V-Ray Lesson 8

Fake environment:
For best environment map, best to us HDRI format. Best to use when its just a separate object, not in the interior.
Go to materials, go to open library and select from the list VrayHDRI and drag to material slot.
In the browse, select the HDRi image file. By map type, select spherical environment. If you want to rotate and look around the picture, you can modify horiz. or vert. rotation.
In order to have the HDRi environment work , go to render setup, under V-RAy, option environment. Turn on sky light with a multiplier 0.3. Next turn on Reflection/refraction environment override. Next drag the material into the None box.

Blending material:
VrayBlendMtl - mostly used in industrial design by mixing a couple of layers of material.
To create it, first create a base material.
For Bronze: Use VRayMtl, have diffuse as darker green and Reflect as lighter green, Refl. glossiness of 0.75, and subdivs of 8.
As a base use the Bronze material and click on the VrayMtl and change it to VRayBlendMtl, click to keep old object, now you have a blend material with bronze as the base material.
In the first Coat Material put a VrayMtl, in diffuse, set the rust bitmap. Now select the blend amount category to assign how the rust will be distributed about the object. Click on None and apply a dirtmask bitmap.
In the second Coat Material apply another VrayMtl, in diffuse, set the dust bump. In the blend map, attach a dust bitmap.

Vray2sidedMtl:
This allows a material to pass light through itself. Important that:
1. The surface should not have any thickness.
2. One of the sides must be lit by a light source
3. Global illumination must be turned on.
To do this, select an existing material, and then click to change it to Vray2sidedMtl.
Set Translucency to about 180 (this allows the light to pass, the higher the value the more light passes). Next to go Global Illumination and turn it on.

How to make christmas lights.
This is done using a gradient map.
Pick light material, change it to Vraylightmap. Set multiplier 1.2. Next click on None and set a Gradient Map. Change Gradient Parameters. Set first to very dark green, second color place a falloff material, for fir color set a white color and second a light green and last as green. Change 2 Color Positions to 0.7.

There is a problem, the lights don't shine. Set the multiplier to 30, so that you get a reflection and a lighting effect. However, in this case, the colors fade. So to take care of this problem you have to use another material.
Vrayoverride mtl. It allows to set two materials, one will render for the light, the other for the material.
To do this, select the light material and change it to Vrayoverride.
Next copy the Base material into the GI slot as a copy. Go into GI, and set the multiplier to 35.

For a final render, set a higher picture size and in the Irradiance map, modify the preset to a medium or higher and in settings increase the noise threshold.

To set up an environment for a skylight:
Select half a sphere that works as the sky and the forest, right click and select object properties. In the general tab, uncheck receive shadow and cast shadow.
Now select the same objects, right click and select Vrayproperties. Uncheck the box visible to GI. After that, go to render setup, go to skylight, set the color to white and multiplier of 0.9. Then go to GI and turn it on.

Final exercise:
How to make a window with beautiful curtains.
Make VRayMtl, set diffuse to 200. Then go to maps, and in opacity set a bitmap of the curtain opacity. Makes sense to increase the tiling to 4x4.
Next, change the material to vray2sidedmtl and set translucency to 70, so that the light behind the curtain is high.
Next, to get rid of the fuzz on the walls (which are due to the fact that light passes via curtain).
Select the VRayLight modifier, go to parameters, exclude the curtain but only shadow casting. Now lower the multiplier to 20 and subdivs to 20.
Next, to increase the brightness on the floor, change the direct light multiplier higher to a 6.
Next, take the second texture of the curtain, change it to a vraymaterial. Then set it to a twosided material and change transparency to about 20.
Final render looks like this:

You can also set render presets.
Open render setup, scroll all the way to the right, all the way at the bottom, there is a drop down of a preset. The file is saves as an rps.

V-Ray Lesson 7

Environment reflection:
Open a gold material, in its environment field place a bitmap of an environment. Instead of bitmap use agp picture.
Go to output in the environment , place output amount to 3, check the box enable color map. Right click the node at the bottom left and right click on it and make a bezier. and pull it down.
To have a similar effect for other materials, go to the original material output list, under maps option, copy the environment node.

