V-Ray 5 for 3ds Max — Webinar: What's New

hi my name is Corey and I'm a CG specialist here at Kaos Group today I'm very excited to introduce to you our latest renderer vi5 for 3 dias max in this webinar will cover brand new features and powerful new workflows and enable you to do more than just rendering instead making it easier than ever to get creative and explore different moods and styles with your images first we'll go over a few UI updates and then introduce you to the newly redesigned fear a frame buffer where you can manage your renders as well as do extensive post-processing well then take a look at the new improved sky in v-ray 5 that gives you incredibly striking sunsets and sunrises with even more dynamic results and we'll explore the brand-new material library which gives you a plethora of high-quality and ready to use materials as well as new built-in presets that save you time and enable you to shade your scenes faster we'll also cover new randomization options which help you add variety to your textures and to create more realistic looking results lastly we'll get creative exploring the incredible versatility of the new very light mixer as well as discover the powerful compositing capabilities available to you right out of the box in v-ray 5 okay I've opened up a scene here in 3dsmax that I'll be using throughout this webinar to get started let's take a quick look at the newly simplified interface in the v-ray settings the new features we'll cover today also work with beery 5 per CPU and v-ray GPU so you can use these features with whichever render engine that best suits your needs fury 5 is also generally already set up to render great-looking results using just the default settings for most scenes without any need for tweaks that said we've made a few small UI changes to streamline some options should you decide to adjust any settings in the v-ray tab you'll find that the global DMC settings have now been simplified down to two checkboxes these options determine the sampling method for evaluating blurry values such as from anti-aliasing depth of field motion blur and so forth by default we have also enabled a brand-new sampling method here called blue noise sampling blue noise sampling automatically produces a more pleasant result or renders that have low sample counts or in situations where you're using depth of field or motion blur it is generally most noticeable when rendering lower quality images with fewer samples next in the GI tab we have also streamlined to the light cache settings in v-ray 5 again the light cash has already been set up with default values that should serve you well for most purposes just like in v-ray next you can also simply switch the preset mode from still to animation in order to use the default settings we have found work well for animation renders okay now let's go ahead and open up the brand-new view a five frame buffer the new VfB has been redesigned from the ground up with a brand new UI powerful new functionality and an overall emphasis on speed so that you can work faster than ever the new VfB is now much more than just a render image window but it comes built-in with powerful post-processing tools that let you further modify your images all with fury v we will explore these new post-processing tools in much more depth later but for a quick overview of the very five VfB let's start with these icons along the top right here here we have our main render controls such as render interactive rendering and the abort button we also have the debug shading drop-down for accessing different shading modes such as isolating selected objects to the left we have the render region toggle test resolution options and the follow mouse mode which prioritizes render buckets based on proximity to the mouse pointer lastly we have the save image and Clear Channel buttons on the left hand side we've got our render elements drop-down which lists any elements rendered with the image let's load in an image to demonstrate I'll click on file load image and let's import an image file I saved in advance from the scene we're working with now you'll see that the render elements drop down as populated with the elements that were rendered with this image you'll also find a button to the right that can toggle between the RGB and alpha channels now if we double click down here on this handle the history panel opens up here we can store a history of rendered images with their post-production Corrections as well as do a/b comparisons between images there's also a search bar that lets you filter the image history based on scene paths as well as to searches through any notes that you've added to the images if you'd like to add a note right click on any image and in the menu click on edit note you can also now load in post-processing layers from a saved image which are something we'll cover later on as well as choose from familiar past options regarding v-ray settings or the option to open the scene in images from down at the base of the VfB we also have a tool bar that contains information about the image pixel values and coordinates based on where your mouse hovers the toggle on the bottom-left lets us lock our coordinates when we click somewhere over the image in addition we can toggle between raw and RGB corrected pixel values we can also specify RGB values under the current Mouse position selecting between HSV web and 8-bit modes finally in the far right corner we can open up the v-ray message log for more detailed information about a render double-clicking the handle on the right here exposes the brand-new layers panel in v-ray 5 here we have a new suite of color Corrections and tools for adjusting your image with this powerful new functionality you can manage all of your post effects and a layer tree based editor for example to add lens effects access to noiser settings or adjust the white balance if we select the lens effects you'll see below in the properties section that if we enable bloom and glare we can tweak the lens effects controls for our rendered image if I select the source RGB option you'll see here that we can access the light mix and the composite modes as well which we'll explore together in detail later on right-clicking on any layers also opens up a context menu with