In this tutorial you can learn how you to set up and light a exterior scene with a HDRI Skydome inside of Cinema4D with vray. While hdri lighting is not very complicated it´s necessary to know some details in order to get a good result.
The VP HDRI Skydomes have a very high dynamic range, which is best to create sharp sun shadows. Also they have an accurate white balance that will bring convincing and colorful lighting into your scene with a few clicks.
Basically you just need to follow 3 main steps: First to add an area light, then add the vray tags for domelight and physical camera and third adjust the rendersettings.
(1) Add a vray domelight to your scene
Within these paramters, select Dome from the drop-down menu Area Type.
(2) Load the HDRI and adjust the light settings
(3) Add a vray physical camera
(3) Adjust render settings and global illumination
Now that we have set up the lighting and hdri map properly we need to adjust the render settings. You might still see a dark object in your scene, which may be the case, because global illumination is not turned on yet.
You still might want to adjust the settings of the light and camera to get a good result. As the light intensity of each hdri can be quite different, you should play around with these parameters a bit to get a good result.
All of the VP HDRI Skydomes include CINEMA4D R11 scenes with proper light and render settings for vray 1.2 and Advanced Render, so you can just go ahead and start to render your own scene.
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In this tutorial you can learn how you to set up and light a exterior scene with a HDRI Skydome inside of Luxology modo. While hdri lighting is not very complicated it´s necessary to know some details in order to get a good result.
The VP HDRI Skydomes have a very high dynamic range, which is best to create sharp sun shadows. Also they have an accurate white balance that will bring convincing and colorful lighting into your scene with a few clicks.
Basically you just need to follow 3 main steps: First to add a hdri map to the environment, then adjust the light parameters and third turn on the global illumination.
(1) Add an hdri texture to the environment map
(2) Adjust the lighting and rotation of the sky
Also make sure that the Visible settings are set to active, especially Visible to indirect rays.
(3) Adjust render settings and global illumination
Now that we have set up the lighting and hdri map properly we need to adjust the render settings. You might still see a black object in your scene, which may be the case, because global illumination is not turned on yet.
You still might want to adjust the settings of the light to get a good result. In my experience, the gamma and High and Low values made the biggest difference in the appearance of the light and background. But see yourself…
All of the VP HDRI Skydomes include modo 302 scenes with proper light and render settings, so you can just go ahead and start rendering your own scene.
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In this tutorial you can learn how you to set up and light a 3ds max exterior scene with a HDRI Skydome and mental ray. While hdri lighting is not very complicated it´s necessary to know some details in order to get a useful result.
The VP HDRI Skydomes have a very high dynamic range, which is best to create sharp sun shadows. Also they have an accurate white balance that will bring convincing and colorful lighting into your scene with a few clicks.
Basically you just need to follow 3 main steps: First to create a standard skydome light, then create background map and third the proper exposure settings.
(1) Create a skydome light
Within the bitmap shader you need to set the mapping correctly, otherwise the lighting will look strange. Set the mapping to Environ and Mapping type to Spherical Environment.
(2) Use the same hdri for the background
You can skip this step if you want to use specific backplates for your background or if you add a background later in compositing / photoshop. If you want to use the same hdri skydome also for the background, here are some additional steps.
Now the skylight and the background are prepared. If you render now, you will probably get wrong lighting and over- or underexposed images. So we need to adjust the camera / exposure settings to match the lighting and background.
(3) Setup the photographic exposure
Within the Environment and Effects dialog, choose “mr photographic exposure”. This will give you access to color mapping, exposure and other parameters that need to be adjusted according to your light and background setup.
- Skylight strength
- Exposure Value (EV)
- Gamma Settings
These are photographic parameters and work the same way like a normal camera. There are lots of tutorials on the web explaining photography and we don´t want to go into too much detail here. As the settings may vary strongly depending on the used hdri map, it´s not very useful to define specific settings here. But a good starting point for the EV would be something between 5.0 and 15.0 with a Skylight value of something between 1.0 to 10.0. Anyway it´s necessary to play around with these parameters in order to get a good result.