Caustics:
In order to work, need a target direct and vray materials. All you have to do is go to render options, under indirect illumination, go to the caustics options and turn on the check box for caustics.
Modify the multiplier to 2, to make it a bit brighter. Search dist modifier blurs the caustics. The higher the value, the softer the caustics (less detail). 4 is a decent number. For Max photons, number of photons that dispurses is responsible for the detail, set to 500.
However, to do it right, you have to select the direct light object, right click on it and select VRAYproperties. The option caustics subdivs is responsible for the detail, 3000 to 5000 is a good value to have for detail.
To make a plane where the object stands. To do this, you have to apply a material that has an opacity map as a gradient.
Then go to Vray-render options. Go to V-Ray Environment and turn on the skylight by checking the box. Set the color to white and multiplier of 0.3.
Further, turn on the Global Illuminations, but don't use lightcache, because it doesn't have high detail. Use brute source, it is perfect for outside scenes where the light doesn't bounce around.
As far as presets in irradiance map, its best to use high preset. However, due to caustics it will take a long time, so medium is the best option. And click show calc face and show direct light.

To simulate a scene with sun beating through the window.
If you have a room with a table and chair with flower on top, and the room has a window, don't place glass in the window since it will slow down calculation.
Best to use a light source into the window with a multiplier 30. Also check Invisible box to get rid of the actual light. And unclick affect reflection, so that there will be no reflection of the light source.
The other would be a direct light with a multiplier of 3-9 thousand. If you have a lot of windows, more than 50%, then easier to use skylight.
Secondary light is used as a light source, either attached to the ceiling, or on the wall behind the viewing area. With a low multiplier. (0.5-2).

For a scene, go to standard light and place a directional light. turn on Shadows and from drop down list, select Vrayshadow. In intensity/color option, set multiplier to 3. Next under Directional Parameters, place hotspot to 500.
Next, create a vray light and place it just outside of the window with arrow touching the window outside. The light should be the same size as the window. Set multiplier to 30, subdivs to 20, turn on invisible and uncheck affect reflections.
Next, setup secondary lighting. Using vray light. To do this, set it up in the top view, so that the size of the light is not completely covering it, i.e. about 4/5 of the area and raise it just a few inches below ceiling. For these settings, have the same setup as the previous, except, set the multiplier to 2 and uncheck box ignore light normal. (means this will make the light only shine where the arrow is pointing to, otherwise it wil shine to the sides as well)
Next in the render setup, under vray go to color mapping, reinhard of burn rate at 0.3 and uncheck affect background.
Then turn on Global Illumination. As secondary bounce, set Light Cache with a multiplier lower than 1, 0.95. Set saturation to 0.25. Irradiance map, current preset set to medium. Under Hemisphere subdivisions, the higher the better quality reduces fuzz. 80 is a lot. 30 is a decent amount.
Detail enhancement not really too useful, only when final render.
check sample visibility is used when you have very thin objects and light shines as a thin line. Check this for final render. (only when this effect is present on the scene)
Check show calc face and show direct light.

There is a function under indirect illumination, in irradiance map. Under mode, if it set to single frame, every time you run new render, it calculates light distribution again a new. If you want to save time, use multiframe incremental however, it is not perfect. (for video, this is a must, to save time only if all objects are still)
You can also save caustics under a file so that it doesn't recalculate.
Further, for Light Cache - take the image size add width and height and then divide by 4. That is the number to use for subdivs.
Check show calc phase and check pre-filter.
Now, under settings tab, change the noise threshold.(affects all processes) 0.001 is the best. 0.003 is very good.
If you have a problem with RAM, you can various settings to use memory. Static eats all of the memory all of it-may crash max. Dynamic - uses memory in blocks, and set the Dynamic memory limit to about 2k to 3k MB.

To make a 360 view of the camera. Go to Vray render setup, scroll down to V-Ray Camera, select type Spherical, check override FOV and set FOV to 360. Also make sure that the width to height ratio is 2:1.