additional options there's also a visibility icon in the shape of an eye next to each layer which allows us to hide or unhide it effectively turning it off and on up above you'll find icons to create or delete new layers as well as the option to save a layer tree preset or load in a preset there's also a quick access icon allowing you to quickly navigate between different saved layer tree presets note that you'll need to specify the path for these presets in the VfB settings which we'll explore in a moment lastly you'll find undo and redo buttons here to the right finally the stats tab here allows you to review useful information about your scene the stats tab changes depending on the scene and rendering mode but it generally offers performance and memory tracking data back over on the left here we have a few drop-down menus for accessing familiar v-ray options as well as a View menu which gives you options for changing the display color space zoom amount channels color clamping and so forth so take a quick look at the VfB settings in the options menu here you'll have controls for the render view and render region setting your VfB history folder path and other history options and a tab for specifying your layer presets path location there's also a toggle to show advanced settings for all the tabs offering further options for customization lastly if you've made any changes to your VfB settings don't forget to click the save and close button at the very bottom of the window to save your changes all right now that we've seen an overview of the new VA 5 bfb let's move on to take a look at our scene here and get rendering okay let's begin by exploring the brand new improved sky model which is an analytical sky model that gives you stunning looking sunrises and sunsets and can be especially useful in cases where you do not want the Sun to be positioned completely above the horizon for a brief comparison at first like to show you how the ho sex guy model looks in our scene which was available in previous versions of beer a normally you would draw at a v-ray Sun in the viewport to get started but to move things along I'm just going to unhide a v-ray Sun that I've drawn out in advance and align it to one of a few anchor points I set up that serve as decent positions for the Sun in the scene now let's double check our sky model is set to the default who say and then let's head back over into the VfB and start the Apr all right you can see here we have a decent-looking sunset with some bright yellow light coming in through the window now let's save this image in the history panel for comparison later by pressing the green plus icon okay let's now switch the sky model from host sick to the new improved model available in beer a 5 you and right away you can see that the new improved sky has added some more character to our scene here let's also save this render to the history and then do a quick a B comparison with the ho SEC model selecting the a B icon and then choosing the two most recent saved renders the new improved sky is a noticeably richer and more contrast II tone offering a mix of both orange and yellow shades of color alright back over in the 3dsmax viewport let's reposition the Sun by aligning it to another anchor point of setup and right away in the IPR you'll see that we get a nice shift in the color hue of the Sun itself as it gets lower towards the horizon becoming a darker shade of orange if we increase the size multiplier for the Sun to something like five you'll see how the Sun not only becomes larger but the actual color of the Sun itself has changed again to a deeper reddish orange color I'm also going to open up the lens effects properties and let's increase the intensity and opacity a bit to see how that adds a little more softness and bloom to the sun's edges now you can see how using the new improved sky model you can easily get much more dynamic lighting scenarios to play with simply by changing the sun's position or size in the scene this makes it easy to quickly explore an experiment with a variety of sunset lighting conditions to find something that works well for your scene let's move on now to take a look at the brand new material library in view a five you can see that I've gone ahead and made a few adjustments to our scenes lighting set up here and blocked out the window by adding a new material to it so that we're using only artificial lighting from here on I've also temporarily switched cameras here this for a moment so I can show you the full room with the new lighting setup okay let's explore the brand-new material library but clicking on this icon here to open up the asset browser Deary five now comes with more than 500 ready-made materials and as you can see on the left hand side the material library gives us a bunch of different categories to choose from for example materials range from bricks stone and tiles to furniture styling categories such as leather fabric and foam to a variety of more eclectic categories such as emissive and diagrammatic materials and if you're not sure where to look you can also use the search function to locate materials altogether the material library is a great time-saver with the new asset browser making it possible to save find apply and organize your materials you can further customize the materials to your liking as well allowing you to take the material as a starting point and then tweak it to your satisfaction from there then custom materials can be saved as dot mat files and then added to the asset browser we'll provide a link in the description of the video which will let you access a new tool that is in beta which automatically creates thumbnails and does everything needed to add your custom materials to the library all right let's see about applying some materials in our scene starting with the couch and chair here back in the asset browser let's navigate to the leather materials and choose a black leather material like this one if we want to inspect it a bit more closely we can right click on it and choose preview to inspect the larger preview of it and also get information about the sub maps used note that we can also right-click and add this material and others to our favorites which can then be accessed from the right-hand flyout panel