3ds Max Image Based Illumination and Dof Composition in Photoshop

Dear colleagues, in this study I will try to explain image baand depth of field in Photoshop. I hope it will be helpful for you.sed illumination in 3ds Max-Mental Ray

1. Lets set the test scene first. Lets place a 100x100cm sized plane object in the center of the scene and change its name as zemin.

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2. Lets make a teapot object with a radius of 5cm in coordinates x: 35cm, y: 35cm in the scene and deselect the body, handle, spout and lid parameters of the teapot object. Then, extend it in direction Z with 150% scale transformation and rename it as kavanoz.

3. After that, lets rotate the teapot object downward with rotate transform as illustrated below as if it turned at left figure.

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4. At this step, by using sphere primitives object; we try to form a pattern made up of spilled over balls.

5. Later on, were drawing another sphere object with a radius of 100cm in the center of the scene. Lets name this object as environment. Lets apply normal modifier to the sphere object from the Modifier list and click flip normal option. This object will provide us to form the environment well use in image based illumination.

6. Lets assign a standard covering to the sphere which we name as environment. Then make diffuse color black and assign loft med HDR image, which is an HDRI texture, to the self illumination channel. You can reach this texture at HDRs folder under 3ds Max maps folder. What is important here is that HDRI images are panoramic images with illumination properties. Assigning this HDRI image two sided to the sphere object covering the scene will serve as an image based illumination of our scene. Set the output amount value to 10. It will provide a brighter image.

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7. We set Mental Ray render as Render engine and specify indirect illumination settings as draft.

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8. As for Rendering>Exposure control settings, well set mr photographic exposure control and indoor nighttime as illustrated below. Lets make Exposure value 2.

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9. Setting up the materials: Well apply arch&design material for background, balls and pot. Use satin vanished wood for background, chrome for balls and thin glass material for the pot respectively.

10. Make a test render to see how your scene looks like. If no problem, there should almost be a scene as below.

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In this scene, we get a result without using any lighting source. This is an image based illumination method called image based lighting within 3ds Max. Now it is time to mention about depth of field in the zdepth render and Photoshop environment.

11. We need two outputs for composition in Photoshop. One of them is the standard render output and the other is zdepth output. Change indirect illumination setting to medium quality for the standard render output.

12. So what is Zdepth? It is an output which expresses the distance to the viewing point of the materials in terms of grayscale between black and white. Lets choose zdepth option by clicking add button via Rendering>Render setup>render elements. Lets make the Zmin 10 and Zmax 100cm. This means which offset value is to be used by zdepth render output for grayscale. In other words, it is coding the distance ranging from 10 to 100cm with grayscale considering the viewing distance.

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13. Lets save the two colored outputs as diffuse in a targa format without any changes. Then save the grayscale output as zdepth without any changes and lets open both images in Photoshop.

14. Lets copy and paste zdepth image completely onto the alpha channel of the diffuse image.

15. Now use blur>gaussian blur effect from filter menu to this channel. Assign 2 to Radius value in order to form a blurry view on the periphery of our chrome balls.

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16. Finally, having added Filter menu>blur>lens blur to the diffuse image with changed alpha channel, apply the values below. If nothing has gone wrong, your image with distance based blurring should look like as above. In conclusion, we have made distance related image blurring in Photoshop with HDRI based illumination which is made by 3ds Max and Mental Ray Render, and zdepth render. There are certainly some other special accessories in 3ds Max that calculate this kind of blurring. However, lets not forget that well see the other benefits of learning composition in Photoshop as well. Simply by blur focal distance settings, you may decide the blurring where to begin and where to end in a few seconds. Radius value enables you to set the amount of blurring in Photoshop and most importantly you may get the results of these settings in Photoshop in a few seconds.

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