Lighting with V-Ray for SketchUp definitive guide part 2

Lighting with V-Ray for SketchUp definitive guide part 1

Previously Nomer Adona wrote a simple tutorial entitledInterior Lighting for Beginnerswhich was published at CGpinoy.org.In that tutorial he used version 1.05 of V-Ray for SketchUp. Since many new features have been added with the latest version of V-Ray for SketchUp, we have decided to do this mini series of tutorials with the latest versions.

In this first tutorial I will be using V-Ray Beta version 1.48.99 (V-Ray for SketchUp User Manual Version 1.48) and SketchUp version 7.0.I will be focusing on IES, Spotlight, Rectagular and emissive lighting. You will learn how to create a realisticlampshade material and how to position the rectangular lights to achievetheright effect for your shade. In this tutorialI will be using the same model that I used in the previous tutorial Interior Lighting for Beginnersand will be adding components and materials to achieve the desired effect.

Here is a screen shot of the particular interior that I will be using.

Basic SketchUp Interior

OK lets begin!

1.IES LightingI have done this in a previous tutorial here at SketchUpArtists:Basic IES Tuorial using V-Ray for SketchUp. The only difference is instead of using a rectangular light to show the light source, I will be just using a Emissive map.Eu tenho feito isso em um tutorial anterior aqui no SketchUpArtists: Basic IES Tuorial usando V-Ray for SketchUp. A nica diferena em vez de usar uma luz retangular para mostrar a fonte de luz, estarei utilizando apenas um mapa Emissive

Emissive Map and IES Light Icon

Here is the material I used for the Emissive map.

Settings for Material

This is the first render.

Render

2. SpotlightTogether with IES lighting, this is also a new feature with V-Ray 1.48.66 and up. Since this is a tutorial, allow me to put 4 spotlights in my four recess lamps.Juntamente com a IES de iluminao, este tambm um novo recurso com V-Ray 1.48.66 e para cima. Como este um tutorial, permita-me colocar 4 lmpadas holofotes no meu recesso quatro.

4 Recess Lamps

The Image below shows the position of the Spotlight icon. I also use a Emissive map on the light receptacle.

Position Spotlight Icon

Here is the settings for my Spotlight. For me the most critical setting is the Shadow Radius which controls the softness of the shadows, Shadow Subdivision controls the smoothness of the shadow and last but not the least is the Penumbra Angle. In the image below I used 0.3.

Aqui est as configuraes para o meu Spotlight. Para mim a definio mais crtico o raio da sombra que controla a suavidade das sombras, Bairro Sombra controla a suavidade da sombra e por ltimo mas no menos importante o ngulo de Penumbra. Na imagem abaixo eu usei 0,3.

Spotlight Settings

Here is the render using Spotlight. In this render I used a very low resolution. This is the reason why I have splotches and grains. This can be corrected easily by using higher Subdivisions and Samplings.Aqui est o render usando o Spotlight. Neste tornar Eu usei uma resoluo muito baixa. Esta a razo pela qual eu tenho manchas e gros. Isso pode ser corrigido facilmente usando subdivises mais altas e amostragens

Render Using Spotlight

3. LampshadesHere is a simple lamp I modeled in SketchUp. I will show you how to place V-Ray rectangular lights.

SketchUp Lamp

Here I hid the shade of my lamp to show how I set up my rectangular lights. V-Ray rectangular 1 and 2 run along the height of the shade. They are double sided, visible but they dont cast shadows. The one that casts shadows is the third V-Ray rectangular light. This one casts shadows, double sided but I made it invisible.

Rectangular Lights

Here are the settings of my V-Ray rectangular lights.

V-Ray Rectangular Lights 1 and 2

V-Ray Rectangular Light 3

Lampshade material: This is a 2 sided material with about 70% gray mixture.

Lampshade Material Settings

Here is the resulting render.

Render With Rectangular Lights

Lastly, I will add a few more components. A special thanks to a friend BTH (Trang An) for some of these great components.

SketchUp Scene with Extra Components

Here is the render.

Night Scene

I also attempted to render with the same scene, this time with GI and BG Colors on (no mapping).