All of the VP HDRI Skydomes include 3ds max scenes with proper light and camera settings, so you can just go ahead and start rendering your own scene.
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In this tutorial you can learn how you to set up and light a 3ds max exterior scene with a HDRI Skydome and vray. While hdri lighting is not very complicated it´s necessary to know some details in order to get a good result.
The VP HDRI Skydomes have a very high dynamic range, which is best to create sharp sun shadows. Also they have an accurate white balance that will bring convincing and colorful lighting into your scene with a few clicks.
Basically you just need to follow 2 main steps: First to create a vray light dome and second to create a vray physical camera with proper exposure settings.
(1) Creating a vray light dome
- Next add a VrayHDRI map into the Texture slot
- Drag the VrayHDRI map in your material editor
- Load the HDRI file you want to use
- Set the mapping type to spherical
- Set the gamma value to 0.75
Note: The Horiz. rotation parameter of the VRayHDRI map allows one to rotate the sky around to change the sun light direction. Every sky is having the sun placed in the middle which allows to quickly change and try different skies by keeping the light direction.
Until this point, we have created our light system, in the next point we will treat the camera settings. Before we move onto the next point, let’s speak about the gamma setting. This setting allows colors to have more punch and contrast, in an high dynamic range context it means that bright spots are much brighter than normal, therefore creating sharper and stronger shadows. You can decrease this value if you feel the light is a bit too flat to bring more contrasts, or increase it if the light gets too harsh.
(2) Creating a camera
There are basically two things we want to achieve when setting up the camera: a proper exposure, and an adequate white balance.
- Shutter speed
- Aperture value (f-number)
- Film speed (ISO)
These are photographic parameters and work the same way like a normal camera. There are lots of tutorials on the web explaining photography and we don´t want to go into too much detail here. As the settings may vary strongly depending on the used hdri map, it´s not very useful to define specific settings here.
If you want to use the same hdri skydome for the background, you can just add the same map to the environment slot of the render Environment Map. If you can´t match the background with the lighting of the vray domelight, you can also create a second copy of the vrayHDRI map with different settings and split these two.
Setting up the white balance :
Using the temperature option is probably the easiest as you can directly change a value and get a cooler or warmer result. For most of conditions, a value ranging from 4500 to 6500 should give you best results. You can always use the eyedropper of the Vray Frame Buffer to see whether a supposed white area is too blue or too red and adjust the temperature according. If it is too warm one must decrease the value, and oppositedly if it is too cold one must increase the value.
Also, sometimes having white areas looking blueish or reddish can lead to a better overall result and is dependant on the mood you try to achieve !
All of the VP HDRI Skydomes include 3ds max scenes with proper light and camera settings, so you can just go ahead and start rendering your own scene.
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This tutorial shows how you can randomly distribute bitmaps on faces of objects with Crossmap. This is especially useful when creating stone floors or interior tiles for kitchens or bathrooms with just simple plane or box objects.
Crossmap is a texture-map plugin from VIZPARK which loads multiple bitmaps at once and distributes these images on objects, elements, of faces of objects. Especially this mode is quite easy to set up for random tiles in a regular square patterns.
(1) Create objects with square faces
If you want to create a sidewalk like in the example above or square tiles for an interior bathroom wall or floor, you can use simple objects like a plane or box objects. In order to use the per Face distribution with Crossmap, you need to set the number and size of faces in the object properties correctly.
(2) Add Crossmap and load images
First you need to add Crossmap / XMAP to your material. You can use a standard, vray or mental ray material.
(2) CROSSMAP setup for face distribution
Now, load multiple bitmaps into Crossmap, either by selecting a whole folder with bitmaps or by adding bitmaps individually, when they are stored in different locations.
