A few more slight tweaks remained – I constantly find something to tweak, even if those things are too small to write about, they are always there. Change the hue here, by a tiny bit, tweak the material there, that kind of stuff. When that's done, we can try to finally render the image at higher resolution. This scene is quite time-consuming to render, due to the fog – overnight is a good idea. For test renders, I use low resolution, fixed image sampling, and lowered subdivs in the fog. Again, note of caution – Fixed sampling produces a lot of bright noise in specular areas appearing as though there should be nice, crisp detail when you do a full render. Much of this disappears and gets filtered down and smoothed, providing a much softer looking result in the end. This is something to bear in mind and so be prepared to do more than one higher quality render. The image took 22 hours to render, but I used a 3-year old machine.

Most of the post-production I had already sorted out, throwing my test renders into that first PSD test-image. I used a few radial gradients to enhance the atmosphere, some color corrections to bring back the cold, blue hues, upping the gamma a bit, overlaying some photographic smoke images, some subtle chromatic aberration -  simple things, really, but as always, crucial to a good looking image. (Fig.19) shows most of the things I added. The final image is on (Fig.20).




I'd like to point out that this image does not use GI. Sure, it wouldn't do any harm but it works quite well even without it, mainly due to the fog which adds some bright fill to the scene. Apart from this it's nighttime whereupon the bounced light is way weaker than during the daytime (no sun, no bright sky).

To Be Contined...

Thanks for viewing "Lighting La Ruelle" for 3DSMax + Vray, we hope you enjoyed it!

If you want to build on what you've learnt during this tutorial and learn how to set up a variety of fantastic light rigs, you can buy the entire Lighting La Ruelle eBook from our shop:

www.3dtotal.com/offer/lightinglaruelle

Product details:
Author: 3DTotal.com Ltd
Original scene: Richard Tilbury
Tutorial by: Andrzej Sykut
Platform: 3ds Max + V-Ray
Format: DOWNLOAD ONLY PDF
Size: 272 MB
Pages: 41
Price: £9.95

Contents:
Chapter 1 - Mist / Fog
Chapter 2 - Sunrise / Sunset
Chapter 3 - Moonlight
Chapter 4 - Midday Sun
Chapter 5 - Overcast

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