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Light and Render an Arch-Viz Style Outdoor

Scene with V-Ray and 3ds Max
Laurens Corijn on Jul 10th 2009 with 40 comments

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Apart from the default render engines that come with 3ds Max, several extra renderers are
available. Of all the 3rd party renders on the market, however, V-Ray has proven time and time
again to be the most popular. In this tutorial, you will be introduced to lighting and rendering an
outdoor scene with V-Ray in 3DS Max.
This tutorial will walk you through the process of taking a finished model from it’s default
rendered appearance, to a correctly set-up, and realistically lit final result. You will learn the
basic V-Ray settings, that should always be set up for any scene, how to use a Gamma correct
workflow, how to set lighting and global illumination settings, and how to optimize those
settings. Note: This tutorial is meant to introduce a user, familiar with basic rendering in 3DS
Max, to using V-Ray in a correct workflow. It will not teach you how to model the scene used in
the images, as that is not our focus.
The software used will be 3DS Max 2009 together with V-Ray 1.5, but using another version of
3DS Max should not be a problem, although minor differences in settings might be necessary.
You can download the project file from the following link if you would like to look at (or play
with) the settings, but you will need to have the above mentioned software to open it.
Project File
download
Final Effect Preview
Step 1
First of all, when rendering scenes with realistic global illumination, it is very important to work
with gamma-correct settings. In short, this means we adjust 3DS Max’s settings to display
brightness levels as you perceive them in real life.
Go to “Customize” > “Preferences”, and select the “Gamma and LUT” tab. Any settings that you
need to change, or pay attention to, will always be marked with a red border. It is very important
to make sure that your screen or videocard display settings are set so that the gamma preview
image blends together as one single grey value when viewed from a distance.
Step 2
Next, go to “Rendering” > “Render Setup” (F10 on your keyboard). The “Common” tab should
be active. Scroll all the way down, and open the “Assign Renderer” rollout. Hit the button next to
the name of the “Production:” renderer to get a list of installed render engines. Choose “V-Ray
1.50″ from the list and hit OK. The tabs in the “Render Settings” dialog should change to
include, among others, a “V-Ray” tab.
Step 3
For now, close the “Render Settings”. Hit ‘F9′ to start a first test render with “V-Ray”. You will
notice “V-Ray” renders with small squares running across your render, these are called
‘buckets’. My scene is Tod Williams’ 1978 Tarlo House in Suffolk County, NY. I chose this
subject because it was easy to model, yet still looks interesting enough as a subject for this
tutorial. You might notice that my background color is grey instead of black. You can do the
same via “Rendering” > “Environment”, or hitting ’8′ on your keyboard, but it is not really
important since we will change this in a few steps anyway.
Step 4
The first thing you should always do when setting up rendering, is change your “Antialiasing”
filter. Hit ‘F10′ again, to bring up the “Render Settings” window, and go to the “V-Ray” tab. The
rollout we want is the “Image sampler” (Antialiasing) rollout. Change the drop down for the
filter from “Area” to “Catmull-Rom”. “Area” is the default filter, which looks blurry and un-
sharp compared to other more advanced ones. You don’t have to use “Catmull-Rom”,
“Lanczos”, and “Mitchell-Netravali” are also okay, but I prefer the crisp look “Catmull-Rom”
gives me.
Step 5
Close the “Render Settings”, and render again by hitting ‘F9′. The difference in changing the
“Antialiasing” filter should be visible already.
Step 6
Next, you will set up a camera. In 3ds Max, you can create a camera from a view by pressing
“Ctrl + C” in a perspective viewport. So, try to find a camera angle that is aesthetically pleasing,
and hit “Ctrl + C”. This creates a default 3ds Max Camera, as you should be able to see from
other views. You can switch a viewport back to perspective mode by hitting ‘P’ while in it.
Hitting ‘C’ will return the viewport back to camera mode, or present you with a list of camera’s
