3ds Max 2010: Viewing a Background Image When Using a Daylight System and a Mental Ray Physical Sky
Jan 8, 2010 3DS MAX, Rendering, latest
Hey All. My Pratt class ended a few weeks ago and there was one thing that I couldn’t quite get to work in the last class. We were using a daylight system and mental ray physical sky, but wanted to use our own, custom, background image. I promised the students I would research the problem and let them know how to do it. I immediately did some research and found, ironically on a the blog of a friend of mine, the solution. His name is Roger Liucci and his website is Revit Zen at http://revitzen.blogspot.com. Roger gave me permission to write-up his posting so I thank him for that.
First of all, I’m going to assume that you have already added a daylight system and have therefore had 3ds Max automatically insert an mr Physical Sky into the environment map. Once you do this, if you hit render (after adding a plane and box with basic, light-gray materials, and set the time of day to 2pm), it would look like this:
That looks pretty good. If I change the time of day, month, year, geographic location, etc., that background would change accordingly. To change that background to an image of our choice, we need to modify the mr Physical Sky that was placed into the environment map. Here’s how:
1. Click the Rendering pull-down menu and click Environment (you could also have tapped the 8 key on your keyboard).
2. Next, click the Material Editor icon 
(you could also have tapped the m key on your keyboard).
3. Within the Environment and Effects dialog box, left-click and hold on the ( mr Physical Sky ) button and drag and drop it onto an empty slot within the Material Editor:
4. When the Instance (Copy)… dialog box appears, select Instance and click OK. You select Instance because you want all settings that you change in the Material Editor to have the same settings as the mr Physical Sky within the Environment Map.
5. Select the map you just added to the Material Editor and, when the settings appear below, select the box to the left of the Use Custom Background Map option and then click the None button.
6. When the Material/Map Browser appears, double-click Bitmap.
7. Locate the image file you’d like to use as a background and double-click it.
Roger now writes, “One would think this is all that’s necessary, but it still won’t show up correctly.” He’s absolutely right. If we render it right now, it looks like this:
The next step that Roger wrote was exactly what I had left out when I taught my students (so pay attention):
8. Back within the Environment and Effects dialog box, within the mr Photographic Exposure Control group, underneath where it says Physical Scale, select Unitless and set the value to 100000. If we render it now, it looks like this:
This looks better, but you probably notice that the original horizon is cutting through the image. To get rid of this, follow these steps:
9. Reselect the daylight system and, on the Command Panel, switch to the Modify tab.
10. Scroll down and, within the mr Sky Advanced Paramters group, remove the check next to Aerial Perspective:
This is what it’ll look like if we render it now:
If you find that your image is too large, needs to be cropped or needs to be shifted, return to the bitmap settings within the Material Editor and edit any of the settings highlighted within the following image:
Again, thanks VERY much to Roger Liucci of RevitZen (and by the way, here’s the direct link to his post: http://revitzen.blogspot.com/2009/01/visualization-in-max-takes-practice.html). I hope this was helpful to you all and especially to my four students from the Fall ‘09 semester.
3ds Max 2010: Control Viewport Lighting with Layers
Jun 1, 2009 3DS MAX, Rendering, latest
I’ll admit it, I don’t use layers much in 3ds Max for architectural visualization. A new feature of release 2010, however, will most likely get me to change my ways. As I’ve mentioned before, the quality of lighting, shadows and exposure control within the viewport is greatly improved over version 2009. You can now use the Layer Manager to enable and diable the viewport rendering effects of groups of lights (it will also effect your renderings). In the following scene – I’ve got three rooms, each with 2, shadow-casting, photometric lights and a cylinder:
The above image is from the viewport and not a rendering. It can be achieved by turning on the settings in the following image:
Each of the lights, for each room, were placed on their own layers (the targets for those lights were separated out onto a single layer called lightTargets):
Now, by clicking the teapot icon in the Render column of either the Layer Manager or the Layer pull-down menu, you can control whether or not those light are active in the viewport (as well as in renderings). For example, if I turn off the rendering feature for the lights within room 1, I get the following result:
This feature can be particular helpful to speed up viewport response time as well as render length. Also, by applying this technique to lights imported from Revit (via FBX), you can have greater control over those lights as well.
Revit and 3ds Max Share Features (because my mom always told me that sharing is caring)
May 21, 2009 3DS MAX, Rendering, Revit, latest
New features within the rendered frame window, part of 3ds Max’s Reveal 3 technology, are what are known as Quality Control Knobs. These knobs, which are actually slider bars, help you quickly change the mental ray-related settings of your renderings without having to go into the Render Setup dialog box or the Material Editor. The values in these two dialog boxes, however, will change as you adjust the knobs since these are global settings. With the Material Editor, or more specifically actual materials, values will change. For example, adjusting the Glossy Refractions Precision knob within the rendered frame window will also adjust the Glossiness setting of all mental ray-based materials. Additionally, you can drag the knobs all the way to the left to turn that particular feature off. Here’s what they look like:
As I stated in my previous post, many more of the features of this version have extensive tool tips. The Quality Control Knobs are no exception. For example, here’s what you see if you put you mouse over the slider knob for Glossy Reflections Precision:
As I was playing with these feature, I suddenly had the feeling that I had seen them before. I had…in Revit:
It’s really great to see this feature being migrated over to 3ds Max (although it would be nice to have the same example images that appear in Revit). In both programs, the Quality Control Knobs really let you continue to work without spending too much time trying to figure out which, for example, number values which will get you the results you want.
The Daylight System in 3DS MAX 2009 – Part 1
Jan 20, 2009 3DS MAX, Lighting, Rendering, latest
The Daylight System in 3DS MAX has been around for a few releases. The system aspect of it means that it’s sort of a group containing both a sun object as well as a sky object. Previously, the sun and sky types were known as standard (similar to standard lights versus photometric lights). Now, with version 2009, Mental Ray is the default rendering engine and, therefore, the sun and sky types are known as mr sun and mr sky. These types of objects work well with Mental Ray to create highly accurate lighting environments. One great additional feature is that depending on the date time and location you set, the lighting level and background will change. In the first part of this post, I’ll go over how to create a daylight system as well as how to change the time of day thus changing the lighting environment and background.
Figure 1 - Basic Box on a Plane
Read the rest of this entry »
Rendering in Revit 2009 – Grouping Artificial Lights for Easy Access
Jan 13, 2009 Lighting, Rendering, Revit, latest
Did you know that in Revit you can put all, or some, of your lights into groups? This is particularly helpful when you want to turn lights off that won’t affect a particular 3D or camera view. Follow these steps:
Grouping your lights will not only help you to turn them on and off quickly, but, if you choose to organize your groups this way, it will also help you identify where in your model the lights are located.
