Mental Ray Night Interior Scene

[PeggyM]

I am a beginner in 3dmax and the only scenes I have done have been intense day-light scenes. Now I need to a night scene of a Restaurant and do not know where to begin. I have started searching through the treads to get any direction. Does anyone have any advice to someone starting a night scene blindly?

 

Thank you for your time.

 

* I had originally posted this in the 3dmax Forum and then saw the post regarding keeping these type of posts in the Mental Ray Forum. My apoligizies.

[Justin Hunt]

Start with placing photometric lights where the real light fittings would be. Then play with the final gather settings or if you really want to do a combination of photon and FG .

 

The process is the same as if your doing a sun-lighht scene, except there is no sun:). Dont be afraid to decrease the exposure EV values to brighten up the renderings.

 

Keep posting in the WIP forum for more specific help when needed.

 

jhv

[PeggyM]

Thank you for your advice. I started working on it and I am lost. Things are happening that I am not sure how to fix. I started off, puttting Photometric Free lights in to get started. I got anxious so I added some materials. I did the Render Setup quickly and checked/unchecked basic things. THis is shown in JPEG attached "5_lighting_furn_materials".

Then I bought a chandelier model to add, but before putting it in, tested it in photoshop & brightened up the image- shown in JPEG "1_chandlier_ceiling"> This is in the direction of how I want the rendering to look.

 

Then I started setting up the rendering more, and it only made things worse. I am not finished tweaking/perfecting my materials and the lights are not working well either. There are large areas of light on certain materials, and also a strange grayish look to the rendering. I turned down all my reflective materials, as well as made the windows a standard MR material to reduce reflections and glare. Am I on the right track?

 

I have shown my settings in one jpeg called "settings_jpeg12" and the rendering is named "12_" I would like to put the chandelier in there but it is too large.

 

I have never done a mr Proxy before and when I try to create it, I must be missing a step because it does not work. Any suggestions on Lighting and Settings?

 

Thank you for your time. I appreciate any input.

[Jose Negrete]

i would try more like 200-300 rays per fg point. your ev is pretty low. that means your lights are not as bright. i usually start off around 10.5-11 ev for interior scene (although use whatever works). i would also increase bounces to 4 or 5

 

i think the lights should not be spherical... i would use uniform diffuse and set the light emitting shape to whatever best fits the fixture it would be emitting from.

 

hope any of this helps