3dsmax 03: Mental Ray Interior Lighting

In this tutorial, we will learn the basic lighting setup for interiors using 3ds max 2009's Mental Ray (MR) rendering engine.  I have been in the Architectural Visualization for about 5 years and been to a lot of rendering programs.  In my experience, Mental Ray has one of the best quality rendering.  The only setback, however, is its rendering time.

I am always asked if there are "default" or "standard" set-up for rendering.  Yup! There are!  But don't get too excited yet, because there is no "CLICK HERE - ULTRA REALISTIC RENDER BUTTON".  The rendering standard requires a combination of 3d model, camera, lighting, material, and rendering setup that has a lot of options, values, and multipliers to consider.  Also, a missed checkbox may produce unwanted result.  So it is also safe to say that a series of trial and error is needed to create an acceptable standard for rendering.  And in reality, creating a convincing rendering requires a lot of time, patience, and a good computer.  In this tutorial, I will introduce a basic daylight interior setup, which you can consider a standard interior setup.  Like each individual, digital rendering will always vary form one person to another, that is why you should learn to understand the rendering language and explore.

*Note that this tutorial is only for lighting; material setup is another topic to discuss.

Before we start be sure that you assign Mental Ray as your renderer (F10> COMMON> ASSIGN RENDERER)

tips:
1. to switch between view port, right click to it
2. to maximize a view port, click the lowest right icon (maximize view port toggle)
2. F3 - shaded to no shade mode
3. F4 - wireframe on/off

Let there be Light!

Since this is a daylight setup, we will start by creating a daylight system.
Go to the top view window and (CREATE TAB>SYSTEMS>DAYLIGHT) shown in figure 1, then place it on the center of your model.  Also, notice that the camera angle is a bit distorted, so to correct the vertical shift, go to top view and right click on the camera, then select (Apply Camera Correction).

After placing your Daylight system, a bunch of options will pop at the modify panel. These are the date, time, location options.  Follow the date and time values shown in figure 2 and you will notice that the light source will move automatically.  I intended to place the main light source at the window behind camera.  To edit the location, select (Set Location) then change it to (Asia, Philippines, Manila).

Then select the modify tab button and follow the values and options on figures 3 and 4.  Scroll down to reveal additional options.

We will use MR Sun and MR sky since we will be using Mental Ray rendering, otherwise we will either produce a poor image quality or take a longer rendering time.

Multipliers - this will always be synonymous to intensity your light source, for now use the value of 3 for both sun and sky.
 

That would be your basic lighting setup! but you cannot render yet.  We still have to adjust the MR rendering set-up.  With this option, you can adjust the quality of your rendering.  Press (F10) in the (COMMON PARAMETERS), adjust the Output size width and height to 400x250 respectively.  We will temporarily leave it this small for our test rendering.  The bigger the output size, the longer it takes to render.  We will adjust this later for the final rendering.

Continue to the Renderer and Indirect Illumination tab and apply the following values listed below.

I will try to explain some of the options here in my own terms.  I cannot exhaust every single one.

Sampling quality: You can change the value of this, the bigger the value, the longer it takes to render.

Filter type: Choose Mitchell, this is just a personal preference.  Mitchell filter is good for soft objects.  It is the best choice since this is a bedroom setting.  You can select other filters as you explore the world of Mental Ray.

Final Gather: Enable this, the FG precision presets determine the quality of rendering.  Let us use the LOW setting for now.  We can render in HIGH setting once we are satisfied with our rendering.  This can highly affect the rendering time.

Diffuse bounces: Bounce bounce bounce!  Light bounces infinitely, but we leave this to value of 2.  So it means the light will bounce twice after hitting an object.  WARNING: this can highly affect your rendering time.

Also press 8 to view the environment and effects window. this window allows us to edit the background, global tinting and exposure control. set the tint to white and then select Exposure control to MR PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPOSURE CONTROL. This will let Mental Ray to correctly read the lights and materials to be rendered. Otherwise your render take longer and the output will definitely not please you.

Now let us render! press F9 to render.

TIP: pressing F9 will render your active view port, be sure that the camera view port is active.  If it is rendering another view than the camera, press F10 and manually select the camera viewport.

Er... nice sunlight, but not what we had in mind.  The skylight is not passing through our windows.  We can either increase the Skylight Multiplier, or apply a Skylight portal right at our window to fake the luminance of our skylight.  To do that, go to (create>lights>photometric>mr sky portal), the MR skylight portal is a rectangular light, now go to your RIGHT SIDE VIEW and place a rectangular light with the same dimensions of your window opening and apply the following values.

After applying everything in proper order, press F10 and adjust the rendering resolution to 1280x800 and press RENDER while on your CAMERA VIEW is active.  After the rendering time you should have something like this.

That's more like it!  If the sunlight is too bright for your taste, you can decrease the amount of its multiplier. Cheers!