for future use okay let's go ahead and start the IPR so that we are switched back to our close-up camera here now let's right-click on the leather material and choose apply to selected objects now we can see in the IPR that we've got the leather material applied to our couch and chair keep in mind that you can also apply materials with real-world scale enabled and even try planar mapping which can be useful for objects that don't have suitable UV coordinates since it predicts textures based on the surface normals of the shaded object great now let's apply another material to this group of geometry including the table here I'd like to use something metallic this time you'll see that we've got a variety of metals to choose from including ones that have patterns paint galvanization or weathering and so forth in this case I'm going to use the titanium metal material by simply right-clicking on it to apply it you now let's find the base floor beneath the furniture here in the viewport and then in the asset browser go to the concrete section to find a material for it you'll see that we have a variety of concrete materials to choose from I'm going to select this concrete flooring isay row 1 2 meter material here and go ahead and apply it to the scene you can see how the new material library can really speed up your shading workflow to get some great-looking materials into your scenes quickly however you're not limited to just using the materials right out of the box but you can also further customize them in fact you can use our new randomization options to add variety by randomizing textures and colors which can help your materials fit in more naturally and realistically with your environment to show you an example let's select the walls and floor group here in the background and explore how we can further improve their shading we'll use a material from the library with the new randomization options available in the v-ray multi subtext in the asset browser let's head to the stone section of the material library I'm going to select the stone granite a 80 centimeter material and this time I'm also going to enable the open material editor on apply toggle at the top now when I applied the material the slate material node editor will open up with the shader and textures for the granite material I'll rename the very material for the shader and then let's see how this looks in the IPR all right that's a good starting point so let's save it to our VfB history on the left here so we can compare it with the randomization adjustments we make next alright back over here in the material editor let's introduce some randomization using the v-ray multi subtext which you can add from the v-ray map section of the editor for this scene I've already prepared a multi subtext in advance and hooked up a duplicate copy of the granite diffuse bitmap to the 15 ID inputs on the multi subtext in v-ray 5 you can now assign random colors based on face material IDs object IDs and the element IDs of an object I have the gate ID mode set to random by element because my wall and floor tiles have 15 different element IDs that I randomly distributed in advance there are also three new parameters who can tweak random hue random saturation and random gamma these three parameters control the post process randomization of colors with their inputs being a percentage of the hue saturation value or gamma range together these new randomization options are a useful way to add variety to a scene and make it more realistic to demonstrate let's go ahead and crank up the random hue to 50 so we can see how this works and then plug the multi subtext into our granite materials v-ray material you'll see that the random hue effect becomes quite pronounced with different hues appearing all over our tiles however it's far too strong for my taste let's bring it back down to something low like 10 to avoid getting any tent that is too colorful and prominent there we go that's looking much better next let's take a look at the random saturation I'm going to increase it to something very high like 100 just so you can see its effect now we can see that the colors are much more saturated and striking again it's too overpowering like this though so let's lower that down to something like 20 all right that's starting to look pretty interesting let's also try increasing the gamma to something pretty high like 50 you'll see that this is creating a lot more contrast for some of our tiles making many of them appear much darker let's bring the Gama back down to a value like 10 all right I'm liking how that looks let's now save this to our VfB history and then do an a/b comparison with how the stone tiles looked before and after we added randomization note that if you want to compare the result with the noising you can switch to the effects result channel you'll see that the version on the left with randomization is looking more contrast II and striking due to the additional variation which makes the stone material feel richer and less dull now you've seen how with the multi subtext you can hook up a texture adjust a few simple randomization parameters and quickly introduce some more diversification to your textures all right now let's move on to look at another new method for adding randomization to our scene using the new v-ray uvw randomizer texture first I'm going to switch cameras here using the shortcut C to get a better angle of our concrete floor beneath the furniture so we could take a closer look at the concrete texture back in the material editor let's get the concrete floor material that we assigned earlier to view its node setup I'll also rename it you'll see that the concrete material does not have a v-ray uvw randomizer texture as part of its node setup although some materials from the library do let's right-click and add one from the v-ray maps menu the v-ray uvw randomizer can be used as a mapping source for a v-ray bitmap or v-ray try planar text note it offers convenient parameters to control multiple v-ray bitmaps and speed up your workflow making it a powerful tool to add randomization and realism to your textures before we hook it up though let's start the IPR and see how our concrete floor looks at the moment you as you can see the concrete floor is a pretty