Mental Ray Lighting
In this beginner’s tutorial we’re going to illuminate a simple warehouse interior in 3ds Max. We’ll explore techniques to illuminate the interior through windows only. To keep things simple we’ll concentrate on lights that work with Final Gather and leave Global Illumination out of the discussion. I’m using 3ds Max 2011.
Step 1 Mental Ray Renderer
We’re going to render the scene with Mental Ray. By default 3ds Max uses the Scanline renderer so we have to change that. Change the renderer to Mental Ray ().
Step 2 Warehouse Geometry
This tutorial is about Mental Ray lighting but first we’ll create a really simple warehouse interior. Create a box ( ) in the top viewport . Modify the box ( ) according to the following parameters:
- Length: 20
- Width: 20
- Height: 10
- Length Segs: 5
- Width Segs: 1
- Height Segs: 3
Step 3 Creating Windows
Next we’re going to create the windows. Add Edit Poly modifier to the box ( ). Activate the polygon sub-object level, and delete two polygons in the right viewport.
Activate the vertex sub-object level and move the vertices to change the size and shape of the windows according to the picture below. ( Click and drag to select a row or column of vertices at once. )
Now the geometry is complete, but since we’re going to render the interior we should flip the normals of all the polygons:
- Activate the polygon sub-object level
- Select all polygons ( CTRL + a )
- Go to the modify panel and click ‘Flip’ in the Edit Poly modifier ( )
- Deactivate the polygon sub-object level
Step 4 Creating Camera
Create a target camera ( ) in the top viewport and apply ( ) the following parameters:
- Parameters
- Lens: 20 ( )
Right-click on the Perspective view and press ‘c’ in the keyboard to change it to camera view. Move the camera inside the box to get a view like in the picture below.
Step 5 Warehouse Material
Open Material Editor ( ) and create the material for the warehouse:
- Click “Get Material” button and select ( doubleclick ) ‘Arch & Design (mi)’ from the list ( ).
- Select the warehouse and assign the material to it.
- Reflectivity: 0 ( )
Apply diffuse and bump maps:
- Bump map: Composite ( )
- Add Smoke map to the first layer of the Composite Map ( )
Size: 0,5
# Iterations: 20
Color #1: Black
Color #2:
Dark Gray ( RGB 50, 50, 50 ) - Add second layer to the Composite map. Change the blending mode to Addition. Add Speckle map to the second layer ( )
Size: 0,4
Color #1: Light gray ( RGB 180, 180, 180 )
Color #2: Black
- Add this file as a diffuse map ( )
And here is how the rendered interior with default lighting looks like:
Step 6 The Main Light Source
Now it’s the time to create the lighting. Let’s start with the main light source (sun). Create Mental Ray area spot ( ) in the front viewport. Place the spot light according to the picture below. Modify the spotlight ( ) according to the following parameters:
- Spotlight Parameters
- Hotspot/Beam: 24
- Falloff/Field: 26
- General Parameters
- Shadows: On (Ray Tracted Shadows)
( Tip: If you’d like to make the light more directional, just move the spotlight farther away from the warehouse. )
Render the image to see the lighting:
Step 7 The Environment
At the moment we can’t even see the windows because the background color is black (by default). Let’s go to the environment settings ( ) and change the background color:
- Click ‘None’ and select Glow ( ) from the Material / Map Browser
- Open Material Editor ( ). Drag and drop the Glow shader from environment settings to an empty material slot in Material Editor ( make sure to select ‘instance’ when asked ). Make the following adjustments to the Glow shader:
Glow: White
Brightness: 4
Render the scene to see the effect:
Now that we can see the windows, let’s apply a glow around them. Apply Glare Camera Shader ( ) Just turn the output shader on, the glare shader should be selected by default. Render the image again to see the difference. ( )
(The glow effect might seem really strong at the moment but in my opinion it works well in the final image. You can adjust the strength of the glow by adjusting the brightness of the glow shader or by adjusting the glare shader itself.)