Edit image list
Once you have images loaded into Crossmap, you can further edit the list. To get a preview of the images, just double click on the image names within the list. If you want to delete images, you can select (shift-select for a list, ctrl-select for separate selections) and hit the Delete button. You can also add images with the Add File button. Add File will open a standard file dialog in which you can select one or more bitmaps to add. Hold shift and select a list / ctrl and select for separate file selection.
Set random per FACE distribution
Now set Image selection to per Face. This will cause Crossmap to distribute and map the images to each face of an object. You can randomly distribute the images on faces with Image distribution set to Random Sequence or you can create patterns with the images in the list by choosing Linear Sequence.
Linear sequence
Random sequence
(3) Further randomization
Add random mirroring
Depending on your bitmaps, you might want to randomly mirror the bitmaps per face. Choose X-mirror and Y-mirror to randomly switch the bitmaps horizontally or vertically per Face.
Add color randomization
You can now randomize the color (hue, saturation, value) per face with the Color Variation parameters. The Range parameter sets the amount / strength of the color change. Setting this value to 100 will result in full range color randomization. You can select if you want to just increase or decrease the values by selecting UP and / or DOWN.
No color variation
Hue variation
Sat. and Value variation
(4) Adding Bump, Reflection, displacement
If you have set up your material properly, you will now get some good results when rendering. But you probably want to add more realism with bump, displacement, and reflection to your material. This is where Crossmap has some strong features, because you can easily copy the map to other channels and then load bitmaps from a folder and filter specific bitmaps by name. So if your folder contains different bitmaps with endings like _diffuse, _bump, _reflection etc., you can just load the bump bitmaps or displacement bitmaps with a few clicks.
Copy Crossmap to other channels
In order to create the other channels with bump, displacement, reflection or others, just make a copy (not instance!) of Crossmap and paste it to the other channels. Creating a copy and not an instance is important, because each Crossmap instance needs different bitmaps that will be used for the specific channels.
Load new bitmaps for bump, displacement etc.
After you copied the maps, go into each Crossmap and load new bitmaps for bump, reflection and displacement. You can easily filter bitmaps on load with the handy load-filter in Crossmap.
So, this is it. If nothing went wrong, you should get wonderful randomly tiled materials, with no repetition even in very large walls / floors and yet a very high resolution texture on close-ups.
Here are a few more examples:
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This tutorial explains how to create randomly tiled wall or floor materials with Crossmap and BerconTile. Using this method has the advantage of getting rid of the tiling / repetition seen in many renderings with standard bitmaps. Also, you can save RAM by using smaller bitmaps for larger walls by still keeping a very high resolution even in close ups.
Easier alternative -> Walls & Tiles
While Crossmap together with BerconTile is a good solution, Walls & Tiles automates this process with a very easy to use additional scripted Plugin. All the process below is mostly automated with Walls & Tiles. Check it out here…
Crossmap works great in combination with the free plugin BerconTile. Crossmap is used to randomize bitmaps of single bricks / tiles and BerconTile is used to create mapping information for the bond pattern. You can easily change bitmaps and keep the pattern or change the pattern and keep the bitmaps.
Crossmap is a texture-map plugin from VIZPARK which loads multiple bitmaps at once and distributes these images on objects, elements, faces, or via BerconTile for bond patterns. While Crossmap is great at distributing bitmaps on square-tiled faces of a plane for example, it cannot create bond patterns used in brick walls. This is where BerconTile comes into place. BerconTile is a great FREE plugin from Jerry Ylilammy which is fantastic for creating bond patterns procedurally. It though is limited to load one bitmap at a time. If you want to distribute multiple bitmaps for random distribution, you can use Crossmap within BerconTile and let Crossmap do the bitmap randomization and BerconTile the UV mapping for bond patterns. Crossmap is specifically compatible with BerconTile in a way that both maps can communicate with each other for randomization of bitmaps and colors.
So, here is how it works.
(1) Material setup with Crossmap and BerconTile
First make sure that you have installed both Crossmap and BerconTile (FREE) for your 3Ds Max version. You can download BerconMaps FREE here.