Physical Sun:
To light up the scene using properly calculated physical values of the sun. Using Vraysun. Best not to raise the sun above 50 degrees. Further, a special sky is made as well, called Vray Sky. Color mapping cannot be used in this setup. The only way to supress the light saturation is to use the vrayphysicalcamera.
To set it up. place the vraysun into the scene and the turn on the GI. In the camera setting, set the white balance setting to D65. (daylight)
The only thing that makes sense to modify in the sun options is the sky model. The setup Preetham is the vray setup. The CIE is the company that made the original calculations. The two settings correspond to clear or overcast weather.

Neat plugs:
Craft Direct plug - need physics chip
Rayfire plug

V-Ray Lesson 6

 V-ray camera:
Exposure check box. For interior, best not to use the exposure check box.
F-number - the size of the pupil size of the camera. The smaller the number, the brighter the scene.
Shutter speed - the lower the number, the brighter the scene.
The combination of F-Number and Shutter speed is called Expo value (EV). EV from 0 to 20. Where 0 is very bright and 20 very dark.



Vignetting darkens the borders of a picture.
White balance sets the temperature picture, i.e. D50-cold image (bluish), D75- very warm (redish). Neutral turns off the effect.
Depth of field option allows fading out objects in the front or back.
By checking specify focus and then setting the focus distance, we can modify which objects are distorted, i.e. in the front or in the back. To make a more proper bleack, set the Bokeh effect blades check box.

Target Directional Light - option Vray Shadows params. If you set the Area shadow check box, you will get diffuzed shadows. By modifying U size option, the lower the sharper the shadow. Also, you can increase the number of subdivs for further detail.
Under intensity/color/attenuation set the color slightly yellowish.
Next open render setup, indirect illumination, turn on GI, under V-ray irradiance map, set preset to high and check the two check boxes calc phase and direct light. Next go to V-ray tab and open vray environment.Turn on GI environment and set multiplier 0.5. By setting sky multiplier to 0.6 and direct light to 1.3 will make higher contrast.

For final renders (for exterior scenes mostly) (best quality-very long). This option is good because it is perfect where you don't have to modify subdivs.
1. Set picture size to a high size.
2. Got to Vray tab option Vray: Image Sampler. Set image sampler to Adaptive DMC. In DMC settings, set min subdivs to 1 and max subdivs to 100.
3. In Setting tab, go to Vray: DMC Sampler. Set Adaptive amount to 1. (this allows the amount of subdivs to render, by setting to 1 it allows DMC to work at max.) Now to Noise threshold, the lower the number, the better the quality. The best quality is 0.001. For commercial use, 0.003 or 0.005.

Global Illumination:
In architectural drawings, the picure must show ideal vertical lines. For this, in the vray camera view, click Guess vert button.
Set a VrayLight. And then in Rendering setup, set colormapping to Reinhard with burn of 0.3
GI is not a source light, it allows otherlights to bounce from other objects.
Go to Indirect Illumination and turn it on. GI Engine option in Primary bounces-is the very first reflection of the light, Secondary bounces measures all the rest of the light bounces.
Brute force option - the most accurate light calculating method, which calculates each light ray. Has lower calculation time, has the highest detail, but has a lot of fuzz.
Irradiance map option - uses a certain number of rays and then an interpolation is used to come up with the average. Has medium calculation time, has the medium detail, but has the best fuzz elimination. However, it only has 1 light bounce. Hence it cannot be used in Secondary bounce. If you go to Vray setup into Irradiance map option, the custom preset of VERY HIGH will allow calculation of the finest detail. However, the higher the preset the less blending action. I.e. picture will be very sharp. Hence, Medium would work best in interiors.
If you have primiary bounes as irradiance and secondary as brute force, the result will be a bit patchy, with fuzz.
A better way to do it is using Photon map as a secondary, however, it had some downside.

The optimal GI engine for secondary is to use Light Cache.
Light Cache is the faster calculation method, bad detail, but medium fuzz.

