Add bloom and glare to your render using the V-Ray Lens Effects

 

This tutorial shows you how to setup the V-Ray Lens Effects plugin. The effect appears in areas that are extremely bright which can sometimes lead to harsh black edges caused by over exposed pixels. The change from one extremely bright pixel to a dull pixel is what makes this anomaly happen. In real life this is noticeable when taking a digital photograph of something that is extremely bright such as the sun. However the resulting photograph will have bloom type effects that show some color bleeding. The V-Ray Lens Effects replicates this by adding an additional element to the render. The bloom and glare effects develop from a source image which is generated by the plugin after the render is complete.

Downloads

If you would like access to the scene files used in this tutorial please click here to download.
In the environment and effects roll out under the effects tab, add the V-Ray Lens Effects option. Under the parameters turn on both bloom and glare options. This effect is applied after rendering making it easy to adjust the settings to get the desired result without having to re-render the scene each time it is updated.

Access the V-Ray Lens Effects via the environment and effects rollout

The bloom effect adds a blurred halo and is controlled via three parameters; size, weight and shape. You can also turn on fill edges so that the bloom effect continues outside of the rendered image to avoid any darkened edges or a sudden cut off.
The glare effect can be adjusted by the weight and size parameters. If using a VRayPhysicalCamera you can choose to take the settings from that or add your own settings by choosing from camera parameters in the drop down list. The final option is to use an image using the Filter Generator tool or your own custom image.
Turn on both the bloom and glare effects before rendering so that V-Ray knows to activate the plugin. If you choose to turn on the effects after the initial render is complete V-Ray will re-render the scene.
You can control where the bloom and glare effects appear on the rendered image. Every pixel has a color float value. The brighter the pixel, the higher the value. By setting the mask intensity to a specific value, everything below will be ignored by the lens effect as it creates an alpha mask. Both effects also have material or object ID options which you can use to make the effect only appear on these ID’s. This is useful when increasing the mask intensity in order to generate a finer mask, causing the unclamped colours to have white or black halos surrounding the pixels.
To get the colour float value of a particular pixel, you first must render a draft version or a cropped section to save some rendering time. Make sure the V-Ray Frame Buffer is enabled and render using the 3ds Max standard button in the render setup.
Once the render is complete, choose LensEffectsSource element from the drop-down list in the V-Ray Frame Buffer. This is an unclamped element which is not affected by the color mapping options from the V-Ray render settings. Right click on a pixel where you want the effects to appear and note down the first value in the color (float pixel information).

Choose a float color value from the unclamped LensEffectsSource element

Enter the mask intensity for both bloom and glare effects and setup your final production render settings. Now render the image by clicking the 3ds Max render button. Whilst V-Ray is rendering the final image you can check your mask is correct by selecting it from the drop down list in the top left corner of the V-Ray Frame Buffer.

Use intensity masking to control where the effects appear

 

Use the update effect button each time you adjust a parameter to view the results. Once you are happy with the results you can save out the final render through the V-Ray Frame Buffer.

Create your own glare filter using the Filter Generator

Adjust each component layer of the filter via the 4 tabs at the top. See the results of the composited filter in the lower panel. The Filter Generator can be found in tools within the Chaos Group/ V-Ray Advanced start menu folder.

Export the filter as a HDRI

You can also add dirt and dust that would typically appear on a lens by using an obstacle mask which will change the appearance of the glare.

Watch the video tutorial

Controlling lights in post using 3Ds Max state sets and Adobe after Effects

Ken Pitts demonstrates how to use 3ds Max State Sets and Autodesk’s After Effects Plugin to make a lighting system that is fully controllable in post-production and to eliminate the need for tracking on simple objects such as a TV screen. This enables you to change the brightness and colour of lights after rendering and the light from some footage on the TV will also affect the room in a physically correct manner.
Lecturer at Bournemouth and Poole College and Associate Lecturer at Bournemouth University. Ken Pitts YouTube channel has 3ds Max tutorials, that provide useful processes with hints and tips so that you can apply them to your own projects easily whilst demonstrating the things that can go wrong and how to avoid them.