Night Scene 2

Cheers! I hope you will wait for the second part of this tutorial and my guide to lighting with V-Ray for SketchUp.

Lighting with V-Ray for SketchUp definitive guide part 2

This is part 2 of the definitive guide to lighting with V-Ray for SketchUp by Nomer Adona. Part 1 in this series can be foundhere. Also for additional helpV-Ray for SketchUp User Manual Version 1.48.

Nomer continues his great collection of lighting tutorials to help you get to grips with and simplify this often complex process, with some easy solutions to this often frustrating and confusing aspect to rendering. In this guide Nomer checks out Emissve materials to help light your SketchUp models. You will need a reasonable knowledge of SketchUp, rendering and the use of Photoshop for this tutorial.

1. What is Emissive Material?Emissive Material is actually a special material layer of V-Ray for SketchUp used for producing self-illuminated surfaces. It also allows a plane, a face or an object applied with this material to turn into an actual light source. In other rendering engines, they call this a self-illuminating material or in V-Ray Max it is equivalent to V-Ray Light Material. When I first used V-Ray for SketchUp, I was not encouraged to use pure Emissive Material to light up my model. The reason was blotchiness. is this the case though? Can I possibly produce quality rendering just by using Emissive lighting?

Esta a parte 2 do guia definitivo para iluminao com V-Ray para SketchUp por nomer Adona. Parte 1 desta srie podem ser encontrados aqui. Tambm para obter ajuda adicional V-Ray para SketchUp Verso Manual do Usurio 1,48.Nomer continua a sua grande coleo de tutoriais de iluminao para ajudar voc a se familiarizar com e simplificar este processo muitas vezes complexo, com algumas solues fceis para este aspecto muitas vezes frustrante e confuso para renderizao. Neste guia nomer verifica Emissve materiais para ajudar a luz seus modelos do SketchUp. Voc vai precisar de um conhecimento razovel de SketchUp, processamento e uso de Photoshop para este tutorial.1. O que material emissivo?Material emissivo na verdade uma camada de material especial do V-Ray para SketchUp utilizadas para a produo auto-iluminado superfcies. Ele tambm permite que um avio, um rosto ou um objeto aplicada com esse material para se transformar em uma fonte de luz real. Em motores de renderizao, eles chamam isso de "material de auto-iluminao" ou em V-Ray Max equivalente a V-Ray Material de Light. Quando usei pela primeira vez V-Ray para SketchUp, eu no era encorajado a usar material emissivo puro para iluminar o meu modelo. O motivo foi blotchiness .... este o caso, embora? Posso, possivelmente, produzir renderizao de qualidade apenas por meio de iluminao emissiva?

In this 2ndPart of my tutorial, I will try my best to share my knowledge and my experience in using Emissive material. But before that, let me reintroduce the basic function of it and how you can access this in V-Ray for SketchUp. Emissive material is normally used as self illuminating material for glow sticks, neons, bulbs and LED lights. I will be using this simple scene to show you how to access this material easily. Again, just like my part 1 tutorial in this series, the Camera and Physical Sky are turned off. This means I will be relying totally on Emissive materials to light up my scene.

SketchUp Scene

2. Accessing the V-Ray Light materialThis one is pretty simple. Open the V-Ray Material Editor. Create material, highlight this material and right-click your mouse button. Select Create Layer and then select Emissive. Click the Emissive Layer then and place it on your material stacks. See the image below for reference.

V-Ray Light Material

The parameters of the Emissive Layer are: Color will be the color of your Emissive Light/ Transparency, Intensity controls the power of your Emissive material. Check Double-Sided, which means both negative and positive faces will have an Emissive Layer. You can load bitmaps on both Color and Transparency boxes, by clicking the lower case m on the boxes.

Parameters

Here is a quick render without using V-Ray for SketchUp default Visopt (Sun, Physical Camera turned off).

Intensity = 5

Intensity = 10

There is a way on how to remove blotchiness. I basically increase the HSph Subdivs of my Irradiance map.

