Tutorial: Study Hall Interior

(lasted updated 03.01.2003)

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This is a brief tutorial for lighting an interior scene to be rendered with VRay 1.09n Advanced. It is not intended as a comprehensive tutorial on
modeling, texturing or lighting of an architectural scene. The aim is to outline one particular workflow for setting up lighting with VRay, and should
be viewed only as a guide for approaching similar interior scenes.

Additive Lighting
It is always helpful to approach the challenge of lighting a scene with a strategy in mind. In this scenario, we'll use an additive approach.
This approach usually begins by starting in darkness and then progressively adding lights, one at a time. Lights are only added after the settings for
the existing lights are satisfactory. This allows us to keep track of how each light contributes to the scene, before adding new ones. This also avoids
having any unnecessary lights in the scene, that may cause unexpected results or increase render times. I generally start with Sky light, then add
Sun light and finally, additional fill lights if required.
PREPARATION & SETUP
1. Start by hiding all the glass before calculating the Irradiance
Map. Not only will this allow more light to pass through, it will also
greatly speed up future test renders.

2. Set the render size to 400x300, and Image Sampler AA to

Fixed: Subdiv=1. At this early stage, we want fast feedback, so the
test renders can be small and jaggy.

3. Under Advanced Irradiance Map Parameters>Mode, make

sure Bucket mode is checked. The render is divided into regions or
"buckets" and each become visible when completed.

A good size for buckets is 128x128 pixels. I also change the

Render Region Sequence often while I'm working, so that I can
see the area that I'm interested in first. For the initial test renders, I
am mainly concerned with the light reaching the back wall, so I set
the bucket sequence from Left>Right.

4. In the Render Dialogue Uncheck Global Switches>Reflections.

Reflections add unnecessary samples to the IR map based on the
color threshold setting.

5. Set Indirect Illumination (GI) to On.

Use Irradiance Map Presets>Low.
Make sure Show calc. phase is checked to see the IR map being
calculated and where samples are taken.
SKYLIGHT/ENVIRONMENT LIGHTING
1. Create an Omni light and turn it Off. This overrides the default
lights.
Turn on Environment>GI Environment (Skylight).

2. Make sure Overide MAX's is checked.

3. Select a light blue colour, eg. R173 G208 B255 and set the
Multiplier=4.0.

The indirect lighting is a bit too dark. We have 2 options:

i) increase the Skylight Multiplier or
ii) use Color mapping option in the render dialogue.
Color Mapping allows limited control of the contrast between bright
areas and dark areas of the image.

4. In this case, we'll use Color mapping since the external areas
have enough illumination and we only want to brighten the interior
illumination. Set the Dark multiplier to 2.0.

Tip: A handy trick is to reuse a Saved IR map while tweaking the

color mapping multipliers. However,you can only save an IR Map
calculated using Single mode and not Bucket mode.
In future, VRay will have it's own Virtual Frame Buffer which will
allow you to adjust Color Mapping values interactively.

From the help file:

The color mapping parameters "control how the color values are
processed before they are written to the output buffer. Color
correction can be very useful for indoor or poorly lit scenes - you can
get a good image without increasing light and sky multipliers.

Type - the type of color correction. Currently the only supported

type is Linear multiply which will simply multiply the colors by a
value based on their intensity. (A Logarithmic algorithm similar to
Lightscape would be alot more useful)

Dark mutliplier - the value that dark colors will be multiplied by.
For indoor or poorly lit scenes, you may want to increase this value
to get more light in dark areas.

Light multiplier - the value that bright colors will be multiplied by.
Normally you'd leave this to its default value of 1.0 which means
that bright colors will not be altered.

SUNLIGHT
1. Create a Sun System.

Sunlight Settings:
Color: R255 G251 B237
Multiplier: 3.0
Shadow: On - VRay Shadows
2. Adjust the Sun system so that some direct light enters the interior
spaces. Turn Off Indirect illumination (GI) calculation to reduce
render times. GI is not necessary since we only want to see where
direct sunlight penetrates into the interior space.

The combination of Sunlight (Direct) and Skylight (Indirect)

provides enough overall illumination for the interior. However, the
render seems to have too much blue from the Skylight.

The Skylight is dominant because of the low multiplier value for

Secondary bounce. In order to increase the Indirect Illumination
from the Sunlight, set the Secondary Bounce Multiplier=0.7

Note: This setting is different to adjusting color mapping multipliers.

