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Lighting with standard 3ds max lights
by Sin-D (http://sin-d.3dk.org)

In this tutorial I'll show you how you can easily create good lighting without a expensive rendering system, just max and the default scanline renderer. And you don't even need radiocity or lighttracer.

First let's see some reasons why not to use a GI system of a 3^rd party rendering system.

1. You have more control over the lighting, GI rendering systems have plenty of options, yet compared to making GI manually you don't have much control over it.

2. The rendering times are not huge, you can make great lighting while rendering a scene only takes a few seconds while GI takes minuts or even hours for a very simple setup.

3. Knowing your way around with lighting could really help your career as a 3d artist, 3D company's don't like GI because of their huge rendertimes and lack of control.

Alright, now what do we need for this tutorial:

You need 3D Studio Max obviously, it doesn't really matter which version you have. for the rest you need the E-Light script for part two of the tutorial. A link to the script is in part 2...

Let's look at a fewexamples.

I recently made this livingroom and I used GI from final-render for it.

This 640x480 picture took25 minuts to render on my pentium4 3ghz.

when i thought of making this tutorial i did some tests with this livingroom, this time using scanline renderer and a bunch of omnis.

this render took 12seconds :o).

We can see that certainthings have changed dramaticly, the colors of the walls, thereflections which could be a bad thing but i like it in this image,the lighting gives it a warmer look too in my opinion.

Here's another example:

This is one of my latest scene done with just scanline renderer and took about 1 minut to render at this resolution,which proves you don't need a expensive renderingsystem to make good lighting.

In this tutorial we aregoing to create two simple scenes everybody can make quickly, we arehere for the lighting not for the modelling or texturing.

There will be two parts:

The lighting of ainterior. And the lighting of aexterior.

Each part has it's ownlittle techniques used.

(do know that the lighting i talk about in this tutorial is specificly set up for these scenes, but you will learn how to set them up for your scene.)

Part 1 - interior scene

Let's start with a interior scene, we will make a room with a window and a few objects in de room ,just standard primitives. (note: There are better ways to create this room but i'll keep it simple for now)

1. Open up max and go to 'file > reset' now we will create a box in the top viewport. Settings= Length 400, width 320 and height -3.0 and call it 'floor'

2. again in the top viewport on the left side of the box create a box of length 400, width 10 and height 110. put it in place as a wall and call it wallleft, then copy it to the other side of the 'floor' box and rename it to wallright.

3. select the floor and copy it, move it up to the edges of the walls and rename it to cieling, now one more box to put in the back, in the front viewport create another box length 115, width 333 and height -5.0, rename it to wallback and move it to the back so now you will have this once you move your perspective viewport correctly to look like this.

(Note:i only put the lightin there to show all walls as the sidewalls and cieling would beblack otherwise.so you don't have to put the light in there).

4. Now we will boolean a window in the left wall so we can let some sunlight through, create another box in the middle of the scene and make it: Length 65 width and height -80.

5. place it like it did and is shown in the picture below.

6. now we will boolean the hole in the wall, select the box we just created and go to compound objects, located in 'create' > 'geometry' then the rolldown menu.

7. in the compound menu click on 'Boolean' and in 'operation' we will change from substract (A-B) the default one to substract (B-A), now press the 'pick operant B' button and you move the mouse over to the front viewport and click on the 'leftwall' where the window will be. If all went well we will now have a 'window'.

8. Let's add a few objects in the scene so we can see the endresult alot better lateron, try to get it like i did in this render. Shouldn't be too hard and it doesn't have to be precise, just close enough :o)

9. Before we move on to the lighting, first let's give the whole scene the same materials so it will look the same on everybody's computer. Select the whole scene and press 'M' to open the material editor, turn one slot into a very light blue material and name it walls, the second slot turn it into a braunish material and name it floor (which will also be used to the cieling) leave the objects inside the room for what they are. Now assing the materials to the walls and floor and cieling.

Also, change the sphereand teapot to these new places in the above picture so we can seethem better now.

10. Great, now we can start with the lighting, if you have added any lights to see the scene better, remove them so we can make a clean start. First thing to do is add a direct light aimed at the window to shine into the room.

pay attention for the twoedges i marked in purple, those are the edges of the window.

11. in the direct light parameters turn on shadows and set the shadows to 'shadow map', change the multiplier to 1.8 and the color to 254, 255 and 211. Change the hotspot to 60 and to soften the edge of the window change the 'shadow map params' to size 250 and sample range to 6.

It should look close tothis: (the closer the lightsource to the object the lower the 'size' to get softshadows.)

12. Well that looks kind of dull and black, so we will place a omni just above the floor and in the middle of where the sunlight hits the floor, as there will come the most light from. This omni will be very important!

13. Once the omni is placed set the multiplier to 0.4 and now for the color let me explain that for a moment, this omni will be the most important one of the scene. To create good lighting the color of this omni has to be in between the color of the sunlight and the color of the room. Best way is to just guess ;o) i set it on 235, 215, 154.