if there are multiple cameras in the scene.
Step 7
“V-Ray” has a special, proprietary camera, called a “V-Ray Physical Camera”. This camera
behaves like a real-life camera with F-number, shutter speed, and ISO values. The main reason
you should use it is because you have more realistic control over your renders, and you won’t
have to tweak your “V-Ray” light settings, since their default values are meant to work with the
“Physical Camera”.
In the “Primitives” tab, go to the “Cameras” section, and change the drop down to “VRay”.
Create a “Physical Camera” at about the same location as the standard camera. Now, use the
“Align” tool (highlighted red in the top left corner) to align your “Physical Camera” to the
standard camera. Do the same thing with the “Physical Camera’s” target.
Step 8
Delete the standard camera (you won’t need it anymore). Change your view to look through your
new “V-Ray Physical Camera”. Now hit ‘F9′ to test render again. You should immediately see
that our render has gone a lot darker. This is because the brightness the “Vray Physical Camera”
expects from lights is much higher than the default brightness of standard 3ds Max lights. You
will also notice the “Antialiasing” quality has gone down. This is actually normal, since “V-Ray”
adapts it’s “Antialiasing” quality based on brightness and contrast (remember the “Adaptive
subdivision” sampler from the “Antialiasing” rollout).
Step 9
To fix your brightness problem, you need to set up some lights. We are going to use a “Daylight”
system to create a sunlight in our scene. The advantage of this system is that it has an easy
interface for correct sun positions and movement. Go to the “Systems” button, of the “Create”
tab, and create a “Daylight” object, at the center of your scene. The size of this object does not
matter. Once created, you can rotate it to change the compass direction.
Step 10
The “Daylight” system automatically created a sunlight attached to it. Select this light, called the
“Assembly Head”, and change the highlighted drop downs to use a “VraySun”, instead of a
standard light, and disable the “Skylight”. The “Skylight” is not an object in “V-Ray”, but a
render setting (we will talk more on this later). Remember that adjusting the “VraySun’s”
parameters happens through here. Since we are using a “Physical Camera”, however, this is not
necessary, as the default values will work fine.
Step 11
With the “Daylight Assembly Head” selected, go to the “Motion” tab. Here you will change the
sun’s “azimuth” and “altitude” to your liking, by using the “Time” settings. What is interesting
here, is that you can also select a location somewhere on earth and the daylight system will
automatically adjust the sun to behave like on that location. Click “Get Location”, and click on a
location on the world map to select it. I used the approximate location of “Suffolk County”, NY.
Step 12
Once you have a basic set up, hit ‘F9′ to test render again. With a default “VraySun”, and a
default “Physical Camera”, your result should look like below. At this point, feel free to make
more test renders, to find a sun position that is to your liking.
Step 13
The previous renders were a little overblown, so select your “Physical Camera” to change some
of its settings. There are quite a few, but “F-number”, “Shutter Speed”, and “Film Speed” (ISO),
are the most important ones for the moment. In real life, there is a rule in photography called the
“Sunny 16 rule”. This rule states “On a sunny day, set aperture to f/16, and shutter speed to the
ISO film speed.” So in our case, we will go for an “F-number” of ’16′, an “ISO” of ’100′, and a
“Shutter Speed” of ’125′ (a small deviation is fine). These numbers are a starting point for
further tweaking. Keep the following in mind regarding these three settings: the lower the “F-
number”, the lower the “Shutter Speed”, and the higher the “ISO”, the brighter your image will
be.
Step 14
Render again. You will notice the scene got darker, and now seems a bit under lit. You will also
probably notice that your shadows are completely black. This is because we have not activated a
“Skylight” with “Indirect Illumination” yet. Once we do this, we will get much more realistic
lighting results.
Step 15
Open your “Render Settings” again. In the “V-Ray” tab, open the “Environment” rollout. Enable
the “GI Environment” (skylight) override by checking the tickbox. Change the color from a