Turn it on as a secondary, scroll down to the Light Cache option. The only option that makes sense to modify is Subdivs. 500 is enough for small size pictures. Switch on Show calc phase and pre-filter.
Light Cache has a peculiarity, the light bounces about 100 times, compared to brute force of 3. Hence, you have to lower the multiplier of Light cache to about 0.95.
To make church type stained glass that shines. Create a material, apply the VrayLight material, and at the right of multiplier, apply a bitmap of the stained glass.

The final render with textures and lit stained glass looks like this:

V-Ray Lesson 5

 Proxy:
Keep all files in a project folder. I.e. just a folder with a name, and have all the texture files, ies, bump maps, max files all in one dump.
To get an object into a scene, use merge function. The object comes in without textures. Make sure you copy textures into the project folder, so that it finds it.
Although, merging objects takes a lot of memory.
A better way is using vray-proxy.
Downside of proxy is that you can't modify it and the worse part is that you can't save materials. However, there is a way around getting materials.

To export:
1. Copy texture materials into the project map.
2. Open the exported object and make sure that the materials don't have high subdivs, if it will be used in the background, doesn't make sense to make it super fine looking.
3. Make all objects attached together. Select one object, go to modified and click "attached list", to select all objects and attach them. By doing this step, one material was also created.
4. Next open Materials "M", using a color picker, click on the object, a new material will arise.

5. Make sure you name the material and object under one name.
6. Next export material, either as a new library, or open an existing one. To import into existin library, open Get materials, click open, find the library, open it. And then, drag the object material into the library and click save.
7. Create proxy. Right click on the object and select VRMesh Export. Select proper path for the file to be saved. i.e. into the project folder.

8. Save materials.

To import:
1. Put it into the scene using VRayProxy.
2. Open materials "M", click on "Get Material". The go to File-> open -> proxylib.mat. Reopen the library if you before applied a texture from the library so that the new material gets refreshed into the window. These materials are combined.

Lighting:

VrayLight - main light source, most used. Difficulty with it is that it decays with distance, so there is a fine line with using the multiplier. Furthermore, the size of the light effects the multiplier. And finally the actually light is seen on the render, hence we have to turn off the object and its reflection.
Works as a plane, sphere and dome (very rarely used).
Set 20 subdivs to get rid of the fuzz. Also, check the invisible box so that in render, you don't see it.
If you have overlighting areas, then the rendering is slow. Hence, to adjust, turn on the color Mapping in the Render setup.
Using type of mapping:
If you are using linear, then it doesn't really do anything.
If you use exponential, it gets rid off the overexposure. HSV is optimal out of those 3. The better option is Reinhard. To modify it:
Option of burn. The less the burn, the less the burnt area. Say 0.3 means 30% is allows to be burnt.

IES is used to engineer light distribution.
For this, there was a VRayIES created. You can download the IES files from the manufacturers websites.
Create VRayIES., make sure that it is pointing in the right direction. Next, go to modify and turn off check box for targeted.
Then click "None" and then select the ies files. To increase the intensity of light (if it isn't given originally), use power. If you placed a light is inside an object, you hae to select Exclude and exclude the object that you don't want to get lit.

Light Material - can be used as neon light. But doesn' work without global illumination. And requires a bit multiplier.
Go to material "M", instead of standard, set it to VraylightMtl. Go to rendered setup GI on. And go to Irradiance map, set current preset to very low and check the two bozes, show calc phase and show direct light.

V-Ray Lesson 4

Good textures to get are from : Arrowway or BOSCH

To create velvet-cloth material:
Use in diffuse a Falloff material and set the front side two two colors a dark and a light color.Highlight glossiness 0.8 And set the bump to a wallpaper bumpmap
Now use falloff into diffuse.