HSph Subdivs = 50

HSph Subdivs = 150

HSph Subdivs = 250

Conclusion:blotchiness can be removed in V-Ray for SketchUp by increasing the HSph Subdivs using the Irradiance map engine.

3. Combining with Image Based Lighting (IBL) using HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images)I believe Emissive Lighting and IBL are almost same. The only difference is that the image used as IBL is a 32 bit image, while the color/image applied to create a self illuminating surface is 8 bit. Since HDRI lighting will be a separate topic in this series, I wont focus on this type of lighting at the moment. In the next image I combined emissive lighting and IBL using HDRI in the environment (Note: HDRI will be tackled later in the this series of tutorials). The render below had a very low HDRIs Bitmap Gamma.

Emissive Lighting,IBL and HDRI

Adding Reflection Layer:

One of the best features of the latest release of V-Ray for SketchUp is the ability to stack layers. In the next render I added a Reflection Layer with a Fresnel Map type. The next render shows a slight reflection thus creating a much more believable surface. I also added a material to the studio surface.

Reflection Layer

4. Using Bitmap as Emissive lightingBitmaps can also be added and create emissive lighting by using them. This is very easy to achieve in V-Ray for SketchUp. Once you have created an Emissive Map Layer, you can actually load a bitmap. This bitmap will then be used as self emitting material. This is useful for TV screens, fire, glowing backgrounds and candle light material.

Bitmaps

Below is a simple scene that I will use to demonstrate how to place a TV screen map and how to create fire to effectively light my fireplace.

SketchUp Scene

For this TV, I need to apply the map correctly to the TV screen. Again this is very easy to achieve in Google SketchUp. I wont go into details on how to do this, instead I will focus on the TV material in this tutorial.

Note: Bear in mind that any UV tiling with bump, displacement, dirt, transparency etc. V-Ray for SketchUp follows the UV tiling of the diffuse map.

Apply Map to TV Screen

Now, all we need to do now is to apply the Emissive map. This time instead of using Emissive Color, we will load the same Diffuse map on to the Emissive Layer. The Intensity will control the power of this map. See image below.

Settings

Here is the render with multiplier = 1.0. No Physical Camera, no Sun, no IBL.

Intensity 1.0

Intensity 2.0

5. Creating the Self Emitting Fire MaterialFor the fireplace, I will be using the material shown below. I downloaded this material from the Internet. I repainted the background and cropped it.

Fire Image

To create the fire material, create a rectangular face inside the fire place. Here is a sample below.

Create Face for Image

Then I applied the fire material to the face.

Apply Material to Face

5.1 Creating the Transparency Map in PhotoshopNow we will create the Transparency map in Photoshop, to remove the black area. Alternatively you can create a PNG file with Transparency click Use Color Texture for Transparency. But me I like the old way.

a.I open my fire Diffuse map in Photoshop.

Open Map in Photoshop

b.Double click the Background Layer to make it Layer 0

c.Create new Layer and Fill it with white and place it under the Layer 0 (your fire material)

Create new Layer and Fill

d.Highlight Layer 0 and click Select>Color Range (make sure Selection is chosen). Use the Eyedropper Tool and select the black area in the actual image and adjust Fuzziness. Then click ok.

Select Color Range

e.Click Layer>Vector Layer Mask .

Add Vector Mask

Note:the good thing with adding a mask is you are doing non-destructive editing and at the same time you can always use an array of options in manipulating the mask. You can actually do this, but I will invert in now, so that later you wont have to invert this map in V-Ray for SketchUp.

f.Select the Mask option and click Invert or go to Image>Adjustments>Invert.

Invert

g.You may want to refine the edge of the mask by clicking Refine Mask Edge. Here you can avoid the halos you can get and smoothen and feather the mask and even availing the edge detection. This is cool of you are using a lot of 2D transparencies like plants, people etc.

Refine Mask Edge

h.Now right click on the Mask, click Add Mask to Selection. Once selected, create a new Layer and Fill the selection with black.

Fill Selection with Black

i.Now unhide Layer 0 and save your Transparency map.

Save Transparency Map

5.2 Applying the transparency map in V-Ray for SketchUpIn the image below, I loaded the Transparency maps using the following settings. Note the areas highlighted in red.

