft shadows

4. then create some vray planes in front of the windows with a multiplier of 2 and the same yellow as the sun have. maybe for the the indirect light you can switsch to a blue hue and a lower multiplier.

5. rotate the vray lights in the x axis for around 25 degrees to extend and soft the shadows

for the right exposure use a standard cam and hsv exponential and play around with the darkness and brightness but i prefer the logarythmic exposer control wich is a tool in max and is located under enviroment.

all these settings you download as screenshots under

http://www.3dworldmag.com/page/3dworld?entry=3d_world_101_s_v

i hope it helps a littlebit and was comprehensible

 

cheers

Edited May 4, 2008 by moodo