VRAY BASIC RENDER SETTINGS

BEFORE YOU START

This tutorial will explain very briefly many of the Vray render settings. A very basic 3D Studio Max
knowledge is needed to be able to follow the tutorial. For more info on each topic, please refer to the
online manual.
It's also a good thing if you have a basic understanding of rendering in general. Terms like Global
Illumination, raytracing, antialiasing, displacement and so on should sound familiar before you start
working with Vray.
The Vray version I used for this tutorial is 1.47.03.

1. Set Vray as the production renderer

Open the render settings dialog, go to the current renderer rollout and click the assign button for
production renderer. Choose Vray from the list.

2. Extra rollouts!
After Vray has been set as the main renderer,
you'll notice a lot of new rollouts. Every rollout
with "Vray:"
in front of its name is filled with Vray render
settings... The next steps will each cover one
rollout in general.
After Vray has been set as the main renderer,
you'll notice a lot of new rollouts. Every rollout
with "Vray:" in front of its name is filled with Vray
render settings... The next steps will each cover
one rollout in general.

3. Vray frame buffer

When enabled, the Vray frame buffer replaces
the Max virtual frame buffer. The Vray frame
buffer has much more options to post process
images and lots of other interesting settings.
In this rollout you can control the size of it by disabling the 'get resolution from max' checkbox.
Rendering to Vray raw image file enables you to render very high resolution images, without eating up all
the available RAM.
The use of the Vray frame buffer is for advanced Vray users only. Don't bother using it when you're new to
Vray.
 4. Vray global switches
Here you can control and override many of
Vray's settings, mainly used to speed up test
rendering.
You can turn off all displacement, lights,
default max lights, hidden lights and
shadows by just unticking the appropriate
checkbox!
The "don't render final image" button is
used to let Vray only compute the GI
(irradiance map for example) without
actually rendering the image. Forget this for
now :-)
Turn all reflections and refractions in the
scene on or off by unticking the checkbox.
Very usefull for testing purposes. The max
depth controls the depth of the reflection/refraction (the number of times a ray can reflect/refract before
it is being ignored in the raytracing process).
You can also turn off al maps, all filtering of maps etc... Glossy effects are for example blurry reflections or
refractions. Turning them off greatly improves rendertime, very neat while doing testrenders.
Override material can be used to give every object in the scene the same material.

Secondary ray bias: please refer to the

manual.

5. Image sampler (Antialiasing)

In Vray, you can choose between 3 types of
image samplers to compute the anti
aliasing of the image. This controls how
sharp and smooth your image will be, and
has a huge effect on rendertimes!
Fixed rate is very predicatble, but slow in
many cases. Use this one if there are a lot of glossy materials, area shadows, motion blur etc... Higher
subdivs means better quality, higher rendertimes.

Adaptive QMC is my favourite. As its name already indicates, it's an adaptive sampler, it will adapt its
calculation to the situation. It will compare the quality of the computed pixel by some thresholds, and
decide if it's good enough or if there's more calculation needed.
This samplers quality is controlled by the QMC rollout (further down in the rollouts). Use adaptive QMC if
you have many glossies, area shadows, motion blur etc in your scene, and if you want maximum control
over the speed vs quality of the image. It takes some time to get a grip on it, but once you get it, you have
full control over Vray with just a few clicks.
Adaptive subdivision is also an adaptive method. Although very fast is many cases, it can get very slow
with lots of glossy effects in the scene. It also uses more RAM memory while rendering. Use this sampler if
you have large smooth areas in your scene (for example an interior with large white walls). The min/max
rates control the quality, 0/2 are good values, -2/-1 are good for very fast test renders.

Some testing will be needed to understand the differences between the 3 samplers. The online
documents have very good explanations on this topic, with lots of examples showing all differences.

The anti aliasing filter can be changed if you have problems with fine textures or fine details in the scene.
Every sampler has its own characteristics, but it is not the goal of this tutorial to explain them all. In many
cases you can get away by simply turning the
filter off!
A few filters I use often:
- none
- mitchell netravali: smooth result, good
controls
- catmull rom: very sharp (a bit like the result
of 'unsharp mask' in photoshop)
- soften with radius around 2.5 (smooth and
fast)

6. Indirect illumination (GI)

This rollout controls the main options for the GI (= bounced light). Like most GI renderers, Vray makes a
difference between first and secondary bounces.
A simple spotlight will cast direct light. This light hits an object and will be absorbed a bit, but the rest
bounces back into the scene. This is the first bounce. This first bounce will probably hit another object
and will bounce again (second bounce) and so on untill no energy is left.

The direct light and first bounce will have the largest impact on the lighting look, because this bounced
light has still a lot of energy. So these need to be computed very accurately to create realistic lighting.
The secondary bounces are usually less important (a lot of the light energy is already absorbed, there's
less impact on the visual result), so approximisations can be rougher here. (interior scenes are an
exception, the secondary bounces become important too)

You can choose between different ways of computing first and second bounces, and adjust the strength
of them (multipliers). With the post processing options you can desaturate the GI, or change its contrast.

