Tip of the Week: making of Archmodels vol. 134 cover

Hi, I`m Marcin Białecki from Evermotion. Most freelancers need good universal scene for rendering small objects like furniture etc.
In this "making of" you will see how to create useful studio for Vray. Most well shadered and textured models look really good when put in this scene. I used great shadered and textured models from Archmodels vol. 134 collection, made mostly by Jawor (Evermotion Team).

Let`s get started.



At first, you need to configure your V-ray Settings (F10), Preference Settings (Gamma 2,2) and Nitrous display driver.

Build your studio, whatever size and shape you need. Put holes in the walls for windows and leave two walls open" (just delete them) to let HDRI work fine.

Adjust size and settings of Vray lights. Put them in windows. (see image). Add one more key light - Vray dome light. Remember to add HDRI map to "use texture" slot for better and more complex reflections.

Now, you need to change settings of this HDRI:

• drag it to empty material editor slot
• browse for your HDRI map
• choose mapping type - spherical
• rotate horizontal to find the best reflections.

You need to make some test renders for best result.

TIP: Make mirror material and put to the "override mtl" in V-ray: global switches slot to see clear-mirror reflection in all objects in scene. You can also add this material just to one of the main objects for quicker result.

Add camera to scene. Remember to check "depth-of-field" and adjust number of subdivisions in subdivision field. If your "Global subdivs multiplier" (SETTINGS) is higher than "1",  value of "depth-of-field" will be higher as well.

The only thing I modeled myself in this scene are tiles. Easy job :) You can see on images quick way to create mesh and nice shader. If you are using nitrous (see image) you can easily see all effects like reflect, bump, displacement etc. in viewport straight away by checking  "SHOW REALISTIC MATERIAL IN VIEWPORT" option (wait for refresh).

Now, let`s see the difference between render with & without DOF (Depth of Field). For the purpose of this tutorial I have rendered two shots. You can easily see which one is better.

And now - the same scene with V-Ray DOF:

Additional shot with V-Ray DOF:

One more TIP: Photoshop DOF (from zdepth) is fake and will never look too good if you have reflections or refractions in your scene. Render time with Vray DOF (4:42:25) can take more time than applying fake DOF in Photoshop but it  will give you much better results!

The final scene: