Free 3d Rendering and Architectural Visualization Tutorials

How to Make a Realistic Grass

2010-04-18T16:35:00.000-07:00

How to make a realistic Grass with VRay 3dsMax tutorial

Open your 3ds Max application

NOTE: YOU COULD CLICK ON THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE
STEP I.

We will start by create a plane with a dimension of 200cm X 280cm

STEP II.
Open your material editor. Shortcut key = "M"
On the material editor, Create a VRay material.

We will apply a bitmap in our VRay material. Choose your grass texture.

I used this texture as the diffuse map.

STEP III.

Apply the material to the plane that we created Earlier

STEP IV
Under the modify tab, apply UVW map and VRay Displacement Mod. Make sure that your plane is selected.

You could use this image as the displacement map

STEP V
Hit Render. (Make sure that your GI is turned on. I have made a tutorial about Exterior lighting on my earlier post)
You can adjust the amount of displacement under VRay Displacement Mod.

The output may vary depending on the amount of displacement. The images above have 3cm, 7cm, and 10cm amount respectively.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment

~mcgoogles©

Exporting Sketchup Model to 3ds Max

2010-04-18T04:03:00.000-07:00

In this tutorial we will learn how to export sketchup models to 3ds Max.

STEP I.

When we are done modeling with sketchup, make sure that all faces in your model are in a front face.

How do we know that a face is in its front face?

Refer to the image below:

If a face is in its back face, Right click on the face and click "Reverse Faces."

STEP II.

After making sure that all faces are in its front face, Click on File > Export > 3dmodel

We are done in exporting our model.

STEP III

Open your 3dsmax application.

Go to File>Import...
Select the file that we have exported from sketchup and hit open.
A prompt will pop up. Select merge objects with current scene and hit ok.
Another prompt will pop up. Choose no.

If you have any questions, just leave a comment.
~mcgoogles©

Basic Exterior Lighting Tutorial with VRAY

2010-04-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

I used 3dmax 2009 and Vray SP2 in this tutorial.

PART I. Assigning vray as the default renderer

Step I. On you 3ds max window, hit F10 to open up the render set up.

Step II. On the common tab, go to Assign Renderer.

Step III. Refer to the image below.

PART II. Setting Up the Render Settings

Notice the Highlighted part of the image. These are the values that are needed to be set.

Under the vray Tab:

Set the V-Ray: Frame buffer and V-ray:Global Switches

1.Uncheck Get resolution from max

2. Choose the image resolution. Higher Reolution means longer render time

3. Under Global Switches, uncheck Default Lights and Hidden Lights

Under the Indirect Illumination Tab

Set up V-Ray: Image Sampler, V-Ray Environment, and Vray Color Mapping

IMPORTANT! V-Ray:Indirect Illumination should be turn on. Select Irradiance Map as the primary bounce and Light Cache as the secondary bounce

Under Settings Tab
Change the value of the noise threshold to 0.005. This will reduce the noise in your rendering.

Save your render preset.

Take note that this setup produces a low quality render. It could be used as a draft setting. You could increase the quality of the rendition by increasing your image resolution under V-ray framebuffer tab. But it would take a longer render time.

Light Cache and Irradiance map also affect the rendering time. The higher the subdivs of your light cache the longer time it will take. I suggest 50-100 for draft and 1000-2000 for high quality rendering. There are also built-in presets under the irradiance map tab. I suggest that you use Very Low for draft and Medium for high quality rendering.

Your render settings will greatly affect the render time. So i suggest that you create a test render or draft preset and a high quality preset.

You could start rendering an exterior scene using this setup.This scene below is rendered using this render setup. No camera and lights are present in the scene. Notice that there are no shadows present in the scene. Creating lights and shadows will be tackled in the next part of this tutorial.

Note that your output may vary greatly, depending on the materials and textures you have applied to your model.

Part III. Creating Lights and Shadows
Shadows will only be present if there are light in the scene. There are 3 types of lights that we could use.

1. VrayLight
2. VraySun
3. VrayIES

We could also use standard lights ,but i suggest to use those three mentioned above.
UsingVraySun

These scene is rendered using vraySUN and vraySKY combo. After applying vraySun in your scene, a pop-up window will ask if you want to enable vraysky. Just choose yes. The color of the sky will vary depending on your vraySun's position.

These render set-up is based on my own. It's purpose is to give beginners an idea on how basic lighting is made. You can always experiment on the render settings and change some of its values and see the differences.

~mcgoogles2010©

Rush! An Architectural Visualization

2010-04-15T04:56:00.000-07:00

Suppose you are given by your Boss only 5 hours to finish an architectural visualization on a 5 storey commercial building with an area of about a 100 square meters. It seems impossible to finish such presentation in a very short period of time. It is "Possible."I, an architecture student and working part time as an architectural visualizer can do this with sofware suited for the work.

This image made using 4 software. Plans are made using Autodesk's Autocad 2009. The 3d model is modelled using Googles Sketchup 7. Texturing and Lighting made using Autodesk's 3dsmax 2009 with Vray sp2 as its rendering engine. Post Processing is made using Photoshop CS4.

My boss gave me the drawing file about 1:00PM. The file includes the plans and its front elevation. The making of the plans is not included in the time frame. I opened the drawing file and deleted the unecessary lines which is not needed in making the 3d models. This would make the file lighter.

Next stop, 3d modeling. 3d modeling would take more time than the others depending on the scale of the model. In this model I spent only about 2hours making the 3d model. Using Google Sketchup, I imported the drawing file made in Autocad. I made It as a quick reference in making the 3d model. (I will make a tutorial about this work flow later, just wait for the updates).

Next stop, Texturing and Lighting. This is the most complicated part in architectural visualization. But when mastered, it would be easy as a pie.

Saving past render preset is very important when making an architectural visualization to save time. I just loaded some of my past render settings in making this image. Because it is a night scene, i didn't need to put a sun on the scene instead, just vraylightmtl on objects which emits light(tutorials soon). Saving past made materials in the material library would also help save time. It took also 2 hours in setting up the scene.

and the Last stop, Post Processing. When I saw the result of my rendered image, It still lack lights and glows. Using Photoshop CS4 i created this glows and also adjusted brightness, contrasts, etc.

Achieving a good rendered image could take less time, depending on the mastery of the user.

I decided to make tutorials to help aspiring 3d visualizers. Wait for the tutorials soon.