slight blue, to white. This is how you activate a skylight in “V-Ray”, as mentioned earlier.
Step 16
Next, go to the “Indirect Illumination” tab. Activate it by checking the tickbox in the upper left
corner. This tab has a wealth of options and possibilities, but for this tutorial, there is no need to
complicate things, as default settings will mostly work fine. It is important to lower the quality of
the “Irradiance” map (a method for calculating “Indirect Illumination”) for test rendering
purposes. This will reduce render times by a magnitude of up to ’4′, with more than adequate
visual results for previewing. Just change the dropdown to “Low” instead of “High”. Checking
the “Show Calc. Phase” tickbox tells “V-Ray” to show you what it does while pre-calculating the
“Irradiance” map, making rendering less boring to look at.
Step 17
Time to render again. After a render, with an interesting pre-pass or two, you should see a result
that’s starting to look more like what we want. Shadows are not pure black anymore, and the
lighting generally became a lot more interesting to look at. The only problem on the image
below, is how the light seems to reflect a little bit too strongly in some corners.
Step 18
The strong light reflection is because, until now, the material in the scene was pure white. This is
almost never a good idea, just as using pure black, red, green, or blue on an object is not done.
Change the material color to a warm white value. To make the scene a little bit more interesting,
assign a “VrayMaterial” with reflections enabled to the windows. To change a standard material,
click the material name in the top right, and select a “VrayMtl” from the list that is presented.
The settings for this reflective material are highlighted. You can skip this step if you like, as it is
not the focus of this tutorial.
Step 19
Render again. The results of the newly chosen materials should be obvious, as the strong light
bounce is almost completely gone.
Step 20
The previous image is still a little bit under lit. Playing with the shutter speed will show that a
value of ’90′ looks best (remember that lowering shutter speed increases the image brightness).
Adjust the white balance to your liking, choosing a warm, orange-ish white as balance will cool
the image colors down, while choosing a cold, blueish white as balance can warm the image
colors up. The default blueish white makes for a result that is much too warm, so change this
color to a warmer white. Optionally, you can increase the vignetting value a bit more, to make
the darkened vignet edges more obvious.
Step 21
Time for another test render. The changes should once again be obvious, and this result should
be adequate enough to end our test rendering phase. We can now start increasing the settings for
our final image. This render might still be a little bit under lit, and can do with some more
balancing of the brightness levels, but instead of spending a lot of time on this in 3ds Max, we
will opt to change these settings in Photoshop afterwards. Remember, in 3D, the final result is
what matters, so if getting there through Photoshop is easier and faster, then there is no reason
not to do so!
Step 22
Go back to the “Indirect Illumination” settings. For higher quality renders, an “Irradiance” map
setting of “Medium” should do the job most of the time. A setting of “High” should only be used
when absolutely necessary, as it increases render times almost to a disproportionate level. An
interesting way of increasing quality is by enabling “Detail enhancement”. This tells “V-Ray” to
locally increase the lighting quality where necessary, and can even allow for a “Low” preset to
be used, instead of “Medium” or “High” in some occasions. “Detail enhancement” also adds
quite a lot to render times, but in certain cases, it is almost a must (the smaller and the more
geometric detail your object has, the more necessary this option becomes).
Step 23
Change your camera angle so it is a bit more to your liking. I chose for a more dramatic wide
shot here.
Step 24
To illustrate the effect of “Gamma correct” settings and workflow, I saved the image without
“Gamma correction”, and then blended between the two. It would have been a lot more difficult
to tweak the settings to look the same without “Gamma correction”. Especially the “Indirect
Illumination” suffers from not using “Gamma correction”.

