Part 2: Texturing
and lighting the Nissan R390 GT in 3ds max 5
>> Section 6: Lighting and rendering
First of all, keep in mind that all reflective materials
are influenced (obviously) by what you have around in the
scene, being it other models or an environment map. In our
situation, we do not have anything to reflect (just a gradient
map to simulate a clear sky) so the effect can be less interesting:
just using a spherical environment map you can get nice results:
try to experiment with different maps, and maybe try some
HDRI lighting. This way i rendered the Mini Cooper in Fig.
21.
Anyway, let’s start by creating the “sky”
map: in a Syandard material put a “Gradient ramp”
map in the diffuse slot. Set the first color to a light and
soft blue, and the other two to white. Select “Environ”
and “Spherical environment” in the “Coordinates”
rollout. Go back to the root of this material and drag an
instance of the newly created diffuse map on the “Environment
map” slot in the Environment panel (in the menu go in
Rendering > Environment).
We are ready top ut some lighting in the scene: create a “Skyligh”
light and put it above the model, using the environment map
as the color of the Skylight (check “Use scene environment”).
Set the intensity multiplier to 0,8. Create a new “Target
light” light and position it similarly to Fig.
22 (but that’s really up to your tastings). Set
the “Light cone” to a value high enough to cover
the entire scene, and set the color of the light to be a soft
yellow/orange (ie 252.240.218). Set the shadow type to “Area
shadows” to get a much more realistic effect, setting
the type to “Disc light” and the dimensions to
an acceptable value (in my case 100x100, just do a couple
of test render to get proper soft shadows).
Now create a small plane under the bonnet, big enough to receive
the shadows, and assign it a “Matte/Shadow” material,
leaving the various parameters to their default values. Open
the “Advanced lighting” panel (menu Rendring >
Advanced lighting”) and activate the “Light tracer”
plugin, leaving the parameters to their default values. The
discussion of the many parameters of this panel is beyond
the scopes of this tutorial, anyway the default values give
almost always acceptable results, then it’s up to you
to tweak the various values to get the best solution in terms
of quality/speed, based on your scene setup.
Launch a new render, and you should get a result similar to
Fig. 23, otherwise i failed
in explaining this tutorial, or you read it without enough
care ;-)
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