Lecture 2: 2009 - Rendering with Max

The strategies for completing a rendering - a summary of the approaches that need to be adopted to Render within Max.

Basic concepts (summarised from tutorials):

• Global illumination - Radiance (Light Studio) and mentalray
• materials are specific to the renderer
  

1. light studio materials for LightStudio
2. Pro-materials for mentalray OR
3. Arch and Design materials for mentalray
   

• LightStudio only works in Max 9
• mentalray works in Max 9 and 2009: recommend the latter
• in both renderers define a sun and sky in very similar ways

1. Light Studio: Create tab/panel: Systems. Pull-down Light Studio option. Select Daylight. Choose location; date; time
2. mentalray: Pull Down menu. Lighting System wizard. Select tab. Create. Choose location; date; time. Accept options to make sky match sun and to set exposure for daylight with yes.

• in both renderers the 'indirect' illumination in bounces (mr) or as the 'indirect' box (LS) need to be a minimum of 2 outside, and 5 to 7 inside.
• In LS there are two render types: "Simple" FOR PREVIEWS ONLY and "Expert" for producing the actual renders.
• In LS there are many different materials, but 'plastic', 'glass', metal are the ones normally used. Have fun making a metal walled Gehry building!
• The LS manual is siomple and easy to read. The two tutoriala online should take you through all you need to know (the second 'advanced' tutorial is about lighting studies, but the materials section is useful for this course)
• mentalray has 'Global Illumination', 'Final Gather' and 'Caustics' settings: for this tutorial and most of this course, we will ONLY use 'Final Gather'.