Settings

Below is the render after using the Transparency maps.

Render 1

Now I added some more planes, re-sized and rotated. Its better to have different maps, but for this particular tutorial, I will leave it like this.

Render 2

So here is the TV and fireplace together. Not the greatest combination though.

TV and Fire

Finally some renders where I only use Emissive materials.

Render 1

Render 2

Render 3

Thanks for following my mini seriesthere is more to come!

V-Ray for SketchUp super crash course

V-Rayfor SketchUp is a plug-in that can require a lot of time to learn properly. To fully understand V-Ray would be very difficult to explain in one tutorial so I will not be doing that here. Instead, in this tutorial I will be posting up screenshots of the settings that I personally use (from lots and lots of trial and error, experience, questions and answers). I will try to explain some of the common variables also. As well as this, I will post up links to other useful reference websites for V-Ray. This tutorial will not discuss materials and how materials are made, only V-Ray option settings.

Please first understand that V-Ray is not a magic weapon that allows you to instantly create fantastic images. It is only one of the tools in your toolbox. For me, Photoshop is probably the ultimate tool, but thats only my opinion and personalexperiencewith the software. To me, I relate using SketchUp, V-Ray and Photoshop to building a real model. SketchUp is the mold and V-Ray creates the model formed from the mold. Photoshop is then used to refine and add the ultimate details to the model.

Having knowledge of photo composition, if possible, is ideal. Understanding perspectives and how a good photograph is put together is critical. Analyzing striking photos, reading photography magazines and books, will definitely help you understand what makes a good image.I am not using the latest version of V-Ray for SketchUp so the settings and names of settings will differ slightly if you are using the latest version, but it should be very similar. The settings in this tutorial created the sample images below.

Pool Image 1

Pool Image 2

In the images above, the water material was very fiddly to play around with. In other tutorials, I will have advice on materials. Bear in mind that these settings are quite high and take a while to render. I will highlight some points which you can change to decrease the quality and render time for test renders.Lets begin.First thing where is the options tab on the toolbar after installing V-Ray?

Options Tab

Global SwitchesOnly thing I touch here is override materials. This does what it says when you render, it will override every material to the Override Material Color.

Global Switches

Image SamplerUse Adaptive DMC as your image sampler. On previous versions of V-Ray, this may be known as, I believe, QMC. The anti-aliasing filter softens edges producing better edge results. I always have this on. Different filters produce different effects. For architectural renders, often it is good to use the Catmull-Rom filter as it produces sharper results. However, it can sometimes produce amoireeffect. The Color Threshold value can be reduced to say 0.1 for faster test results.

Image Sampler

CausticsQuite a difficult feature to use. It creates the shimmering results seen in the render above. Caustics also create the light effects you see when you shine a light through a diamond, for a example. It takes up a lot of render time and is not always necessary. Usually, I turn this feature off.

Caustics

SystemOnly setting I use here is the DR setting, which means distributed rendering. This allows multiple PCs to be used for one render, sharing the power of the PCs. You need to input the IP address of each computer in there, as well as having the program DRSpawner on each of the PCs (which comes with V-Ray), if you choose to use this.

System

DisplacementUnless you have materials with displacement, this setting need not be changed. 1000 Subdivs provides decent results.

Displacement

EnvironmentGI Color controls the lighting that affects the image. BG Color does not affect the lighting but only creates the background of the image. Unless its something special, I keep the texture of each as Sun/Sky.

Environment

CameraThis is where youre photography skills can pay off. I always use the Physical Camera which essentially acts like a real camera, where you can change the shutter speed, ISO, F number, etc.

Camera

VFB ChannelsThese are additional channels that will also be rendered should you wish to. As a default, RGB color and Alpha are required. Some of the others can prove to be quite useful when using in post production. I havent used many of them, but one that I have used is Render ID, which differentiates materials by color.

VFB Channels

OutputHere, you can change the final output size. You can also choose to render directly to file or render to something called a VRImage. This is useful should you wish to render a large file and you are running low on memory. However, you will need an extra program found on the ASGVIS website, to convert the file to OpenEXR.