Caustics are light patterns formed by refracted/reflected light. GI caustics are caustics created by
refracted/reflected GI light (light bounces). The standard first and secondary bounces don't take the
reflective/refractive material properties into account, only the diffuse properties. You need to turn them
on or off with the two appropriate checkboxes.
An example of very visible reflective caustics
is the light pattern you will see if you put a
spotlight on a chrome ring lying on a table.
Refractive caustics are generated for
example by a glass sphere, which bundles all
light that passes through it, creating a very
bright spot underneath it.
Note that when you want GI light to pass
trough transparent objects, you must set
'refractive GI' caustics ON! Remember that
caustics is only a name for refracted/reflected
light. So even without these typical lighting patterns, light that
is reflected or refracted is being called 'caustics'. For example
light going trough a flat window are also caustics.

A special case is light coming from a max spotlight for

example (or any other max light). This is direct light and not GI
light, so Vray gives you the ability to render these 'direct light
caustics' too. These options have their own rollout (see step 8).
You will notice that light from a spotlight doesn't penetrate
transparent objects in Vray. This is because by default, direct light caustics are not enabled. So if you want
light to pass trough transparant materials, you either have to enable caustics (which will take longer to
render), or use a fake caustics option in the transparant vray material (='affect shadows' option in the
refration properties of the material).

7. Irradiance map / Quasi monte carlo / photon mapping / light cache

Depending on the method for first and secondary bounces you have chosen, the above rollouts will
appear. They are all ways of calculating GI bounces. Each have their specific advantages and uses. I will
explain these in a seperate tutorial as this is too complicated for this basic settings overview.

For now, remember that all these methods are ways to approximate GI lighting. GI calculations are very
time consuming, that's why methods are invented to speed things up by using approximate values.

8. Caustics
Remember the direct light caustics from step 6? Well, here you can turn them on or off, and control some
parameters. To get nice direct light caustics, you will also need to make adjustments in the Vraylight
settings. If I find the time, I will make a direct
caustics tutorial too!

A simple trick to eliminate the need for direct light

caustics, is simply not to use direct lights :-) With
only GI light, you tick 'refractive/reflective GI
caustics' in the Indirect Illumination rollout and all
caustics will be calculated according to your GI
settings! Of course it is not always possible to use
only GI light... But if you only use skylight and vray
light types, you can eliminate the need for direct
caustics.

9. Environment
Vray allows you to override the Max environment with these controls.

Use the skylight to light the scene with a 'skylight'. If you put a map in the slot behind it, the color swatch
is neglected and instead, the map is used to light the scene. You need to enable GI for the skylight to
become visible. The skylight is not a direct light, it's actually treated as first bounce, that's why GI is
needed to make the skylight visible. Note that if GI is enabled, skylight is turned off and you have put a
color in the Max background, that color will be used as skylight!

The other swatch controls the reflection/refraction environment. No matter what the max environment
is, your objects will always reflect/refract
this Vray override. You can also put a
map in there like with the skylight
option.

Note that these settings will not show up

in the background of the render! Use the
Max environment setting for this.

10. QMC Sampler

The QMC sampler can be seen as a global quality control center. It controls all paramters that have
anything to do with Quasi Monte Carlo calculations like adaptive QMC AA, QMC GI, Irradiance map,
Glossy effects, area shadows, Motion Blur and Depth of field.
The most important parameter is the noise threshold, this controls the accuracy of al the calculations. The
highest quality setting is 0.001, but this of course requires the longest rendertime. The global subdivs
multiplier can be used to lower/increase all
subdivision parameters in the scene
(Irradiance map, QMC GI, glossies, area
shadows, Motion Blur, Depth of field,...). This is
very usefull for fast testrenders.

11. Color mapping

Color mapping can be used to kinda post process an
image within Vray. Please refer to the manual for more
information about the different types.

12. Camera
You can choose different camera types instead of the default standard Max camera, for example fish eye
lense, spherical camera, cylindrical etc... Please refer to the manual for more information about these
different camera types.

Depth of field is an effect caused by the

diameter of the diafragma opening of the
camera. Objects that are out of focus will
become blurred. The further away from focus
and the bigger the diafragma, the more the
object will be blurred.

Motion blur is the blur that you get when

objects move very fast, or when the camera is
moving. In real life this is due to shutter time of
the camera.

Both of these effects are raytraced, not faked

with some fancy tricks, so they have a big impact on rendertimes...

13. Default displacement

These parameters control the default

Vraydisplacement settings. More on
displacement can be found in the online
manual, with lots of illustrations.

14. System
Another rollout that controls all kinds of general parameters.
Raycaster parameters are used to control the amount of memory Vray uses for a specific scene. In 99% of
all cases you don't need to touch these!
Render region division. X and Y control the
width and height of a render bucket. For small
render resolutions, you can lower these, for high
resolutions you can increase these. Good values
are squares between 32 and 128px. Region
sequence alters the order in which the buckets
get rendered.

Distributed rendering is the process of

rendering 1 image with different PC's.
"Previous render" controls how the previous
render in the frame buffer is overwritten by the
new buckets.
Default geometry static/dynamic: refer to the
manual.
Frame stamp is usefull to print rendertimes and
such on the rendered image.
Objects and lights settings control Vray specific
properties for scene objects and lights. You can turn off/on all kinds of things locally for each object in the
scene.
Presets can save all or some render settings for easy and quick switching between for example test
settings or high quality settings.
The Vray log is the small window that appears while rendering, giving you some textual feedback about
the rendering process. The level controls how much feedback is printed inside the box.