repetitive and noticeable pattern to it let's save this render to our history so we can do a comparison later and then see how we can use the uvw randomizer to randomize this pattern and create something more subtle and interesting in the parameters we'll first need to select the randomization mode I'm going to enable the brand-new stochastic tiling method checkbox which changes the mapping based on the UV tile now we just need to plug the uvw randomizer into the mapping source inputs for all the respective bitmaps you and as you can see the results are immediately looking pretty interesting simply by enabling the stochastic checkbox I'm also going to increase the tile blend parameter to 0.4 in order to adjust the edge blending between adjacent tiles now you can see in the IPR that the patterns are looking much more subtle and blended together we can also further tweak the variant settings below to create even more randomization the variant section lets us control the min and Max range in which the scale offset and rotation parameters are applied let's change the variances you skill percent so that it scales on the U axis from 100 to 150 in order to further diminish the visible patterns in the texture there we go that's looking much more natural and authentic as a final step let's save the render to our history and then do an a/b comparison with our previous image to see how the randomization improves our result as you can see the previous image on the right clearly has a visible repetitive pattern whereas the randomized image on the left is smoother and nicely blended making the concrete altogether much more convincing now that we've explored a few new methods for adding randomization to your textures let's take a closer look at some other new material features that we've introduced with v-ray 5 back in the material editor let's create a new viewer a material and take a closer look at the brand new material swatches when you're making a material you want to know exactly how it will look as a result we've updated the swatches so that you get a better lighting preview enabling you to visualize how your material will look when you press render I'm going to rename this material and just make some parameter changes here so you can see how the swatch updates now you'll see that you get a more accurate render preview of the material when adjusting parameters such as increasing the reflection or tweaking the reflection glossiness and so forth and if you enable the show background and preview option you'll find it easier than ever to understand your materials reflectivities helping you to visualize how your material will look when rendered all together the new swatches give you an accurate sense of your materials as you work on them so that you can be confident in the results you'll get when you press render later speaking of material improvements let's create another v-ray material and see we can use the brand new built-in presets to create a chrome material this preset drop-down gives you quick and easy access to some common materials such as various metals glass plastic water and so forth now you won't need to look up material information or IOR values for these common materials saving you time while giving you realistic results in this case let's select the chrome preset so we can apply it to the geometry and the scene here let's also switch cameras so we can get up closer to the Newton's Cradle device and furniture in our scene I'll select the group here which contains the Newton's Cradle as well as the base of the chair footrest and couch and then apply the very material with the chrome preset the seal that looks all right now let's go ahead and start the IPR so we can see how the new chrome material will look in our scene okay great that looks nice and with no need for any further tweaks now let's create a new variable and name it water material then I'm going to select the water material preset now let's also switch back to our main camera again so we can apply it in our scene and start the Apr I have already set up some geometry to apply the water on in advance so I'm first going to unhide it now let's assign our water material preset to it okay now let's start the IPR to see how it looks all right great now you can see that we've got a nice-looking water body huh bring the floor stone tiles however since I want the water to look even more like a surface rather than like water in a glass I'm going to add a noise texture to it to give our water some more variation let's load in a simple 3ds max noise texture and plug that into the bump map slot on our water material then see how it looks you okay this is a good start but let's try lowering the noise size down to 20 there we go that's looking more appropriate but I still think the noise is too strong let's head back to our water material preset and bring the bump amount down to 0.5 now that's helping to break up the reflections without overdoing it and giving us the subtle appearance of a surface starting with a basic material preset you can see how further fine-tuning things with textures or tweaking parameters and get you customized results quickly to best suit your scene now let's move on to apply a few presets to the flying car in the background exploring even more ways to achieve customized results first I'm going to turn on this garage light in the background here so we can better see the car and any changes we make to its materials okay let's select the car body and create another v-ray material you this time I'm going to select the plastic material preset by default it has a yellow diffuse color so let's change that to be nearly white now let's apply that to the car body in the scene perfect next let's apply a material to the wings on the car body I'm going to create another v-ray material which I'll name base black material and then let's choose the plastic preset once again first I'm going to change the diffuse to a nearly pitch-black color and lower the glossiness down to 0.65 now let's go ahead and apply this material to the car wings okay I like the way this material looks so far but I want the windows here to look less like plastic and more like tinted windows for this we can use the brand new code parameters rollout to create a tinted window