Press F10 on the keyboard, turn VRay::Indirect illumination (GI) on. Now we'll set up the GI(Global Illumination) and do a test render. Position the teapots so that they are in front of the mirror and resting on the VrayPlane, as in the screenshot below: Let's create some random objects for the mirror to reflect - I just created some teapots, but obviously you can use anything. Move the VRayPlane so that it is below the mirror.
(this is an infinite plane, represented by an icon in the viewport) Now angle the light so that it is facing down and towards the mirror surface as in my screenshot below:Ĭreate a ground plane for our scene. It should be a plane light, 80cm x 80 cm big, and set the light's multiplier to 5 Let's change the background in the material editor to something more visible - a checker background, so we can actually see the material preview reflecting something.Īssign the "mirror surface" material to the mirror object (Drag and drop)Īdd a camera to the scene so it is positioned more or less like mine in screenshot below:īecause the diffuse color of the mirror surface material is grey, it is very difficult to see it against the 3ds Max viewport background, so I change the camera view to "Smooth + Highlights" with "edged faces", by pushing F4 on the keyboard Notice that the preview ball in the material editor "disappears" - (it doesn't actually disappear, it just looks like that because it is reflecting the grey background surrounding the ball). Rename this material "mirror surface" and make it totally reflective, by making the reflect color swatch totally white as in the screenshot below: (White is totally reflective, black is not reflective at all, so the lighter the color, the more reflective it is) Open up the material editor and change the first material in the material editor to a VrayMtl. Create a box in the front viewport that is approximately 70cm x 40cm x 0.4cm (Note, it doesn't have to be exactly this size and if you would prefer to work in inches or other units, that's also okay, I'm just used to working in cm.)Ĭreate the actual V-Ray mirror material. I am assuming that you have a basic knowledge of 3ds Max, so I won't explain absolutely everything, but it should still be easy enough for beginners to figure out what is going on in this tutorial.Ĭreating the mirror surface. We will then create the V-Ray materials for this mirror, and finally we will render out a simple 3d scene, showing reflections in the mirror. That said, mapping the image onto geometry replicating what is in the image is usually the best way if you need to retain some illusion of depth and scale (more pertinent for interiors).In this tutorial we will create a simple, framed mirror with 3ds Max. A large tree in the middle-ground/foreground will most likely look bad. This does not necessarily work so well with all hdri images, mainly ones where the environment in the image is evenly distributed around the image with similar distances. This will let you bring some sense of scale and "floor" into your dome environment, but you will still need to play with your camera's FOV to get more into the frame if needed. You then plug your hdri into this map and set the parameters accordingly (though the spinner names are confusing and the documentation is rather lacking last I checked). There is however a node still not included in Vray's default installation called "VrayDomeEnv" that you can get from the spot3d site as a separate download. The domelight, and environment are represented as infinite spheres, so size does not matter. Firstly, if I have completely misunderstood this discussion, please ignore.