Step 25
Once you’re happy with your render quality, and resolution, save it, and then open it in
Photoshop. In this case, using “Image” > “Auto Color”, and then “Edit” > “Fade Auto Color” to
50% should prove enough to fix the levels. Feel free to try anything else you want in Photoshop.
“Image” > “Auto Levels” or “Auto Contrast” might also work, but “Fading” them might prove
necessary either way.
Final Result
Click on the image to open a High-Rez version.

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By Laurens Corijn
Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.
I'm Laurens Corijn, a recent Digital Arts & Entertainment graduate from Belgium. I've been
doing CG for 4 years now, mainly focusing on mechanical subjects such as vehicles. I equally
enjoy working on high-end rendering, and optimized, real-time, video game art. Besides doing
CG, I like to spend my time listening to music, and riding and maintaining my motorcycle. My
website can be found at: laurenscorijn.com.

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July 10, 2009 at 9:51 am

Can you show me a tut of Vray using C4D…
Reply

1. Kid says:
July 10, 2009 at 11:04 am
Thanks for the tutorial. Notice the noise though in the dark shadowed areas. Hows does
one go about getting rid of that? Do I have to up my sampling in the G.I. rollout?
Reply

○ Laurens Corijn says:

July 10, 2009 at 12:20 pm
 Yes, going up to High Irradiance map presets would fix this, especially with
Detail Enhancement enabled.
Kep in mind that this noise is even less visible on a textured scene: the noise
blends in with the noise in the textures. For an animation this would not be a
solution, the only fix being increasing the quality until the noise is gone.
Reply

2. lictor alpha says:

July 10, 2009 at 12:22 pm
tnx, i hope to see something as this for rhinoceros and vray
or for maya and mental ray.
greetings
Reply

3. excessID says:
July 11, 2009 at 5:56 am
There are great tutorials.
why i am missing maya too much?
Reply

○ Kaleb Aylsworth says:

July 12, 2009 at 8:40 am
Not to worry. More Maya tuts on the way very very soon!!
Reply

4. Yannick says:
July 14, 2009 at 6:03 am
Nice basic tutorial but I’ve got a few remarks:
Why did you start by choosing the anti-alias filter frist, you can’t know up front which
kind of renderproblems you’ll get..?
Why didn’t you even mention Color Mapping, I mean, it’s my fav feature in VRAY, I
use it like always.. Especially when scenes are over lit or to dark, just playing around
with some of the settings over there gives good results instead of tweaking camera
settings.
No offence but this tutorial is not exactly the best thing to follow for real beginners, I
mean, they don’t even know WHY you chose Brute force & Imap instead of light cache
for example.
In my opinion it is better to first understand why you are using something instead of just
following along, doing what the guy in the tutorial tells you to do.
Just my 2 cents and again, no offence, you obviously know what you’re doing but

beginners just don’t think like that

Reply

○ Laurens Corijn says:

July 17, 2009 at 5:57 am
I agree on some points:
Yes, I don’t elaborate on everything (like the GI engines) since this is a basic
tutorial. Leaving settings at default works for a lot of stuff in Vray and can
produce excellent renders. This tutorial is meant to put people on their way and
showing them the CORRECT way of working with Vray, without too much un-
needed explaining on settings that don’t matter (yet).
The correct way also means that you should at least initially try work with real-
life camera settngs instead of color-mapping, since camera settings make a whole
lot more sense than Color-mapping settings (especially for beginners).
And I do take a little offence form your post, you sound like you want to prove
you know more about Vray than me. I honestly think you are the one who’s
missing the point that this is meant as an absolute basic introductory tutorial, not
meant to confuse a total beginner at all.
Reply

 Yannick says:
July 17, 2009 at 9:22 am
 Well I wasn’t aiming at offending you. I study Architecture and I make
architectural renders at least once a week. I’m not saying I know more
about VRAY than you. I’m only speaking from my own experience with
the software.
You started off great by explaining the gamma 2.2 settings, something
most beginner tutorials don’t even mention. But vray and rendering as a
whole is a complex process if you want to do it right. It is my personal
opinion that you need to know why you are selecting a setting right from
the start, not a few tutorials later.
I’ve learned it the hard way, not at school but by browsing through tuts
online and on dvd’s. It was very confusing because most tutorials didn’t
even explain why you’d had to chose a certain setting. That’s the only
thing missing in your tutorial. Beginners need to grasp all the settings one
by one you use during the process. Once you understand how things work,
you can figure out more on your own.
Sorry you found my reply offending, just trying to give some advise for
next tutorials.

5. Tiago says:
July 22, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Great…i mean…G R E A T Tut!!!
Reply

6. 3Daniel says:
August 23, 2009 at 2:35 am

thank you so much great light!