(2) CROSSMAP settings
Now, load multiple bitmaps into Crossmap, either by selecting a whole folder with bitmaps or by adding bitmaps individually, when they are stored in different locations.
Load bitmaps and set Crossmap to BerconTiles ID
Then set Image selection to Use BerconTiles ID. This will create the connection between BerconTile and Crossmap, so that images are mapped correctly in the UV pattern of BerconTile and Crossmap knows how to randomize bitmaps and colors. Also set Image distribution to Random sequence, unless you specifically want repetitive patterns (in which case you need to set it to Linear sequence).
Crossmap Mapping settings
It´s quite important that the mapping settings in Crossmap are correct in order to get mapping coordinates from BerconTile. Set Mapping to Explicit Map Channel and the Map Channel to 2. The map channel 2 is the channel for the individual map coordinates for each tile / brick from BerconTile, while the map channel 1 is used for the overall map on the objects.
(3) BERCONTILE settings
Next we need to set BerconTile to create tiled uv maps, select the bond pattern and “talk” to Crossmap.
BerconTile Mapping rollout
First you need to set the mapping type in the mapping rollout to Explicit Map Channel Real World. If you have set your system units correctly, you can later set the size of the bricks directly to the correct real world size of bricks used in your country, for example width: 24 cm / height: 7,1 cm. I´ll explain later more about brick sizes and their usage.
Bond patterns
With the Pattern: dropdown menu you can select the bond pattern that you want to use for your wall or floor. BerconTile offers a variety of standard bond patterns and even goes beyond: You can create your own bond patterns directly within BerconTile. Below is a list of available bond pattern presets.
Using VIZPARK textures, you don´t need to add procedural edges to your bricks / tiles, so you have to set the Edge width and height to 0,0. If these are not 0,0, you will see a colored mortar / edge between the bricks.
Set tile UV mapping
In order to let Crossmap use correct uv maps for each brick, you need to turn on Enable Tile Mapping and set the Map Channel to 2.
Connect to Crossmap
Turn on Randomize Multitexture and BerconGradient and Crossmap will get “under the hood” information from BerconTile to randomize bitmaps and colors.
(4) Object UV map modifier
In order to get correct mapping on objects, you need to use the UV map modifier applied on every object.
UV map modifier settings
There is basically just one setting: Use Real-World Map Size. This will make sure that your mapping will work throughout the whole material and independent of your object size. Once again, it´s important that your unit setup in the 3Ds max preferences is set correctly.
Of course you can use different map gizmos according to your object. Use box on most of the standard buildings with 90° corners, cylinder on round objects or planar on flat surfaces.
(5) Bond patterns
Here is a list of available bond pattern presets within BerconTile. Once you have set up your material, you can quite easily change the pattern by just selecting a different preset from the drop down menu.
You can get many more individual patterns if you use the custom pattern preset and type in your own presets within BerconTile. It´s a very powerful feature which I´ll explain some time later.
(6) Adding Bump, Reflection, displacement
If you have set up your material properly, you will now get some nice results when rendering. But you probably want to add more realism with bump, displacement, and reflection to your material. This is where Crossmap has some strong features, because you can load bitmaps from a folder and filter specific bitmaps by name. So if your folder contains different bitmaps with endings like _diffuse, _bump, _reflection etc., you can just load the bump bitmaps or displacement bitmap in Crossmap.
Duplicate BerconTile including Crossmap
In order to create the other channels with bump, displacement, reflection or others, just make a copy (not instance!) of the BerconTile map containing Crossmap. Creating a copy and not an instance is important, because each Crossmap instance needs different bitmaps that will be used for the specific channels.
Load new bitmaps for bump, displacement etc.
After you copied the maps, go into each Crossmap within BerconTile and load new bitmaps for bump, reflection and displacement. You can easily filter bitmaps on load with the handy load-filter in Crossmap.
So, this is it. If nothing went wrong, you should get wonderful randomly tiled materials, with no repetition even in very large walls / floors and yet a very high resolution texture on close-ups.
Here are a few examples:
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