Introduction
Hello, my name is Daniel Radulescu. I was born in Romania, I'm 18 years old and I study visual arts at an art school in Brasov. I'm very interested in 2D concept art and especially in 3D graphics. I've been working in 3D Studio Max for over four years now and I can honestly say that picking up Max was the best thing that's ever happened to me! I'm now fascinated by any object, shadow, light, or reflection that surrounds me, and every time I see something interesting, I find myself thinking: Can I do that in 3D? Well, after many, many tests with lights, VRay and poly-modelling, I finally realised that yes, I can! For me, the world of computer graphics is somewhere I can finally release my imagination and turn my drawings into 3D, which is great – and, of course, a lot of fun!
Modelling
Everything in this image was modelled using the poly-modelling technique. I started from a plane or a cube, after which a chamfer was applied to all edges – and for some objects I also added meshsmooth with two or three iterations (Fig.01). I also used splines to make curved details on some objects. For the trees outside the window, I used OnyxTree (http://www.onyxtree.com).
Fig. 01
Materials & Textures
All the materials used in this scene were created with VRayMtl (Fig.02 & Fig.03), using the following settings:
Wood – Diffuse: wood.jpeg / Reflect: R: 64, G: 64, B: 64 / Refl. glossiness: 0.71 with Subdivs: 20 / Fresnel reflections: [active] / Max depth: 5 / BRDF: Phong / bump slot 30.0: woodbump.jpeg
Chrome – Diffuse: black / Reflect: white / Refl. glossiness: 0.9 with Subdivs: 8 / Refract: black / Glossiness: 1.0 with Subdivs: 10 / BRDF: Phong
Glass Brick – Diffuse: R: 248, G: 255, B: 243 / Reflect: R: 242, G: 242, B: 242 / Refl. glossiness: 0.49 with Subdivs 8 / Fresnel reflections: active / Refract: R: 241, G: 241, B: 241 / Glossiness: 1.0 with Subdivs: 25 / Affect shadows: [active] / Affect alpha: [active] / BRDF: Phong
Leather – Diffuse: black / Reflect: R: 111, G: 111, B: 111 / Refl. glossiness: 0.87 with Subdivs: 8 / Fresnel reflections: [active] / Refract: black / Glossiness: 1.0 with Subdivs: 20 / BRDF: ward / bump slot 35.0: leatherbump.jpeg
All textures used were from www.cgtextures.com and the 3DTotal Textures DVDs (www.3dtotal.com/textures).
Fig. 02
Fig. 03
I used basic settings for the glass and wine (Fig.04):
Glass – Diffuse: black / Reflect: white with Subdivs: 3 / Falloff – type Fresnel / Refract: white with Subdivs 30 / tick the Affect shadows & Affect alpha boxes
Wine – I used almost the same settings as for the glass, but I changed the colour to red and changed Glossiness from Refract to something like 0.99, to give it just a little blur (you could of course make bubbles in there, too, to simulate the gas – a sphere with Glass effect)
Fig. 04
Lighting
I used six VRay lights (each with a different shade of blue, from R: 240, G: 245, B: 250 to R: 220, G: 250, B: 250), each with multiplier: 7.0. Invisible, Affect diffuse and Affect specular were enabled, as well as subdivision: 20. For the sunlight I used a Target Direct light, with VRay shadows, a 2.3 multiplier and a colour of R: 255, G: 247 and B: 223. I also enabled Smooth Surface shadows and Area shadows in the VRay Shadows parameters. Besides that, I used Near Attenuation and Far Attenuation for shadows. For the background, I used a plane with VRayLightMtl set to pure white with multiplier: 10.0. These settings gave me a more realistic light in the room, especially at the windows, as well as some great reflection on the objects inside the scene (Fig.05).
Fig. 05
The VRay settings I used were pretty basic (Fig.06 & Fig.07):
VRay Global Switches – default lights were disabled
VRay Image Sampler – I used Adaptive subdivision and Catmull-Rom
GI engine – I used Irradiance map and Quasi-Monte Carlo
VRay Irradiance Map – Set up as: Low / HSph. subdivs: 50 / Sample lookup: Overlapping (very good/fast) / Show calc. phase: [active]
VRay Colour Mapping – Exponential type / Dark multiplier: 1.1 / Clamp output: [active]
VRay System – X: 32
Fig. 06
Fig. 07
I hope that this article will be of use to you, and may offer you some useful information. My advice to anyone working with VRay is to make many tests with different types of lights and different settings – as many as possible. In my opinion, this is the best way to learn how to use and play with VRay.
I hope this was helpful for you; if you have any questions about my work (Fig.08), please feel free to e-mail me!
