[Tutorial] Rendering Made Easy

First, start out by creating three omni's, and a spotlight. Aim the spotlight at the object you are rendering. Place the three omnis around the object, in an evenly spaced arrangement. Tick the "shadows" box in every lights menu (spot01, omni01, omni02, omni03). As you are in the omni menu, give every light a slight tinge of color. Choose complementary colors, such as red, blue, and green. Feel free to test with colors here.

It should look like this:
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/3598/lightssn1.png


The next step would be to place a skylight into the scene. Place it anywhere you want.

Settings should look like this:
http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/1039/skylightzb5.png

Now, its time to set up your environment and render settings. Press 8 to bring up environment, and set the background color to a slightly-less-than-black color. In the dropdown menu under that, select automatic exposure. Do not mess with these presets unless you know what you're doing. Press f9 to bring up the render dialogue, and click the 'renderer' tab. Select the 'catmull-rom' filter. This will pronounce the edges and make it a much more crisp render.

It should look like this:
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/9403/sceneenvsp1.png

Now, materials are something that vary for every model. You will have to custom tweak these for your own model to create the best effect (as well as tweaking the lighting, and angles). Something that will no doubt make your material look better is the Falloff modifier for specular. This is illustrated below, and is straightforward enough that i wont explain how to use this.

http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/4730/matski4.png


Here are some examples. On a highres mesh with many triangles and edges to create different lighting, it can appear as such:

http://img488.imageshack.us/img488/7960/highres1yc5.jpg

If you're using a lowres mesh, it should appear like so:

http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/2314/render1ia2.jpg

Note that the amount of highlighting and shading is different on each model, but each use a very similar material. This means that you will have to custom tweak the materials to look good on your object. Try playing around with renders like Vray, or Brazil. Keep trying, its a large game of hit and miss--but with skill you can greatly lower the times you miss. Good luck!

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Good tut, I was waiting for something like this.

Good tut, though I suggest only having one light with shadows, cause I think it looks terrible with the mess of shadows from all of them,

If you do it right, there is only one "shadow". All the other shadows are for color, and they do not show up.

Well perhaps it isn't from the shadows being on, but whatever it is it causes this in all of your renders, which looks pretty screwy/bad.
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h3...ighres2zs1.jpg

thats from the spotlight, its because the shadow map its rendering is a low resolution. It doesnt appear if you render with mental ray or whatever.

meh, fuck max.

Maya + Hypershade + Mental Ray = win kthx.

This will come in handy to me. Thanks for that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by OmegaDragon

This will come in handy to me. Thanks for that.

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Holy shit thanks, thisll help me a helluvalot.

The cast shadow box is grayed out for the skylight? why?
Here's my result. Looks pretty good except for the multiple shadows.

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/7...highresim0.jpg

So is that on your hi-res model leukemia or wave. whom ever model it is. Is that bump mapping on the grip and other various parts? Just wondering it looks so and is great. Im thinking of doing a gun model in my spare time aside from opening up a business with my father.

That would be WOL's model and render. And he normalmapped the thing from a higher res version.