Shiny tooth type material:
Set reflect to white, Refl glossiness to 0.9. Now go to Diffuse and set to falloff.
For front color set gold color in the side, copy the front and make really dark.
Turn on Fresnel and click on the letter L on the right, this will unhide Fresnel IOR. increasing the amount makes the object more reflective. Scroll down to section BRDF, if you set the anisotropy to a negative, then the reflection is vertical, if you put a positive fraction, then the reflection is negative

Reflection map you can regulate the intensity of reflection on each pixel. If you put a map in, reflection in white parts will reflect maximum, in black no reflection. Normally, if you get a material, you get a diffuse map, a bump map and a reflection map if it is a reflective material.

How to make reflective tiles:
Set reflect to white, refl gloss to 0.95 and fresnel turned on and set IOR to 2.2. or depending on tipe of reflection you want. Now go to the reflect and assign a reflect bump map, set tiling 4x4. Next assign the same map to the bump by copying it. Finally, set the diffuse map and make sure you set the tiling 4x4.
For large areas, use similar type of tyle maps. If you are doing a small area, best to use a map that has variation tiles as a block.

How to make wallpaper that has reflection items on it:
Assign a reflect bump map and assign it to the reflect color set refl glossiness to 0.7
Now set the bump map and the diffuse map.

Say you want to create your own reflection and bump map:
Take a picture and first check if the object is tiled.
In Photoshop:
Use offset and move the object horizontally or vertically and see if you have any cuts in it. Then adjust hue and saturation to set the color of the texture. And set levels to highlight white and black parts. Create, bump, reflect and dissuse map.

Now to the material:
Set glossiness 0.6, set reflect map as a bitmap. You can adjust the intensity of the Reflect under the Maps options.
Next set the bump map, and set the intensity to -20.

To create polished rock material:
Turn on Fresner, and then apply a reflect bitmap.
Set Glossiness to 0.6
Fresner IOR - 2.5
Then apply bump around 60 intensity and diffuse map.

To create less reflective rock material:
Turn on Fresner, and then apply a reflect bitmap.
Set Glossiness to 0.62
Fresner IOR - 2.4
Then apply bump around 60 intensity and diffuse map. And set map to 450x450x200 on the wall.

How to make better leather material:
Fresner on and IOR to 2, set a bitmap map in reflect.
And Refl glossiness 0.65.
Copy reflect map to bump. And assign diffuse.

Metal 1:
Copy color of Diffuse to Reflect and set refl. glossiness 0.7.
Then put a bitmap to the Refl.glossiness option, i.e. a metal bitmap. Then set strength to 50

Metal 2 - for Tube
Copy color of Diffuse to Reflect and set refl. glossiness 0.7.
Go to BRDF option, open drop down and you can select type of reflection material. For tube type metal material, setting a 0.5 in anisotropy will make the reflection around the object, with a -0.5, will set te the reflection along the tube.

Metal 3 - Chrome:
Diffuse 220, copy to reflect and set glossiness to 1. By modifying high glossiness, you can set the bleak higher without distirtion of a reflection. To turn it on, click the L and set it to 0.65

How to make better glass:
Arch-glass good use for windows and for glass on shelves in furniture.
First - Diffuse set to black, Reflect is white color. Fresner on. Turn on High glossiness. Set it to 0.98. In order to increase the reflection, we increase Fresner IOR to 2.5.
Set refract to 240 color and Affect shadows on.

In order to increase render time. first create materials, then select lights. but while you are adjusting lights, make sure you block materials to increase render time.
Go to materials, the open Vray in option Global Switches. The click Overrise materials. Then drag a black grey material into the None area of next to the override. You can click override exclude to not affect an object.

To draw an object, instead of materials, but a wired and lighted scene.
Go to a bank material, set the Diffuse darker value 100. And then set a VrayAdjustTex into the Diffuse map. In its options, set the diffuse color to 50. Twice less than the original color.

Vraylight:
VrayIES allows a different type of light distribution in the VrayIEA Parameters, click on None and apply an IES file.