CTD Visuals and Process Videos by Carlos Mazon

Carlos Mazon posted two impressive images on the Ronenbekerman's forum this week, along with two process videos showing how he takes it from model to final image. This work was done for Wire Collective LTD and designed by Crystalzoo Architecture. Both images were rendered using Blender and Cycles. Check it out!

The time was crucial and the really quick RT preview in Cycles was a big advantage. First image was post-produced in 2.5 hours in Photoshop and the second one in 3 hours, so don’t mind the numerous mistakes. You can see the process in the two videos below

Image One

Image Two

Visit the forum thread and join the discussion – CTD – Images and Time lapse
Be sure to visit Carlos Mazon Website to see more of his work and say Hello! – www.wirecollective.com

VRayLightMtl + VRayDirt for Quick AO Render Checkup

Here’s a quick tip I use almost all the time now, mostly because I really like the look and it’s easy and quick to setup, but the main advantage of an AO (ambient occlusion) pass is spotting problem areas in the geometry – especially holes and flipped normals you might have missed

Setting up the AO pass with VRayLightMtl & VRayDirt is real easy and fast. You don’t need to turn on GI or use a VRay Physical Camera for this (if you do, make sure to tick off the exposure option). After I import the model into 3d Studio Max, or just finished modeling inside 3dsmax, I run this quick pass to check the model for geometry bugs such holes and flipped normals i might have missed.

In the image below you’ll see how those problem areas will show in such a pass. This will only work if the Emit light on back side option in the VRayLightMtl is off allowing for all those problem areas to appear pure black since they are not emitting any light.

 An example of how flipped normals will look

The material settings

Using VRayDirt map as color, making sure Emit on back side is off.

                                                                VRayLightMtl Settings
Setting pure white and pure black for colors and radius to 200cm gives me good result, but you can play with it.

                                                                      VRayDirt Settings


Check out Peter Guthrie’s VRay Dirt Tutorial at his blog for more cool uses for this great VRay map.

Adding fog using vrayzdepth render pass

Here’s a quick and flexible way to imitate the look of fog in the background of an image. I recently used this technique in the visualization of the Agami House in Yaffo. It’s true it might not look real enough but for most cases this really looks good enough and you have the added bonus of fast render and flexible edit inside Photoshop if the client ask for tweaks.

Adding the fog layer

You’ll start with the original render without any fog in it as you see below

                                                           Render without any fog

On top of this image you’ll add the fog layer – Full frame of pure white color masked out by the VRayZDepth render pass.

 VRayZDepth Render Pass

 If you need to adjust the fog location relative to the camera you can play with the ZDepth image levels, instead of re-rendering the image after changing the VRayZDepth parameters, This way you can quicky move the fog in and out as i did in the example below.

                                                   Getting the fog near camera with levels edit

                                    White layer masked out using VRayZDepth on top
But this is not that good since the beautiful sky is now covered with white color. In order to get this right, and actually more true to the way fog behaves in reality, you need to change the pure white layer to a gradient with pure white at the bottom that shifts to transparency as you move up… this way the fog will be limited to near ground areas.

                                            Fog using a gradient instead of pure white layer

You can see above the end result with the fog layer at 100%. You can decrease the impact of this layer to fine tune the general effect, or even mask out specific areas to emphasize exactly what you like.

80% of fog layer

                                                                        60% of fog layer

                                                                          40% of fog layer

Creating ceilings with RailClone

Creating ceilings with RailClone from iToo Software on Vimeo.

In a previous tips and tricks tutorial we looked at how RailClone can be used to “Creating Parquet Flooring”. In this instalment we explore how to create suspended or acoustic ceilings. This style will use a single enclosed spline to define the area and include lights placed at nth intervals on the X and Y axis.”
Go ahead and check out the “Creating Ceilings” tutorial page now!

The files that come with this series are compatible with 3ds Max 2012 – 2015, V-Ray, Mental Ray, Corona Renderer and RailClone 2 Pro.
Make sure you check the readme file that comes with this scene for the terms of use.

House in Oxfordshire by Peter Feeny Architects

The House in Oxfordshire by Peter Feeny Architects hits it on the nail with a beautifully nestled design, replacing and older house on the premises. Great reference for wood cladding and landscaping photographed by Rafael Dubreu.