And finally, for the ground I used a high definition map of concrete. I added a gradient ramp to recreate the dark area present in the background of the image, and an RGB Multiply to tint the diffuse (Fig.08).

Lighting

For the lighting, I used a simple skylight with an HDR map (Fig.09 & Fig.10).

Render

I wanted to render a high definition image in this scene using a minimum rendering time to justify the use of a normal pass, rather than creating a three-point lighting setup which would need a longer rendering time and less work in post-production. 

For the indirect lighting, I used Final Gather with the settings shown in Fig.11.


I think I succeeded in correctly making a render in high definition (1950x1100), with a minimal calculation time – only 1 hour, 30 minutes to make the scene, with all the passes, on an old Pentium 4.  The 3ds Max output image can be seen in Fig.12.

Post-Production

Post production was the most important step in the project. Up until this stage, I just had an image with a flat light created by the skylight. Because of this, I rendered a normal pass so that I could play in real time with a three-point lighting setup. I also rendered a pass to recreate the rounded corners on the normal pass and an ambient occlusion pass allowed me to recreate, the shadows present on the output image from Max. Once done, I extracted the red, green and blue layers to play with my three-point lighting in real time. I added a little depth of field… and voila! (Fig.13)


The final image can be seen in Fig.14.

Conclusion

I really loved working on this image, and I particularly enjoyed the techniques I got to use in post-production. They proved very efficient for a fixed image and allowed me to considerably reduce the rendering time!

I hope you have enjoyed this "Making Of”.