The render was accomplished using V-Ray 1.50.SP5 for Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design. Post production was done using Adobe® Photoshop® CS5.

In V-Ray you have hundreds of little toggles and spinners that control your render. V-Ray uses a very advanced algorithm and I would suggest, to help maintain your sanity, to learn what all the settings do.

Below you’ll find some screen grabs of my workflow:

3ds max preference - gamma settings

V-Ray Color Mapping

 Leave “clamp output” unchecked so you can access all that 32-bit floating point pixel information in Photoshop. 

sRGB color space

V-Ray raw image file

More to come!

Stereoscopy, stereoscopic imaging or 3-D (three-dimensional) imaging is any technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or creating the illusion of depth in an image. The illusion of depth in a photograph, movie, or other two-dimensional image is created by presenting a slightly different image to each eye. Many 3D displays use this method to convey images. It was first invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1838. Stereoscopy is used in photogrammetry and also for entertainment through the production of stereograms. Stereoscopy is useful in viewing images rendered from large multi-dimensional data sets such as are produced by experimental data. Modern industrial three dimensional photography may use 3D scanners to detect and record 3 dimensional information. The 3 dimensional depth information can be reconstructed from two images using a computer by corresponding the pixels in the left and right images. Solving the Correspondence problem in the field of Computer Vision aims to create meaningful depth information from two images.

Traditional stereoscopic photography consists of creating a 3-D illusion starting from a pair of 2-D images. The easiest way to create depth perception in the brain is to provide to the eyes of the viewer two different images, representing two perspectives of the same object, with a minor deviation similar to the perspectives that both eyes naturally receive in binocular vision.

Composition is one of the most misunderstood concepts in any form of artwork. It has been said that you can be the greatest painter in the world, but if you don’t know how to compose properly, your painting will fall apart and the same goes for digital art/illustrations/renders.

Like all illustrations of mine, this one started off in my head.  First I decide what would make this image special and I decide on a focal point.  These cabins are on a lake, very close to the water, and have windows and a deck facing the South.  I like to play with contrast so I typically place my camera about 45 degrees from my light source (in plan), with the focal point being in the light.  Since the cabins are on the lake facing South I know that you would see the sunrise so I took advantage of the glass on the sliding windows.  I chose the sunrise in the reflection as my focal point.

To bring the viewers eye to my focal point (composition is really about moving the viewer’s eye) I placed the boat in the foreground, pointing towards my focal point.  The boat was tipped slightly away from the camera so it wouldn’t bring so much attention to itself. I used yellow on the boat to help the viewer up into the image knowing the eye associates colors and the sunrise in the reflection is yellow too.  The focal point is also 1/3 to the left of center and about 1/3 below center, which is were the eye is naturally drawn to in an image.  I usually have my horizon lower, but I wanted at least as much blue water as blue sky (the water and sky are blue, which are complementary colors to my focal so it brings the illustration into balance).

Below are some screen grabs of my V-Ray settings: 

VFB Frame Buffer

Global Switches

Antialising

Image Sampler

Environment

Color Mapping

Camera Type

GI

Brute Force

Light Cache

Caustics

DMC

Displacement

Systems

Elements

V-Ray Camera

HDRI

Gamma

I can comfortably say that I have never used the same settings for any 2 scenes so these settings might not work for you, but it might be a good starting point. I am running a render farm with 90Gb of RAM and 24 processors so unless you have an equivalent farm these settings might be to high for you.

Below find some Photoshop CS5 post screen grabs:

(coming soon…)

bit.ly/crNzZD

New features:
*Added VRaySamplerInfoTex texture and VRaySamplerInfo render element
*Added VRayObjectSelect render element which allows to extract objects with specific IDs into a separate element

Modified features:
*Added an option to the VRayPhysicalCamera to perform image distortion based on a texture map
*Allow the user to specify texture bounds for 3d displacement
*Added displacement slot to VRayFastSSS2 material
*Added “prepass id” parameter to VRayFastSSS2 material so that multiple materials can share the same illumination map
*Added displacement slot to VRayLightMtl material
*The color parameter of VRayIES lights is now animatable
*The min/max z-depth values for the VRayZDepth render element are now
animatable
*Support for reflection occlusion in VRayDirt
*Support for environment sampling in VRayDirt
*Support for Particle Flow vertex color mapping and particle visibility
*Support for the “Use transparent shadows” option with Arch&Design materials
*The clipping planes for the VRayPhysicalCamera are now displayed in the viewport
*Added an option “show cone” to the VRayPhysicalCamera to control the display of the camera in the viewports
*Ability to save and load color correction curves for the VFB in Adobe(r) PhotoShop(r) .acv format
*Support for pixel aspect ratio display in the V-Ray VFB
*Support for anaglyph stereo preview in the V-Ray VFB
*Support for LUT color correction in the V-Ray VFB from .cube files
*Ability to display the value of the corrected colors in the V-Ray VFB pixel info dialog
*The “Dynamic memory limit” parameter can be set to zero to remove any limit

