Final Render 101: Simple environmental and object based global illumination

By Stephen Reb
Software used: 3ds Max

This is the first in a series of Final Render tutorials that will cover the
basics of global illumination, HDRI, ray tracing, lights, caustics and sub-surface
scattering. In this first, two-part lesson we'll go over the essentials of global
illumination using two methods of light generation. Part 1 will address
environmentally produced GI. Part 2 will examine HDRI basics and self-
illuminated objects. If you have any suggestions or comments, please send me
an email.

1. Start by creating a box and flipping the
normals. To prevent color bleeding in the
corners you might instead assemble your
room with six overlapping planes or boxes.
Place two spheres in one corner and aim a target camera at them. To allow light into
the room we need to boolean out a window in the wall behind the camera, or simply
remove the wall or ceiling. In the example scene I used a box and removed the top
poly. Place an omni anywhere in the scene and turn it off. This is to inactivate Max's
default lighting.

2. Right click every scene object and select "Properties."
Under the Mental Ray Rendering Control check the
relevant options. In this case we want each object to
receieve and generate global illumination. It's a good
idea to do this immediately after placing an object in the
scene.

3. Go to the Material Editor and create three FinalRender
materials, two for the spheres and one for the walls.
Under the Caustics and Global Illumination rollout, turn
off caustics and make sure both send and recieve are
checked under Global illumination. Leave the settings at
their default of 1. Apply them to your objects. By now
you've noticed that your shaded viewports are blacked
out. In order to see your shaded viewport you need to
temporarily turn on your omni or create another. Don't
forget to turn it back off before rendering. For at least
one of the spheres set a specular and glossiness level
similar to mine.

4. Open the Environment Dialogue and set the
background color to pure white.


5. Right click any viewport and select Final Render Globals from the quad menu. Open the Global Illumination Parameters
dialogue and enable GI. For test renders keep the prepass size at the default level of 1/4. And for test renders the RH-Rays
should usually be considerably lower lower than the 300 rays I'm using here, but this is a simple, low-poly scene and
render times should be fairly painless. Go ahead and render the scene.


6. Somewhat smooth. Not too much artifacting evident, but it's hard to tell. I want the image lighter than this. Remember,
too, that the amount of light reaching the scene is partially dependant upon the size and placement of windows, etc.
Go back to the Material Editor and increase the Recieve parameters for each Material to 2.0. Render again.

7. Better. A little artifacting, but that can be fixed later by pumping up the RH Rays and prepass size. If you used high
specular and glossiness levels in either of your materials, you'll notice that the GI doesn't bring out highlights on the
spheres. To do that, add another omni and this time turn it on. Under Affect Surfaces uncheck diffuse but leave specular
on. Go back to the Final Render Globals dialogue and increase the RH-Rays to 600. Increase the prepass size to 1/2 and
render again.

Part two of this tutorial will cover HDRI basics and self-illuminated object
based GI.