To light up an exterior scene, you need two types of lights. One for the sky and the other for the sun.
Open Vray setup and open Vray-environment option. Here turn on the GI Environment. Set it to 0.8. Sky should have a smaller multiplier than the sky. Set color to white.
Now open Indirect Illumination tab and turn it ON.
Next open the rolled Irradiance map. Change the preset to medium. And check show calc phase and show direct light

V-Ray Lesson 3

Vray material:

Go to Materials "M" and change the standard material to - Vraymtl
There are 3 main options:
1 Diffuse - Main color
The option for Diffuse is roughness, its function is to reduce the amount of reflection of light.
2 Reflect - strength of object reflection within an object, by changing the color (from white to black changes the reflection) 0 (black means reflection is turned off)
In real life, reflection works depending under which angle you are looking at it. This is called the Fresnel law, hence, set check Fresnel reflections. If this is checked, then set the Reflect color to white - 255.
However, the reflection is too perfect. If you put a stick into the ground and shine light on it, at the base the shadow will be sharpest but as it goes higher it gets more diffused.
Raytracer is good for reflection, however it cannot determine the amount of blurring that a reflection may have.
A better way is the MonteCarlo method, instead of 1 light ray, it uses a bunch of light rays at one point to calculate reflection. To turn it on, you have to modify Refl. glossiness. Monte Carlo is turned on, if the value is less than 1.
To modify the accuracy of MonteCarlo, increase the Subdivs to a higher number.
Use interpolation - gets rid of distortion by using blur. (don't use it, because it sometimes gets rid of smaller items)
Max depth - amount of times a light can bounce. i.e. how many times a mirror will reflect itself from another mirror. Exit color is the color that the reflection will take after it exhausts the reflection amount.

3 Refract - transparancy, similar technique as Reflect, i.e. by changing colors
If Reflect and Refract are all set to 0(black), then all the other options won't be working.



For rug: use vraydisplace, carpet displace into the bump-map. 2D maping, Amount 3, although if you are doing on a 3000 size, then 1 or 1.5. Resolution 1500 and Precision 15.
Next, create a material vraymtl, in diffuse set the carpet material and set the roughness to 0,4.

For a reflection object, such as a tile floor: In order to set proper setting, place bitmap into diffuse last, so that you can adjust the reflection and refraction accordingly. If you can have a tint color, you can set the color in the reflect to that tint color. To have a proper reflection of an object, copy the Diffuse color to Reflect. However, to make proper reflection, check Fresnel reflections, set Reflect color to white, 255. And set the Refl. glossiness to 0,85. Subdivs of 20. Next scroll down to "Maps" and assign a bump map to Bump and a texture map to Diffuse, all under "Maps".

To create matte material - wallpaper :
Set Diffuse-texture bitmap and bump-texture bit-bump-map and set Roughness to 0.25
To create brick:
First go to bumpmap, amount -50, apply diffuse bitmap and set the roughness to 0.55

Plasticy materials:
1. Check Fresnel Reflections on, then set Reflect color to 0 (255).
2. Set Refl Glossiness from 1-0.5
1.0 - chrome, metal
0.9 - glass, plastic, car paint
0.8 - perfect wood polish
0.7 - wood
0.6 - flat plastic, plastic cover, skin
0.5 - polished rocks

For polished wood:
Check Fresnel Reflections on, then set Reflect color to 0 (255)
Set Refl. glossiness to 0.75 and subdivs to 9
in Diffuse set the bitmap to wood

For leather:
Check Fresnel Reflections on, then set Reflect color to 0 (255)
Set Refl. glossiness to 0.65
Then set the leather bump and then the leather diffuse.

For metal:
Make sure that the Diffuse and Reflect are the same colors and Fresnel is turned off.
For production type metal, such as steel, use Refl Glossiness of 0.5 and diffuse/reflect of 50
sand papered metal, use Refl Glossiness of 0.7 and diffuse/reflect of 120
polished metal, use Refl Glossiness of 0.9 and diffuse/reflect of 200
Chrome, mirror, use Refl Glossiness of 1 and diffuse/reflect of 220

For transparrent items:
1. Set diffuse to black (10).
2. Set reflection to white and turn on Fresner Reflections.
3. Set Refl. Glossiness 0.95
4. Refract - the lighter the color the more transparent it is. 240 - if for normal transparency. You can set the color of the glass here too.
5. Make sure you set the check box effect shadow on.
6. Glossiness (under refract option), set it around 0.9 (this option sucks a lot of memory)

Self lighting material:
Change type of material to Vraylightmtl. Self set.