14. Next step for this omni is the 'far attenuation' check 'use' and set the 'start' on 200 and 'end on 400. Now the secret of good lighting, in 'advanced effects' click on 'ambient only' so we will get this:

15. still looks horrible, so let's fix that. Copy the ambientonly omni and move it straight up till it's above the cilinder in the front viewport, set the omni's parameters on these settings:

(use normal shadow map forshadows and set the color of the light on 254, 255, 211)

(if it hasn't happendalready set the shadow map paramaters to size 128 sample range 6)When you render it now itlooks better but still not perfect.

16. Next step, we will create an array of omni's at the cieling of the room, first create one omni very close to the left wall, then in the panel on the right click on the 'Hierarchy' tab and select ' affect pivot only', once selected move the 'pivot' in the top viewport to the right as it shown in the picture.

17. once that's done go to 'tools' in the top menu then to 'array...' set the parameters as shown in the picture.

18. Now you should have 8 omni's in a nice circle, the reason we use 'instance' is because if we change one of the omni's all 8 omni's change so we don't have to change the settings of each omni.

Select one of the 8 omni'sand make sure you have shadows selected, the color of the lightshould be already correct (check it, if not the color codes are 254,255, 211).

Set the mulitplier to 0.05and set the attenuation as shown in the picture. (shadow parameteresshould be correct already if not (size 128 sample range 6)

19. Make sure you have the 8 omni's on the same place as i do, check your setup with mine on these pictures.

20. there...time to render, now we can see how the array of omni's create a little bit of light but most importantly nice soft shadows on the objects a bit further into the room.

Of course it doesn't lookthat great without any real textures but you can see how to createrealistic lighting.

A little render with onlygrey materials.

Note:This lighting setupis made for this scene only, it doesn't mean this setup works onother scenes as well, this is just to show you the basics and how totreat lighting

What i did mostly here in the tutorial was following the trail of the a lightbeam.t came from the direct light, bounced off the floor (ambient only light) then hit the cieling (array of omni's)And finaly sprawls across the room.P>If you have any question regarding this tutorial feel free to ask here.

Part 2 - exterior lighting

Part two will be exterior lighting, this one will be a bit easier then the interior one.

So let's get started.

1. Reset max 'file->reset' so you have a clean start again and now create a plane of 230 x 230 in the middel of the top viewport.

Oh you may have noticed iuse different user interface colors since the first part. It hasnothing to do with the tutorial i just like this color better. (morecomfty for the eyes =.=).

2. I have default of 4x4 segments so should you probably if not change to 4x4. Create a box in the topviewport length 115, width 115 and height 100, then place it as i did in the topviewport right on the segments as is shown here:

3. zoom and move the perspective view till you have a similar look as i have, and again in the topviewport create a sphere on the corner of the box. Raise it so that it's not sinked half in the 'ground'

4. Now we will run a script called 'e-light' it creates a dome of lights, max 5 and 6 both have skylight but in my experience e-light is just as good and it renders faster in my opinion, you can get it here:

(If you have max 5 or 6 you can use 'skylight' as well if you know how to use it, but i will only explain for E-Light script)

Just extract the filesinto your scripts folder like C:\3dsmax\scripts\

5. in max again you can now run the script by going to the maxscript menu and click on 'run script..'

click on the E-lightscript, there are two scripts one called E-Light and one calledE-lightmax5, as far as i know both will work, so in my case (i havemax 6) i click on 'E-Light'.

6. Now you will get a new menu which allows you to create the lighting. So set the setings as i have had, radius of the dome '500', mulitiplier '2.0', color should be white but with a tiny bit of blue in it (it is a sky afterall).

Now you can click on'create enviroment' and it will create a half a sphere filled withspotlights. Which is kind of ugly and makes it difficult to continueworking so you click on 'hide E-Light' in the menu.

That will hide everythingE-Light has created but when you render the image it will still bethere.

7. Now render the image in the perspective viewport and you will see the basic lighting of the scene.

8. But we want it to be a sunny day, so now we will make a sun, in the topviewport create a direct light. As shown below and raise the spot to an acceptable height.

9. Now at the direct light's parametres turn on shadows and set the shadows as 'raytraced shadows' as we need good sharp shadows, set the mulitiplier to 1.8 and the color to white bit with a tiny bit yellow in it, and in the directional rollout set the hotspot/beam at 150.

10. Render and you will see some good basic lighting of your scene.

A final note, when youapply textures you probably have to change the strength of the directlight a bit, when i applied these simple textures i had to increase themultiplier to 2.5.

Well, i hope you learnedsomething about lighting from this tutorial, till next time :o)

Sin-D.

This tutorial was written by 3D Kingdom Princess Sin-D
http://sin-d.3dk.org