Color map settings affect the brightness of an image based on
intensity before outputing to the VFB, whereas changing the GI
multipliers affects the light contribution of each bounce during
IR map calculation. Therefore, changing the bounce multipliers
requires a recalculation of the IR map, whereas color mapping can
reuse a saved IR map.

Adjusting Color Bleed from Objects

There are large areas of timber surfaces in this space which would
make the space a bit warmer than what we have at the moment.

In order to simulate this warm bounced light from the timber

surfaces, we will increase the Generate GI Multiplier on all objects
with the timber material.

1. Select all the objects in the scene with the Wood1 material.

2. In the Render Dialogue, click System>Object Settings...

3. The objects with the Wood1 material should already be

highlighted in the Scene Objects list.
Change the Generate GI to 1.5.

The effect is very subtle but most noticeable on the ceiliings and
walls. You can increase the multiplier on individual objects or objects
with certain materials by repeating the previous procedure to tweak
the amount of color bleed.

For example, I also increased the Generate GI multiplier on the red

painting on the wall.
FILL LIGHT
Another thing to notice is that the Skylight and indirect illumination
from the Sun has not cast shadows for small object, such as the
handrail and balustrade.

Increasing the IR map Min. & Max. rates may fix this, but will also
significantly increase render time. Another option is to use an
invisible VRaylight to simulate the light coming from the glazing.

1. Place a VRaylight at the glass wall. Make sure the Normal is

pointing inwards, into the interior space.

VRaylight Settings:
Color: R255 G245 B217
Multiplier: 0.5
Invisible: Checked
Type: Plane

Notice the nice area shadow created by the VRaylight.

The VRaylight should not be set to Store in IR map, because this
tends to blur the area shadows when the IR map is sampled.

2. With all the lights and the IR Map on, this is a good time to
tweak the Color Map settings again. The test renders should be
fast since we are reusing the saved IR Map and only adjusting the
Color Map multiplier values. For the final render, I used Bright=1.0
and Dark=1.8

FINAL RENDER SETUP

1. IR Map Calculation:
Change the IR map preset to Medium or High.
These presets are resolution-dependent and are optimized for
640x480 pixels. For the final render, the resolution will be 700x526
pixels, so the presets will be fine.

2. Change the Render Output Size to your desired resolution.

Check the settings to make sure they are similar to the following
image.

3. Make sure Don't delete, Auto save and Switch to Saved Map
are checked. Leave the AA at Fixed rate=1.
Then hit render to calculate the IR Map for the final resolution.

After the IR map calculation, VRay will automatically switch to the

saved map and reuse it.

4. Turn the VRaylight On. Increase the Subdivs to eliminate grain

5. Unhide the glass. Enable Reflections in the Global Switches

Rollout.

6. Change the Image Sampler (AA) to Adaptive Subdivs=0,2.

If the image has a lot of noisy effects, such as large areas with
glossy reflections, simple two-level AA would be faster than
Adaptive Subdivs.
POST PROCESSING
Although VRay produces beautiful images, I generally always do a
little post processing and fine tuning work in Photoshop.
1. Make a duplicate of the original layer.

2. Select Image>Adjustments>Color Balance. Choose

Highlights and add more Red and Yellow to the duplicate layer.

3. Set the blending mode to Color, and reduce the Opacity of the
duplicate layer to 30-50%.

To add specular blooms:

4. Make another duplicate of the original layer. Screen this layer
over the 2 existing layers.

5. Add a mask to this layer. Copy the image and paste it into the
mask channel. This will mask out all the dark areas of the layer and
only the bright areas will remain. Adjust the levels for the mask
channel.

6. Add Gaussian Blur to soften the highlights and adjust the

Opacity of this layer to your liking.

Other effects such as Film Grain, DOF, blurs, etc. can also be added.

CONCLUSION
This scene proved an interesting challenge since it has both interior
and exterior spaces. By using some of the features in VRay, we were
able to achieve very natural and realistic lighting in a fairly short
amount of time.

When approaching a lighting challenge, it is helpful to have a plan of

attack. One useful strategy is to light the scene "Additively" -
starting in darkness and adding lights one at a time. This allows us
to adjust the numerous parameters and settings for each light in
discrete stages.

Skylight + Sunlight + Fill lights = Total Illimunation

I hope you have found this tutorial useful and informative.

We will add an exterior tutorial for this scene, again using VRay.

And as new builds of VRay are released, we will try to update the
tutorials so that they remain relevant.

Please feel free to send feedback and suggestions to

vu@osmosis.com.au.

Have fun and...I love VRay, do you?

Vu Nguyen|osmosis