Step 8 Indirect Lighting
At the moment we have only the spot light (sun). The image is very dark and there is no indirect light. Create a skylight ( ) to simulate the indirect light coming from the windows. Apply ( ) the following settings to the skylight:
- Multiplier: 1,5
Render the scene to see the lighting:
Some light reaches the ceiling over the windows but as a whole the image still looks about the same. We need to drive more light inside the warehouse. Fortunately there is an easy way to do just that. Go to the right viewport and create two sky portals ( ) that are slightly larger than the windows and position them immediately outside the openings. Apply ( ) the following parameters to the sky portals:
- Multiplier: 1,5 ( )
( Sky portal needs a skylight to work. It gathers existing sky lighting into the interior scene. The arrow shows the direction of light flow. ) Let’s render the scene to see how the sky portals affect the lighting:
Let’s add bounced light to the equation to see if it makes any difference. Go to the Final Gather setup and apply the following settings ( ):
- Basic
- Multiplier: 2 ( )
- Bounces: 5 ( )
Render the scene to see the effect of indirect illumination.
Now there is noticeably more light inside. If you look carefully you can even see each corner of the room.
Step 10 Volume Light
Let’s make the image more interesting by adding some volumetric light rays coming from the windows. Go to the Atmosphere settings ( ) and add Volume light effect:
- Click ‘Add…’ button, select ‘Volume Light’ from the list and click ‘OK’
- Click ‘Pick Light’ and click on the mr area spot we created earlier
- Density: 20 ( )
Let’s render to see the effect of the volume light:
Step 11 Completing the Lighting and Rendering with Mental Ray
The Volume light seems to bring too much light into the scene. Let’s fix it by decreasing the Final Gather multiplier:
- Rendering > Render setup… > Indirect Illumination > Final Gather > Multiplier: 1,4
Let’s also adjust the sampling settings to get a more polished render. Go to the render setup and increase antialiasing quality by increasing Mental Ray’s sampling values ( ):
- Samples per pixel
- Minimum: 4
- Maximum: 64
- Filter
- Type: Mitchell ( )
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading!
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120 Responses to “Mental Ray Lighting”
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WHY doesn’t my project look ANYTHING like yours after step 6??? after I add the spot light, the whole “spot” inside gets lit up, disregarding the “windows” totally. And if final gather is on, the whole friggin room gets more or less lit up. PLEASE help, I don’t understand any of this
Have tried countless other tutorials but there seems to be some kind of fundamental setting difference between me and everyone else. Using 3dsmax 2011.
Your spot light needs to have shadows turned on.
What Andy said. Thank you Andy! I fixed the tutorial. Originally I didn’t mention it because in 2011 the shadows are on by default.
Your tutorial is fantastic.. worked great and give me lots of ideas for lighting.. my only question is if you had windows all around the room would you creat more mr areaspot one for each side of the room that has light and then adding the others as volume lights or would this be too much?
thanks,
Steve
The spotlight represents the sun so I wouldn’t create more of them. I would just create new sky portal for each window.
I tried that Looks good but still find the inside of the room a bit dark.. any ideas.. can i send you a screen capture?
Steve
If the room is dark, just increase diffuse bounces or multiplier in final gather or multiplier in sky portals or skylight.
Hi,
I was looking for lighting tutorials and came into this page, nice tutorial. I just learned about volume light and flip thingy and indirect illumination.
I was wondering, if by any chance you have and exterior lighting tutorial, most settings I find are interiors. I have a new project, an exterior especial setting with furniture and fixtures with it and it is kinda hard to make a good lighting for my scenes..
Just by any chance if you have, thanks guys!
Jobs
Great!
I propose to add an Ambient Occlusion in warehouse material in Special Effect and pick Exact AO.
Try, looks much better.
Thanks for tutorial!
Very, very Great. Thank you 4 this tutorial.
that was so nice,thanx dude,keep going on
Bro, will you ever make a tutorial for NURBS?
thanks for al these tutorials
Man this is very helpfull thanks!!!
Nice tutorial man, quick easy and well done. Keep them up
Can you use Daylight(Mr Sun) instead, for light?
Great Tuto but i have an DB 0.3 fatal error after step 10.
Before i add volume light effect, the rendering process worked, but ater i have this fatal error.
I made this tuto on 3ds max 2010.
tanks a lot !!!:)
that is an awesome tut…haven tried it but looks promising…can u make a similar tutorial for maya cause i have been tryin to get any type of rays in MR but seems impossible…
first thanks for this tut. but my project just does not look anything like yours after step 6? did i miss something?
after the mr spot nothing looked the same!
Make sure shadows are turned on in your spotlight.