Now, for rendering without distortions, go to render, click tab settings. Under DMC Sampler, modify Noise threshold. The smaller the better. The finest is 0.001. A normal is 0.005

V-Ray Lesson 2

 Antialising-антиступенчатость and setting up your scene.
A bit of history: When drawing a line, vertical or horizontal is fine, however, once you go diagonal, then you get into the problem of correct pixel construction in terms of stairs.

To solve this problem, the renderer renders the picture normal 4x the size of the set picture and then shrinks it to the original set picture. When it shrinks, it combines the pixels together creating a blur effect. As a result, the stairs become blurred and the picture looks good. However, when the picture is increased 4x, then the process time takes 16 times longer.

Vray has 3 methods of antialising,
1) Fixed- the oldest (takes the picture increases and shrinks it, make the area bigger)
in v-ray:: fixed image sampler, subdivs - if 1, doesn't increase size. With 4 subdivs is the best quality, i.e. increases picture 4x. If in the picture you still have stairs due to light, then you have to reduce the intensity of the light. It is not a problem of antialising. To correct the problem go to color mapping in vray options and click two check boxes: subpixel mapping and clamp output.
Production quality size of render is 3508x2480 at 300dpi
2) Adaptive DMC - the most optimal, has similar function as fixed, only in this case it blurs only the needed parts not the entire picture.
In its options, you have min and max subdiv options. min means that if you don't need to blur, then use the min value, if there is a portion that needs to be blurred, vray will use use the value in max. It is twice as fast as the fixed.
3) Adaptive subdivision - the fastest good quality renderer, best to use for draft. In its options, setting the min and max rate to 0 and 3 will be comparable to the DMC options of 1 and 4.

So in summary, use antialising, subdivision for draft and for rendering, use DMC. The most important factor in rendering is the actual size of the picture, so the more pixels, the better the picture. For draft a good size is 1754x1240.

You can also use the antialising filter. Filter VrayLanczosFilter, makes the image slightly softer with a size 3. Used sometimes in nature mort. For interior, use either VraySincFilter, which makes all objects sharper with size 4. Makes a  photorealistic photo with a tripod and high exposure.

V-Ray Fur is similar to displacement, however fur gets better quality.
It can only be applied to a surface with a lot of polygons. The more polygons the better the fur rendering. 1x1 plane will kill your computer and you'll have to restart.
To use, example 1. Create a circle centered at 0 and 100 radius. Go to modifier and select garment maker.
In fur modification options, one of items to pay attention to is in the Distribution segment in the Per area. For exteriors, use 0.01. For interiors, use around 4, which makes it very dense.

Another example:

For rug, use Length of 2, Thickness of 0.2, Gravity of -1, Bend of 3 (which makes each fur curl up), Knots - 6 per area 2
For comforter, use length 6 or more, thickness of 0.2, gravity of -4 (so that the fur gets pulled down), bend of 1.5, knots 10, per area-3
To apply material to the fur, create a regular material in the diffuse area install a bitmap, with tiling of 2 and 2. Apply this material to the object and the fur object.
If you want to make an arc or other polygonal object and apply fur to it, apply modifier quadrify mesh which will break the object in further polygons.