Bug fixes:
*Motion blur for Hair&Fur in “mr prim” mode does not match the “buffer” mode
*Occasional random crashes in 3ds Max 2010 due to progress bar updates
*Fixed invalid smoothed normals causing issues with displacement
*Fixed AA artifacts with thin bright lines when using Adaptive DMC image sampler
*Stuck buckets with perfectly transparent surfaces and GI
*Incorrect vignetting for VRayPhysicalCamera when using horizontal/vertical offset
*Set VRaySilentMode should disable the dialog for overwriting raw .vrimg files
*Missing reflections in VRayFastSSS2 when it is a coat material inside a VRayBlendMtl
*Incorrect bump mapping for GI when using time-interpolated irradiance maps
*Fixed artifacts with VRayFastSSS2 when one of the scatter color components is zero
*Fixed incorrect normal map with VRayNormalMap on VRayProxy objects
*Fixed crash with animated irradiance maps and objects with zero scale
*The color of VRayIES lights was not animatable
*VRayIES lights did not produce photon-mapped caustics
*Fixed invalid normals with VRayEdgesTex in the bump slot

Diffuses = Light

An Ambient Occlusion pass returns a gray scale image with intersecting geometry darker. This technique allows you to do some post production using layer manipulation. Revit 2011 has some built in Ambient Occlusion capabilities so be on a lookout in the next release.

The below image was created via a script and I use this technique on almost all of my work.  It gives your illustration a more realistic feel. This is also how I create the museum board stills and animation.

A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces.  Sometimes in an abstract way.  Sometimes surreal.

The new build is available from the download section of the Chaos Group site.
chaosgroup.com/en/2/downloads.html

The V-Ray® 1.50 Service Pack 4 is compatible with Autodesk® 3ds Max® 8, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 9, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2008, 3ds Max® 2009, Autodesk® 3ds Max Design 2009, Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010, Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design 2010.

The new V-Ray build supports both 32-bit and 64-bit OS.

Changelog since SP3:

New features:

Image Sampling Tutorial

The Camera Map texture and modifier projected a bitmap behind and in front of the camera, instead of in front of the camera only.

Solution: The problem is now fixed, with the default settings (projecting to the front only). However, if you want to restore the legacy behavior (projecting in two directions), do so with MAXScript as follows:

* For the texture map, both scanline and mental ray®, if the texture is applied to the diffuse slot of a Standard material on the selected object use:
$.material.diffuseMap.affectBehindCam = true
* For either of the modifiers, if the modifier is at the top of the stack on the selected object use:
$.modifiers[1].affectBehindCam = true

Exception: For scenes using the Camera Map texture, then saved to an MI file, and rendered in mental ray standalone, there is no solution. The shader for mental ray standalone will continue projecting in two directions as before.
Customer Error Reports (CER)

The data is now transmitted for CERs originating from a machine with the Microsoft Windows® 7 operating system.
DirectX Shader Material

The DirectX® Shader material now respects the vertex normal.
DWG File Format

If DWG Files contain double-byte characters, such as Korean characters, in the file path or name, you will now be able to import the file.
InfoCenter

Capabilities such as one-time login, login less, and in product renewal related to the Subscription Center did not work from InfoCenter. These issues have been resolved.
FX Files

If you had two FX files, both with the same variable names, the parameters were being lost when you switched from one file to another. This has been fixed so that the parameters are retained.
Material Editor

In the Material Editor, when you choose a material map source which contains a double-byte characters, such as Korean, you can now select the associated image file.
MAXScript

* The command filenameFromPath now returns the filename as expected.
* You can now query a server list with MAXScript in the 32-bit version of 3ds Max/3ds Max Design.

mental ray

When you rendered using mental ray® and certain overlay scripts, the software would stop working. This issue has been resolved.
Non-Uniform Scale

When you rotated and scaled while using Non-Uniform Scale, unexpected rotation and scaling occurred. These issues are resolved.
ProCutter

* When you try to restore a material with ProCutter, the original UVs are now retained.
* When using ProCutter, smoothing groups are no longer lost.

Render Window

You can now save an image to a path that contains double-byte characters, such as Korean.
Third-Party Plug-ins

* Lightscape: The issue which caused the software to stop working when lights were copied has been resolved.
* The issue with drag and drop operations causing third-party plug-ins to stop working has been resolved.

Vertex Color

Vertex colors are no longer being overwritten when switching between Vertex and Polygon sub-object modes.
Viewport Performance

HOTFIX Download

HDR­Source website spe­cial­izes in 360-​​degree High Dynamic Range Images and libraries.  The images have great resolution and a high dynamic range. They are priced nicely too!

PDplayer

The new version now supports RED (R3D) files.

Version 1.0.3.8 of PDPlayer is now released with the following new features:

• Support for RED R3D files

• Support for a secondary monitor as an external output device (allows users to display just the content of the safe area and mask to a secondary monitor)

• Ability to control the alpha (key) output of Decklink cards

Pdplayer 1.0.3.8 is available for immediate download:
www.chaosgroup.com/en/2/downloads.html?s=pdplayer

For a detailed feature list, please visit:
pdplayer.chaosgroup.com

Look out for a review of PDPlayer on this site very soon!