Awesome tutorial…my first fully complete scene using 3ds Max and its looking awesome. I’m new to 3D design and was curious about step 3; what would have been the result had we not flipped the normals of all the polygons…does it have to do with where the mapped materials/textures would appear? (please excuse my lack of initiative)
Thanks Max! By default material only appears on one side of a polygon. Additionally only the visible side casts shadows, at least with standard materials.
Coming up just to say a BIG thank you for those tutorials. It improved my skills so much (yes, I’m a beginner).
THANK YOU (a big one this time).
Great tutorial thank you for providing this. I followed it once and it came out looking the way I wanted.
However
the second time I tried it, I couldn’t get the render to look the way it did with smooth volume light shining into the room.
Instead
what I got was a staggering, stuttering appearance of light coming into the room. It’s as if the light thought it was hitting a surface multiple times between the window and the floor, so there are rectangular traces of light surrounding the light path.
I asked my peers about this problem and they say it looks like there is something going on while the render is going through one of its passes? I can’t seem to re-create the success of my first attempt.
Thank you very much I actually used this tutorial to make a cool looking garage for my car I made. very helpful.
My mr Area Spot light doesn’t seem to be working, and I’ve no idea why. It appears to work in the modelling window, but when I try to render the scene there’s no light coming from it, there’s only the light coming through the windows. What am I doing wrong??
heeeiiieeee….
thanks a lot for sharing such an interesting piece of knowledge with us….
it is really helpful to me…!!!
Very nice tutorial, the outcome is realy impressive. I just can’t figure out how you created the light with Ray Traced Shadow which has the soft edge shadows.
Thanks very much
Hi, May i know how & where to adjust the glare shader ?
Hi, And the file take quite long time to render when i try the tutorial in my interior with furniture …is that have any solution to lighten my file size ?
Thank you so much ~ and i like your tutorial ~ look cool ~with clear explanation
my Question is? why did not creat daylight Instead of skylight in the artwork.
Thanks very much
Hi,May i know How to create hidden light at ceiling ?
Hi, i try to apply this render method on a enclose room .. there is no window .. n after render is quite dark.. do have any other light can lighten up the place ? Thank you so much
Hi All, I just had a go of this tutorial, very good good amount of info and picutres. However I don’t get the same results?!?!
My volumetric light is pixelated and i don’t have as much shadowing in the room. Also with the ‘sun’ hotspot and beaam fall off 24/26 i don’t get any feathering on the cast shadow?
Just wondering is there any other details I may have missed, also does volumetric thing take a very long time to process? I have new machine with oodles of power oodles! but seemed rather slow, 10mins at 640×480
Many Thanks Hen
Excellent Tutorial Clear and well laid own! Thanks
great work done…. its really learning one..good keep it up
Great tutorial. I got a satisfactory result even in 3Ds Max 7. Though I prefer making rooms using shell modifies than flipping normals. I had absolutely no idea about volume lights. Thanks to your tutorial, now I do know.
Really nice Tutorial!
I’m not surte what i make out of it but we’ll see XD
Thanks a lot, really gave me a good insight into various lighting techniques
Also, I couldn’t find “warehouse” when using the Arch+Design thing :/
Need more!!! ha I’m trying to learn as much as I can about mental ray
Great Tutorial !
Thanks a ton
Here is my render .
This is my result: file:///C:/Users/Mukul/Desktop/Polygon%20Works/new%20one%20lighting.jpg
Can any body help me to get a window glare..even if I turn the output shader on..I get nothing, seem something wrong.
Do I have to select anything before a applying that? or to do the camera?
I really need your help.
Thanks in Advance.
Great tutorial. really appreciate that you show a sample render after each step, so we can understand where things went wrong if the final render doesn’t come out right. I also really appreciate that the tutorial doesnt require any special plug-ins. Thanks!
Hey Guys.
I did exactly the same as you described in your tutorial with Max 2010. I’ve even used the same values. But here’s my result:
http://s7.directupload.net/file/d/2584/mvmvkdxp_jpg.htm
I think my standart settings are false…
Please help me, I need the Room for an Intro i watn to create.
Thanks in advance,
Robin
oooooh..how great are you..thank you very much..i’v been suffering to know this without going crazy with too many steps..you just made it clear and simple..i hope you have more tutorials..i’m enjoying lighting for the 1st time ..thanks alot