appearance first let's select the cars glass elements then let's also change cameras so that we can get a closer look at the windows of the vehicle you could see here clearly that the material has too much of a matte appearance for a window as the reflections are far too dull to fix this let's duplicate our material and rename it glass material then let's head to the KOAT parameters rollout below the new coat layer is easy to set up and faster to render than a blend material with straightforward parameters that make it easy to get a nice-looking result for example let's increase the podium at 2:1 and then apply this material to the windows you'll see that the code amount controls the blending weight of the coat layer with zero meaning no coat layer while higher values blend the coat gradually since we set the coat to 1.0 we're getting nice sharp reflections now in our windows now let's tweak the coat IOR to effect the reflections a bit and increase it to something like 2.2 this is helping to create a subtle increase in the intensity of the reflections here note that the coat glossiness controls the sharpness of reflections meaning a value of one would give us perfect mirror like reflections since the glossiness is already at one we can see the reflections quite clearly let's now give the coat a bit more of a colored tint using the coat color swatch there we go that's looking like a nice tinted window while also still keeping the coke colour fairly subtle now that you've seen how we can tweak our material presets to add more interesting characteristics like a reflective coat layer let's move on to explore another brand new rollout the sheen parameters let's switch cameras to a shawl we have draped across a chair in our scene which you'll see in the IPR here is currently set to a default v-ray material let's take a look at how we can use the sheen parameter to make it appear more like fabric let's select the shell and then create a new variable which I'll name cloths material you then let's change the diffuse color to give it something fitting in this case I'll try a brown color then let's set the reflection to a light brown or beige I'm also going to bring down the glossiness to 0.65 now let's assign this material to the shawl and see how it looks in the IPR okay we're off to a good start now let's drop down the Sheen parameters to see how we can make our material appear more like cloth the sheen is designed to assist with the creation of cloth materials you can think of it like a top reflective layer on the diffuse color that makes creating a fall-off effect for cloth easier than ever let's start by adjusting the color of the sheen to a light brown or tan color and see what effect that has on the shawl note that you can use the Sheen parameters to create a variety of BLUF like material styles such as satin or velvet okay I'm liking how this looks but the cloth still doesn't have a noticeable enough Sheen effect and I'd like to make it more prominent to do that we can adjust the sheen glossiness which controls the sharpness of the reflections let's try lowering it down to 0.3 you'll find that higher values let more light reach the diffuse therefore diminishing the Sheen's visibility whereas lower values to reflect a more light making the sheen a victim more pronounced all right now you've seen how we can easily introduce the sheen effect to help give our material the soft reflective character of fabric at this point we've now finished shading everything in our scene so let's get ready to do a production render and explore some of the powerful new post processing capabilities that come with v-ray 5 first I'm going to switch cameras to our final camera for rendering you'll see here in the IPR that this perspective gives us a nice wide composition for our scene here okay let's stop the Apr and then add a few render elements for our production render let's switch the denoiser engine from the nvidia AI denoiser to the default v-ray denoiser since it's more consistent for production rendering with VRA 5 we want to make it so that you can easily create a production-ready image from start to finish simply using v-ray as a result we have introduced a new render element called v-ray back to beauty which automatically creates the necessary render elements you need to reconstruct the beauty pass in post-production you can think of the very back to beauty element as a shortcut to save you time it also ensures you don't forget to add critical elements that you might need later on to reconstruct the beauty paths and compositing since I'm using the denoiser I'm also going to check on the de noise checkbox for the back to beauty element so that way the de noising operator is supplied to all of the back to beauty render elements consistently now let's also add the brand-new very light mix which is a new render element that we'll need to add in order to take advantage of the powerful light mixing capabilities in v-ray 5 when the very light mix render element is enabled you can then render your scene and further tweak your lights in the new VfB both during IPR and even after production render is complete this means that you can tweak the intensity and color of lights and light emitting materials as well as enable or disable lights altogether without needing to re-render your final output you can even work faster if you mix your lights while rendering interactively since you don't have to navigate the individual light sources to tweak their parameters if we scroll down in the light mix settings and take a look at the group by drop-down you'll see that we can specify how to group the lighting information in the light mixer in this case I've already organized these lights into separate layers to manage them more easily so I'm going to set this to group my lights by layers now the lighting information for each layer will be stored in a separate channel note that for whichever mode you choose the light mix will also create self illumination and environment render elements which will store light emitting materials and environment information respectively okay great now that I've got my render element set up let's prepare our render settings I'm going to switch to the bucket rendering mode for production and set my noise threshold the