Reply

7. MalakoO says:
September 7, 2009 at 8:17 am
thanx perfect I’v been looking 4 this tutorial
 Reply

8. hisham says:
October 23, 2009 at 4:34 pm
thank you very much………………
Reply

9. poy says:
November 2, 2009 at 2:09 pm
sorry could it be use for 3ds max 9?i try it before but i have some problem with the
tutor…
one of my problem is on the part of daylight…you gave the tutor that we should choose
vray sun(on the daylight assembly head…)but i dont have that choice on my 3ds max 9…
so the result is so dark…i wonder if you would give me some answer of it,or at least the
alternative if i dont have the vraysun to choose
tax
Reply

10. zuza says:

November 26, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Nice tut, I didnt have time to try out a scene, but what is the render time for this?
Reply

11. Prince of Persia says:

December 5, 2009 at 3:16 pm

Thanks for your tutorial, it really helped me.

 Reply

12. vaibhav says:

December 16, 2009 at 2:37 am
thank you very much………………
Reply

13. Laxman Kumar says:

January 4, 2010 at 4:52 am
Nice tutorial, but why use the skylight?
Reply

14. shahir says:

January 10, 2010 at 6:34 am
dear laurence…i have been searching for a tutorial like this 4 a long time…
you did a great thing……….
thank you very much.
Reply

15. Mike says:

February 3, 2010 at 2:42 pm
The scene won’t open. Is there something I’m missing? I’m on Max 9. Looks promising
though.
Reply
16. naga says:
February 7, 2010 at 8:27 am
out put nice ,
Reply

17. Luke says:

February 12, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Thanks a lot Laurens, the tuto is very useful
Reply

18. hicham architecture says:

February 15, 2010 at 8:04 pm
hi nice exterior begining , but i dont understand one thing i want to know why u didnt
used vray sun sky and camera , is it more easy to do it as u have done here ,
Reply

19. Sinisa says:

February 25, 2010 at 5:24 pm
Very confusing tutorial.
Reply

20. vicky gudise says:

March 9, 2010 at 4:58 am
 sir nice tutorials i would like u to suggest me about how to use lights of vray in interior as
well . please suggest me that and reply me .
thank u
Reply

21. Felipe says:

March 18, 2010 at 7:24 am
hi..
dude..
i get a trouble on my vray..
its on DEMO versions…
no matter how i try i cant use the ‘phi cam’ of vray….
can you help me please!?
Reply

22. nitin kaushik says:

March 25, 2010 at 1:19 pm
why you dont use vray sun light ,you use day light its you when you do work in mantel
ray
Reply

23. Judy Scott says:

April 26, 2010 at 6:23 am
I was Goggling around for some tutorials.Anyway i found an good stuff here.step by step
information is really helpful
Reply

24. hamid says:

 May 9, 2010 at 9:59 am
i think this is not a good way for take a real scense information, gamma can”t be use
here!!!anyway,thanks
Reply

25. Ahmer says:

August 2, 2010 at 7:07 am
hi…. good evening …. it is nice exterior view daylight ok… but it is some bright light
but need put some dark how? i want to learn more daylight in the setting with vray now ..
pls u send me for let me mt e-mail hurry ….. more tutorials anything … bye
Reply

26. tim41 says:

August 2, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Nice tutorial, thanks!
Fix broken link to the source file, please:
http://cgtuts.s3.amazonaws.com/016_VrayRendering/TarloHouse_scene.rar
Reply

○ Matt Brealey says:

August 2, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Hi Tim41,
I’ve just checked the link and it seems to be working ok here. Could you try it one
more time and let me know if you’re still having trouble!
Thanks,
Matt
Reply
27. Kike says:
August 20, 2010 at 9:40 pm
I think that the color of the walls are similar, and the effect of dark lacks clear needs more
definition
Reply

28. zouhir says:

October 25, 2010 at 2:39 pm
woooooooooooow very great tut thanx a lot thats really amazing
Reply

29. ohmno says:

November 6, 2010 at 8:56 am
Hi!
I have trouble with opening that .max file, I’m using version 9, do I really need 2009 for
it?
Thanks!
Reply