Another example of grass creation. Instead of using fur, use displacemap.
To use grass you need a lot of memory, 2nd you need a specific bumpmap. Use a bump map i.e. grass displace and apply material to grass diffuse. Apply UVW Map to wall, size 200x200x200 (based on the side of the bitmap being applied) after that is done, apply another modifier vraydisplacementMod. If you use a plane to apply the dispacement, use the 2D mapping, if a more complex object, then 3D. In the textmap apply the difuse map. Then apply amount around 6. In 3D mapping options, increase the quality (the lower the better quality), place around 2 (good quality), 1 is ideal. Also, set the checkbox of Keep continuity, it keeps the edges stitched together. For grass, set amount to 8, under 2D mapping, Resolution is the detail of map, set it to 1500, Precision is the precision of putting the map where it should be, set it to 15. There is a plug to create grass called Grass-o-matic. The result of render is as follows:

V-Ray Lesson 1

To start with, there are 4 main render engines.
1. Scanline - roots from 3D studio based on DOS programming
2. Mentalray - was popular but very slow and memory intensive, still used but not prefered
3. Quick Silver - good for draft scenes
4. V-Ray - current industry standard for rendering.
V-Ray Chaos a) 1.5Sp2 (for Max 2009), b) 1.5Sp4a (for Max 2010), c) 1.5Sp5 (for Max 2011), c) V-ray Rt (allows rendering real time)
Which hardware works best with 3DMax:
CPU - Min: Core 2 Duo, Normal: Core Quad, Better: Intel i7 (doesn't overheat as much)
Ram - Normal: 8GB, for i7 you need 12GB, otherwise it will run at 2.
OS - has to be 64 bit for graphics. Can run any XP, Vista or 7 as long as its 64-bit

Unto V-Ray:
To turn it on:
Press F10, in the setup renderer, go all the way to the bottom where you can select the type of render engine.




V-Ray Displacement - is used as a bump map, however it is more advanced in that it actually creates micro polygons that act as real geometry, i.e. can create shade and various other effects. It is used to create rugs, grass and other similar type objects. (Uses a lot of RAM)
It can be found under Modifier -> VRayDisplacementMod -> Under Texmap click "None" and then select "Bitmap" from the new window to put the bump texture onto an object. By changing amount you modify the height of the bump, also set edge lense to 2.

Vray-Proxy - allows to bring in other objects to the scene that are already pre-rendered and don't eat a lot of memory as far as render power goes. The objects cannot be modified, but only rotated, scaled or moved. To create such an object, you have to first create it, then export it as a *.vrmesh. On the right you will see where to find it.


Vray PhysCam - creates a vray camera which has its own unique features that can be used within the Vray engine.

VrayFur - is used to create Fur, grass, or any type of fur related item. To use it, first select the object (surface) to apply it to, then go to create object->Vray->Vray Fur. To make grass use the following settings. The Taper setting sets the thickness of the end points of the grass.

Vray Mtl - this allows to create materials used for V-Ray. For example, to create gold, go to materials, click on the Standard and change it to Vray Mtl. Once that is done, start modifying the settings, i.e. Diffuse is yellow, copy the same color to the Reflect category and in order to make gold super shiny, make the refl. glossiness to 0.8. This will give the object more distortion as far as reflection.

Similarly, you can create a water object using Vray Mtl, parameters shown on the right.

Vray-Light - is used to give the scene lighting. The bigger you draw it, the more intense the light will be. For indoor scenes, a multiplier of 30 is more than enough (with V-Ray), but once you start making outside scenes, you are talking a multiple of thousands.

Color Mapping - is used to modify the light diffuse, i.e. counteract the shine. For this, go to Render Setup. And go to V-Ray tab.Look at picture on right. For interior, you can use HSV exponential. However, the more popular is the Reinhard preset.
For Reinhard preset, set the Burn Value to 0.3. 1 makes maximum exposure, vs 0 that make no exposure. 0.3 works well for interior scenes.

Global Illumination - irradiance map makes the light softer.

In the render setup, select the tab indirect illumination (GI)
Turn it on, next go to the parameters under Vray: Irradiancemap-> current preset-> here, the higher the value the sharper the light will be traced, however more resources will be sucked. a low value actually blends the light smoothly and may actually work better. In the options make sure you click Show Calc phase and Show direct light. This will allow you to see how the rendered is tracing the object.

Vray lightMtl - inside Vray, there is a material called VRay lighMtl which if applied to an object makes the object work as a light source and illuminate other objects. For this to work you have to have GI turned on (see above) and the current preset should be set to at least medium to see proper light tracing.