Output

Indirect IlluminationGI (Global Illumination) always on.Ambient Occlusion is a new feature in the latest version of V-Ray. Very useful tool that helps create wonderfully realistic results.The Primary Engine, I always use Irradiance Map and Light Cache. DMC/QMC really eats up time, so I would not use that plus it doesnt give great results.

Indirect Illumination

Irradiance MapThe Min Rate and Max Rate can determine the quality of the render. Play around with it to see the different results. Always keep the Min Rate at a negative value. The HSph. Subdivs also control the quality. 50 is quite decent, but for higher quality renders, a value of 100 can be much better. However, this does greatly increase the render time once again.

Irradiance Map

Light CacheThe default value of 1000 Subdivs produces rather good results. I never go beyond it. However, for test renders, I would lower that value way down to the values of 100 or so.

Light Cache

DMC SamplerThe default Adaptive Amount value is 1 on previous versions of V-Ray. Make sure that this value is changed to 0.85. Just do it! The noise threshold value here is 0.01. This produces quite good results and a sharp image. You can reduce this value to say 0.1 for quick tests.

DMC Sampler

Color MappingPlay around with the Color Mappingtypeto test the results.

Color Mapping

Thats it! I hope this somewhat comprehensive tutorial will help you in some way or another and thanks for reading it. Here are some resources I have found useful in learning more about V-Ray and rendering

Using HDRI in V-Ray for SketchUp

Using HDRI in V-Ray for SketchUpby Nomer Adona

HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging. It is a technique that allows a larger span or range of luminance between the light and dark areas of an image. You can use Photoshop orPhotomatixto create HDRI. For this tutorial I will not talk about how to create them but rather how to use them in V-Ray for SketchUp. I loveDOSCH HDRIbut if you want some free excellent HDRI you can visit my favorite sitehdrlabs.com. Please dont forget to acknowledge them.

Let me begin this tutorial by using this simple SketchUp setup composing of different types of glass urns using the follow me tool. Since I already rendered the scene before writing this tutorial, the V-Ray glass materials were already added. You might want to download my separateV-Ray Glass Tutorial here.

SketchUp Setup

In V-Ray for SketchUp you can actually use the HDRI both as a background and an IBL (Image Based Lighting). If you want to use the HDRI as background, all you have to do is to load it in the Environment Rollout/Background. If you want to use it as an IBL, then you have to load this HDRI in the GI (Skylight). This will become a light source then toilluminate the scene. Alternatively, you can use the sun and HDRI together by using a Blend Map, but I wont tackle this one here. The image below explains this clearly.

Render Options

To load the HDRI, all you need to do is click the small m highlighted at (1) and then click type Bitmap, then on the Bitmap File highlighted at (2). Next browse the location of the HDRI file in your computer (3).

Load HDRI

You should select Environment UVW either cylindrical, spherical or box type (depends on the HDRI map type you have). In my case I have chosen spherical map, since I am using a spherical HDRI map. My setting is basic, except for two things, my Physical Camera and the Irradiance setting which has a little higher hsph subdivision.

Physical Camera and Irradiance Setting

Alternatively, do not even bother to use the Physical Camera since the HDRI will override the SUN which is a big Omni light. You will find that you dont have to worry about balancing the Physical Camera setting and the multiplier of your HDRI. The only problem really is just syncing the V-Ray camera with the SketchUp camera. This is the reason why I used the Physical Camera. By using ThomthomsV-Ray Toysplugin. I was able to sync the V-Ray camera and SketchUp camera. The image below is the render. The render is a bit dark, but you can see the reflection on theenvironment. You can also see the rendering time is quick.

First V-Ray Render

To lighten the image, I just increase the gamma of my HDRI, both in the background and skylight. Saving Irradiance and increasing the HDRI Gamma to 1.2

Second Lighter V-Ray Render

Alternatively instead of raising the Gamma, you can also adjust the multiplier of the map or create an extra Omni light to lighten the scene. Again this thing is up to you. Finally, here are some more renders using different HDRIs.

Different HDRI

Different HDRI

I hope this tutorial is useful to you and look forward to sharing my next!

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