Magic Wand - 3D and 2D Graphics, Animation, Modeling and Product Visualisation solutions

Hi,

Recently I browse through the net in search of a tutorial that explains the lighting techniques in 3ds MAX very well, I found my tutorial but, there was another shocking Discovery, that is , there are very rare examples in the whole net for Mental ray sunlight and Mental Ray skylight in 3ds Max.

Some people will be having an idea about what I am talking, but those who are not familiar with this, let me explain.Mental ray sun and mental ray are introduced in 3ds Max 9, as a powerful utility to recreate sunlight in renderings with the help of mental ray and final gathering. Actually it can effectively recreate the sunlight with exact time and location values, more than that its running on Mental ray and when we are using final gather, the light is distributed correctly to give a great rendering. Following are the steps to do it easily, everything is available on max, we have to find it and use it. Lets go through the procedures…

• Open your scene and set your Rendering for Mental ray
• Now from the create menu(not the create panel) go to Systems > Daylight system

• Just create the system and Max will ask you for an exposure control change, just press OK
• When you are creating a sunlight system you will be creating a Compass first and then the light, for that drag the Compass in top view port and then create the light
• Change the sunlight to mr sun and the skylight to mr sky then max will again ask you for creating an mr physical sky as the Environment map; just press OK

• You are almost done now from the Date, Time and Location button below the Daylight parameters you will get a window like this, from there you can change the Location, Time and Date of the scene, just like the real world Max will change the sun position and also the sky color automatically.

• Now render your scene with Final gather enabled. isn’t it nice?
• I got a result like this.