MR for max and interior lightning headache

[TheWriter]

MR seems to be hard to master. I suggest pick up a good book(s) on it.

[Thykka]

You should try v-ray for lighting an interior. IMO it has a lot better and faster GI than mr.

[ToddD]

Mental Ray is more than capable of creating the type of render you are looking to achieve, no need to purchase vray or anything else. I don't agree with recommending purchasing another renderer as a solution to a problem:shrug: With knowledge of the settings MR can render at respectable speeds almost on par with the others.
There are some tutorials included with max that outline how GI and Final gather work.
There are also some lighting threads in this forum pertaining to MR as well.
Do you want the room lit by artificial light sources(lamps fixtures)?
Or do you want the room lit by sunlight coming from outside the building?
More details will help us answer your question.


Todd

[TheWriter]

You should try v-ray for lighting an interior. IMO it has a lot better and faster GI than mr.

Can you back this statement up? I am a bit suspicious if you will forgive me, as it seems you have only posted a total of two messages on CGTALK to date.

[cjlopez4]

Try this PDF manual, it's great for getting your feet wet with MR.

http://www.vizdepot.com/ecom/index.php?cPath=21_31

[percydaman]

I gotta go with thykka. Vray is frankly the undisputed king of interior arch rendering. Im not saying that you should immediately go out and spend $700 on it, as Im sure mentalray is capable enough, but then all the latest renderers are. But having said that, ALOT of people use vray for arch vis, and nothing is faster for that type of work. Our studio own vray, brazil and of course mentalray and we've made our choice.

[CupOWonton]

Ive tested MR against VR, VR deffinately takes the trophy.

Especialy when it comes to tons of geometry, or tons of reflections.

I still havent tested Brazil yet though.

[ToddD]

If he asked a Max question would everyone be so anxious to recommend Maya?:shrug:
Vray is a great and fast renderer, but that wasn't part of the question.

Molten, if you want help with MR I would answer whatever I am capable of.

EDIT:
CupOWonton (member.php?u=136668), I find that usually people that "compare" renderers are usually more familiar with settings from 1 program than the other, so it isn't always accurate.

[CupOWonton]

Ive had many months more experience with Mray, I only started testing Vray reciently, putting it through stress tests and the like, and the instant jump in speed and clarity when testing vray was tremendous.

[CupOWonton]

Back on topic, the way your scene is set up is based on whats in the scene as far as lighting is concerned. Either light it from the outside using a directional MR light and bounce it through, or, you can set up a global sphere to bounce light in the windows.

Either way it involves photons.

You can alwayse fake it with omni's. I did a whole 5 minute architectural animation using faked GI in standard scanline rendering. We made a nice mark at the convention with it.

[ToddD]

For light from outside a window, I use the illuminated dome(normals inverted) encompassing the scene, and a MRareaspot set to disc(adjust the size for softer shadows). Global energy multiplier helps control ambient pretty well.(don't be afraid to play around with values from 1 to thousands depending on scene scale etc)

[Molten]

Hi again and thanks for the replies everyone.. great forum I really appreciate that youre so helpful.
Im sure there is easier renderers than mental ray like vray that some of you suggested. My current teacher at 3D class is also using that in his archvis stuff but at this time we have only two options; scanline and mental ray and I wanna go with MR cause I like challenges (plus the eyecandy you can have with it):)

At this point I have a simple room with 3 mrOmnis set at really low intensity (0.1), my scene is at millimetres and the sun is simulated by mrSpot (raytrace shadows).. and I have a glare(lume) in camera output. I also have a glass shader from the cgtalk-mr.mat library in the windows.
The sunlight looks ok but the omnis arent working really well.. just doesnt look like that smooth GI effect Im looking for. Its just too flat.
I also tried beam(lume) so I could get some nice volumetrics in light thats coming through the windows. But it seems to be not working.
ToddD Ill try what you suggested (directional+illuminated dome) and see what I can get out.
Are you meaning attenuation when said mrOmnis set to "disc"?
And do you think ill have to go real high values in GI and energy when working in millimetres and trying to light about 40m2 room?

When I started this scene I didnt knew about MR pretty much nothing so I thought that just setting up spot/directional and pointing it at the window with GI and final gather on I could achive nice lightning fall in to the room.. I was so wrong :rolleyes:

[ToddD]

Under arealight properties you can set the light to a disc, changing the size will produce softer shadows.
The energy values are good for producing a "bounced" feel to your lights, really worth just trying different settings till you get something you are pleased with, the value may not need to go very high, depends on the scale of your room( I also think the scale of your dome plays into the value)
Another energy related item, a directional light will produce much more light than a MRareaspot at the same value. I don't believe you can get a soft shadow from a directional light. So if you wanted to use a single light as your "sun" and you want it to be a MRareaspot, you may need to raise the energy value higher.
Why do you have the 3 omnis and an outside light source? is this a daylight scene?

As for glare, and beam, I would do that stuff in post as opposed to using either of those effects. Glare will be applied to any bright area, I have a simple scene where it actually affected specular areas, so you want to be careful. Those effects will also add to render time, even though I have a dual xeon I still dont make it a habit to use Glare.

[hassearo]

If you are going to do an animation i would recomend you to first light the scene, use MRs arealight for nice shadows. render it out
If you dont have 20 machines skip final gather, and instead render out a pass with ambient occlution shader on the whole scene, then a pass with ambient lightning, comp it together and you could make great animation lightning that dont flicker in half the time.

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