Mental Ray Lighting (part 1)

Mental Ray Lighting

In this beginner’s tutorial we’re going to illuminate a simple warehouse interior in 3ds Max. We’ll explore techniques to illuminate the interior through windows only. To keep things simple we’ll concentrate on lights that work with Final Gather and leave Global Illumination out of the discussion. I’m using 3ds Max 2011.

Step 1 Mental Ray Renderer

We’re going to render the scene with Mental Ray. By default 3ds Max uses the Scanline renderer so we have to change that. Change the renderer to Mental Ray ( Rendering > Render Setup… > Common tab > Assign Renderer > Production > mental ray Renderer ).

Step 2 Warehouse Geometry

This tutorial is about Mental Ray lighting but first we’ll create a really simple warehouse interior. Create a box (Create panel > Geometry > Standard Primitives > Box ) in the top viewport . Modify the box ( Make a selection > Modify panel ) according to the following parameters:

• Length: 20
• Width: 20
• Height: 10
• Length Segs: 5
• Width Segs: 1
• Height Segs: 3

Step 3 Creating Windows

Next we’re going to create the windows. Add Edit Poly modifier to the box ( Make a selection > Modify panel > Modifier List > Object-Space Modifiers > Edit Poly ). Activate the polygon sub-object level, and delete two polygons in the right viewport.

Activate the vertex sub-object level and move the vertices to change the size and shape of the windows according to the picture below. ( Click and drag to select a row or column of vertices at once. )