Global Illumination

- Global Illumination is mainly a method to simulate how light reflects in reality.

- The way the rays react after they hit one surface is the key to the difference
between specular and diffuse.

- Blurry reflections will produce the look of a rougher surface.

- Blurry reflections can be achieved via scattering rays.

- The more rays you use the longer the rendering time.

- Diffuse light reflects off of surfaces and scatters over much larger areas than
specular light.

- When using Global Illumination, we always have to pay attention to the exposure
levels, by using a physical camera, in the same way we would in real life situations,
since GI often uses real world lighting.

- Irradiance Mapping as a primary bounce is effective because it will use less samples
in areas that don't need it, and shoot more in areas that do.

- Light cache as a secondary bounce is effective because it's view dependent and
mainly because it essentially calculates infinite bounces of light.

- By using the two methods above we can achieve the best possible results in the
lowest rendering time.

Gamma Correction
- Gamma Correction is merely a tone mapping process that adjusts the output levels
and color range of a rendering.

- Renderings are calculated and displayed in linear color space, while your monitor
needs to be gamma corrected.

- There are several ways to compensate for this.

- the best way is to set your color mapping to exponential.

- Choosing exponential color space will add balance to the image's

levels/curves/exposure as a result it'll get rid of over exposed, washed out white
spots.

- If in any case more "burning" is required, Reinhard color space could give more
control over how linear or exponential a render should be, by adjusting the burn
value.
Lighting
- Default lights are on by default.

- Set up your lights using a neutral 50% grey material on all geometry in order to
evaluate light color and intensity without the influence of shaders or textures. Few
exceptions may apply.

- Exterior scenes are generally easier to simulate as they usually deal with a single
light sources such as sun and/or sky.

- Interior scenes have more complex lighting as the geometry itself reflects light and
becomes an environment light source. Interiors' light sources vary.

- Light needs to bounce off of many more surfaces compared to exterior scenes.

- Bright materials help bounce more light.

- We should learn to light in the same way that a photographer or cinematographer

would light a scene.

- Elements that are receiving more direct illumination, such as the floor in an interior
scene, affect the scene more than objects that receive less light, such as the ceiling.

- When adding lights to your scene, make sure you test each set of lights
individually.

-Larger in size lights cast more ambient shadows.

-a good way to color your lights is giving Kelvin values. a Kelvin chart could come in
handy.

-Higher Kelvins make for more blue colors, Lower Kelvins make for more redish-
orange colors.

- Vraysun and vraysky's intensity is based upon real world measurements.

- In order to control the amount of light in a rendering, it's always best to adjust the
camera instead of altering real world lighting units.
Environment Light
- Environment light is almost always prominent in real life situations.

- The most basic way to add ambient light is to use the "rendering/environment"
option.

- The color or map that's active in the environment dialogue will be used as an
ambient light source, background color and reflective color.

- It's better to use the GI environment as it allows us to add more light by increasing
the multiplier of the sky.

- Turning on GI environment override will deactivate the light coming from the
"rendering/environment" dialogue box.

- Turning on Reflection/Refraction override will deactivate the reflection and the

refractions caused by the "rendering/environment" dialogue box.

- vraysky map is a good choice as it gives us more than a simple color to the whole
sky.

- vraysky environment map contains a huge range of colors as well as physically

accurate results.

- vraysky can only "follow" direct lights. e.g. standard-direct, vray-vraysun.

- Image based lighting is best for producing complex light setups.

- The best type of image to use when doing image based lighting is a High Dynamic
Range Image (HDRI) which represents 360 degrees of view.

- A large library of HDRIs can provide a large number of lighting scenarios. keep a
large collection of different lighting setups.

Materials
- vraymtl is the best material to be used with vray.

-Be sure that vray is your designated renderer, otherwise vraymtl will not show up in
the materials list.

-Study real life materials well, absorb how light reflects and/or refracts over them in
order to begin creating them.

-Diffuse is merely the color of a material.

-In order to give reflection to a certain material, two things should be taken into
account; Amount of reflection and type of reflection.
-Amount of reflection controls how reflective one object is. In vray it is represented
through a black/white ratio. where black and white give us no reflection or full
reflection "mirror" accordingly.

-A map could be used in the reflection slot in order to give a material a variety in
reflective amounts, instead of using a single color.

-A major contributor to the amount of reflection is Fresnel reflections.

-When on, Fresnel reflections give a physically accurate look by reducing the
reflections of surfaces that face us and increasing it in surfaces that look away.

-When Fresnel reflections is on, the object's reflection will be applied as a top layer
above diffuse and refraction. Thus it will NOT cancel out neither of the two.

-IOR can control how reflective one object is when Fresnel reflection is on.

-Not all objects produce Fresnel based reflections.

-The type of reflection is controlled by the glossiness level.

-Reflection glossiness of 1 gives for specular reflections.

-Reducing this number will give more diffuse reflections.

-Lowering the glossiness of an object will make its reflections blurrier and highlights
larger.

-This relationship between blurrier reflections and bigger highlights is always linked.
but it could be unlinked. e.g. if we want one objects reflections to be more sharp
while having a big highlight.

-Reflection Glossiness could be mapped. e.g. white areas in an image will give for a
value of 1 and black areas will give for a value of 0.

-BRDF anisotropy gives for a more linear specular highlight "as opposed to isotropy".
such effect is evident in brushed metals, stainless steel even fabric and hair.

-Almost all refractive materials have Fresnel reflections.

-Look out for IOR charts over the internet.

-Refraction in vray works almost the same as reflection. black makes for no
refraction and white makes for 100% refraction.

-Refraction glossiness controls how clear or unclear the refractions are. e.g. a typical
glass has a glossiness of 1.

-Fog Color is the right way to give color to refractive objects.

-Refraction shouldn't be confused with transparency.

-In vray transparency is controlled by applying an Opacity map.

-Simple translucent materials could be created by using a vray2sidedmtl.

Rendering
-Render elements could give help us understand the different layers of a rendering
by breaking each element down.

-Turning dense geometries to proxies could help save some ram memory.

-Make sure to avoid copying proxies. instead, instancing them is a much better
solution.

-You're only as good as your reference material.

further reading:

http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/reflection/specular/

http://www.aversis.be/tutorials/vray/vray_basic_material_settings_01.htm

http://www.spot3d.com/

http://www.vray.info/

Tareq Hassan

http://voodoq.deviantart.com

Tareq_84@hotmail.com