As most of you guys know, I always question guys that use the 3D studio Max program in their respective threads & would like to say a big thanks to them who have helped me, but Im still not getting it right. :bash:

I use Auto CAD to draw the object & try to render it with 3DS release 9.
At first I took it simple with just different materials.

eg:

http://i17.tinypic.com/642ef4p.jpg

Then I thought I'd be adventurous & add some lights, but it went horribly wrong.

eg:

http://i9.tinypic.com/67e7ll3.jpg

Then asked some you guys for advice with the lighting & shadows etc... some one told me to use the Skylight & an Omni light, which worked brilliantly!

eg:

http://i17.tinypic.com/52yd4bs.jpg

Then I did some changes to the drawing & added a few more things, imported it to 3DS, created all the materials & added to the layers, put in the skylight with the right intensity, & omni light ect.., but all I got was a DARK versoin of the building, I did some changes to the lighting, then I ended up with a black screen. Then I thought I mess around with some settings in the Render Box, with the mental ray high setting, it took about 3 hours to render with 3 different windows opening, 1 showing atmosphere, etc, etc, & all were black!

Then I cancelled that, & tried something else, & it just took forever to render, I left it over night to render, but I checked & the status bar did not move, at first I thought it might have froze, but the PC was fine.

Then I tried rendering somthing esle, & now all the edges seem to be unsmooth.

eg:

http://i8.tinypic.com/4orc08g.jpg

Please can some one just give a simple A,B,C of rendering with 3DS, & using lights, also how to set back grounds with the sky etc. Also if I can add other elements to the render such as trees, etc.

Also an estimate on how long your renders take to be done. Its not like my pc is slow, I got a AMD Turion x 2 , 2ghz ; 1,5 gig RAM, & a 512Mb Ati Graphics card.

Please again, your help will be gratefull.

This is what I use : 1 Skylight, Sunlight (which you can find under the Systems icon, looks like a gear and can set for most cities), scanline renderer (rarely use mental ray), Advanced lighting: Light tracer. Make sure shadows are only ticked for sunlight and not for the skylight. As for backgrounds you can load an image by going under the render menu and clicking on environment.

You could also try changing the background from black to white under the environment menu as well.

I always use Vray. It is fantastic for rendering and always produces very realistic quality, and never with any flaws. I'll talk to ya later.

Thanx for your help guys :okay:

This is what I use : 1 Skylight, Sunlight (which you can find under the Systems icon, looks like a gear and can set for most cities), scanline renderer (rarely use mental ray), Advanced lighting: Light tracer. Make sure shadows are only ticked for sunlight and not for the skylight. As for backgrounds you can load an image by going under the render menu and clicking on environment.

Well with the new version, the daylight system makes everything really easy. Just use the daylight system. The secret though is that everyone forgets to use exposure control.

Once you setup your daylight system. Go to Render, Go to Enviornment, Under the expore control rollup select Logarithmic Exposure Control. Then select under its rollup select exterior daylight.

This will get rid of the brightness in your pictures. Also make sure you use all mental ray materials, so they render correctly. Use the Architectual and Design materials. They have templates. Like wood, glass, water, brushed metal... etc. They are pretty effective, then start tweeking from there...

Thanks for that mr brett. That was one of the main reasons I never used daylight had no idea how to reduce brightness without reducing the intensity. I've started playing with fog to try and get visible rays coming through the windows onto the inside is this the best way to do it?

Thanx for the advice guys, will try it out this weekend & come back with more complaints next week :D

Ok, played around with it for a bit this weekend,

Mr Brett, tryed your way, but something tells me a made a mistake somewhere, but followed your steps again & it worse!

1st attemp

http://i15.tinypic.com/4lpx5qx.jpg

2nd attempt

http://i13.tinypic.com/6257eye.jpg

Then I tryed Archibomber's way, didnt blow me away, but helped cast shadows.

http://i16.tinypic.com/5ymydyc.jpg

http://i16.tinypic.com/4y6c209.jpg

LOL. Make sure that you are using the mental ray renderer, plus make sure that global illumination is turned on.

How do I make sure I use the the 'mental ray' renderer? is it an option in the render window?

Press f10, go to common optios, scrool down to assign renderer and at production field click on the square with the "..." and choose mental ray

Those renders don't look right. They're supposed to look almost clay-mation like.

oh, okay, then I deff did something wrong!

Thank Artet, will try that tonight.

If you render exterior scene with built in means of Max9 then your choice should, without doubt, be Mental Ray with daylight system comprised of MR Sun and MR Sky and indirect illumination comprised of Final Gather coupled (my personal recommendation) with Global Illumination (photons) solution! It isn't fastest you can get on the market but still quite fast, but provides one of the very best images here is my own example:
http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7121/oss4sscgm5.jpg
Max help has quite detailed article on setting this system also there is an excellent tutorial available here:
http://evermotion.org/index.php?unfold_exclusive=141&unfold=exclusive

And if you after "simcity" look here is what you can acomplish with Mental Ray:

http://img329.imageshack.us/img329/3136/ingame1yr0.jpg

Thanx guys, was fiddling around last night, used your advice SimFox, & Artet, didnt come out that bad, will play around with it more over the weekend, will post the renders then.

Have a good weekend :cheers2:

one more, thing, some one said that 3DS has a sky background, so you can have the sky there when you render, I dont see this, & everytime I want to add a file it wont except bmp or jpg, only 3ds files.

I used vray sky... because of the standard settings of the 3ds some of those skys will appear like a black image, and a noob like me will think "what the hell is that" and give up on that.

But we can change the sky settings to make the sky more blue and bright. The tutorial for exterior light setup explains how to do that... if not, google for "vray sky setup"... i found some tutorials in spanish but with images in english

Check them maybe they will help - http://neozenit.iespana.es/Tutorial_1parte_Vraysky.pdf
http://neozenit.iespana.es/Tutorial_2parte_Vraysun.pdf
http://neozenit.iespana.es/Tutorial_3parte_setup.pdf

A friend of mine prefers to use HDR skys but about that i don't know anything

Just normal render's with Standard 3DS.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/MoesisMabhida_9Medium.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/MoesisMabhida_11Medium.jpg

With Mental Ray

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/MoesisMabhida_12Medium.jpg

Now, I loaded Vray, followed one of the tutorials, clicked render & ended up with this....

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/SanRaf_15Medium.jpg

the fiddled with the sky & some other stuff, didnt add any lights or sun as yet, then ended up with this...

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/SanRaf_16Medium.jpg

Then I put in the daylight system because I couldnt find the "Vray sun" & ended up with this!

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/SanRaf_17Medium.jpg

So got pissed off & put in some spots & renderd it, got this...

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/SanRaf_20Medium.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/SanRaf_23Medium.jpg

Then went back to Mental Ray , added some more spots & got this...

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Sky%20Scrapercity/SanRaf_25Medium.jpg

I used the Mental ray to render this one, it came out pretty shweet with the shodaws & textures

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Cage_19Medium.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Cage_18Medium.jpg

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/Cage_14Medium.jpg

But then when I tryed to render this stadium, it said 'insufficient memory to render' when I tryed rendering it, so I had to use the standard rendering engine.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/StanleyParkA_17Medium.jpg

So then I tryed Vray, but the picture came out brighter.

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g160/amgosai/StanleyParkA_19Medium.jpg

Is this your work Durbsboi??

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/l/liverpool/6912346.stm

^^I wish, lol