point zero zero eight otherwise I'll leave the rest of my settings at the defaults we've got everything set up let's go ahead and press render [Music] [Music] all right great now that our production render is finished let's jump into the new light mixer and see how we can create a variety of different lighting scenarios without any need to re-render the image to access the light mixer open the right-hand layers panel and then simply select the source layer in the layer panel hierarchy we're already on the light mix mode but if it says source RGB or composite you can easily switch to the light mix mode at the top of the properties section you'll see in the light mix parameters below that we have a UI which lists all of the lights grouped by the layers that I setup in the scene there are also various options available such as the ability to save and load light mix presets send light mix modifications to the compositor or even transfer our light mix tweaks back to the lights in the scene alright let's explore how we can build a new lighting scenario here from the ground up starting with toggling off the all check box at the top you'll see that our render is now pitch-black as no lights are enabled at the moment let's now enable some of the more subtle ambient lights in our scene beginning with the self illumination lights then let's also enable the lights car for the cars headlights I think these headlights could be a bit brighter so let's increase their multiplier to four keep in mind that a light standard multiplier will have a default value of one alright so far so good next I'm going to turn on lights floor charge a and let's increase the multiplier to two I'll also turn on the lights garage for the light that it's above the car one of the amazing things about the light mixer is that you can change the colors of your lights enabling you to completely reimagine the mood of your scene for example let's change the lights garage color you'll see as I drag around in the color picker that the VfB updates the results very fast making it so that I can find a color to suit my image very quickly I think I'll go with a light blue here note that generally we recommend rendering your lights as a white neutral color if you plan on doing light mixing that way you can focus on tinting your lights completely in post-production without any color interference from the lights existing color tone all right let's move forward and turn on the lights columns to begin lighting up the room and the space around the car I'm also going to increase their multiplier to two so that they provide some more warmth and contrast in the image great now let's also turn on the lights Phil to add a fill light to our scene it's definitely way too subtle though at first so I'm going to crank it up a lot let's try setting the multiplier to 10 there we go now I'm liking how this looks if you get to a stopping point where you're happy with your results you can simply press the Save button above this will save your settings as a light mix preset bottle which you can then load in later in this case I'll save mine is light mix preset o1 okay now that we've saved our first preset let's continue tweaking our lights to get a different look I'll start by enabling the light spots these are from the lights that are around the base of the trees in our scene next let's turn on the lights floor platform this gives our scene a very nice rim of light around the room at the base of the wall that's looking good so far so next let's enable the light ceiling so we can shine some light on the furniture in our scene I think the ceiling lights are too dim though so let's increase their multiplier to 3 great if you'd like we can also solo a particular light by holding alt and clicking on it this will turn off all of their lights except the one you clicked on then you can all click on it again to return to your lighting setup as you have it I'd also like to change the color of the ceiling like to something warmer let's try a slightly yellowish color there we go I think that's looking pretty good all right I'm going to go ahead and press save again and save this this light mix preset 0-2 all right now that we've saved two presets of our own let's also try loading in some presets that I saved in advance pressing the load button here let's load in this preset called light mix preset 0-3 and there we go you can see that it is loaded in just fine and our light mix settings have updated to reflect the different colors and multiplier values for the lights and we can even further tweak this if we wanted to let's go ahead and load in the light mix preset 0-4 as well you can see that this preset is quite Moody and showcases how we can also use light mixing to achieve some very drastic differences in mood and tone all by simply playing with the colors and multiplier values and if you'd like to quickly compare saved presets you can simply click on the recent presets icon here and switch between the light mix preset files we've loaded in to preview them note that the recent presets path location checks in the latest loaded preset files folder we can also simply press the up and down arrow keys to switch between the recent presets very rapidly for comparison now you can see how using the light mixer we can quickly create a bunch of different lighting moods using a single rendered image as well as save and load presets and without needing to rerender anything this saves you time while allowing you to explore different creative looks all within the new view a 5v of B and that's not all once you've got your light mixed settings set up to your satisfaction you can then send them over to the brand-new compositing layer editor where you can take your post-processing even further to refine your image you can also press the reset button here which resets all light mix changes to default values however if you do decide to send any of your light mix changes to the compositor you'll find that all of the tweaks you made in the light mixer will be described in the relevant render elements okay let's move on from the light mixer and switch over to the composite mode the brand-new compositor in v-ray 5 offers a layer tree system that makes it possible to do nuanced color Corrections set blending modes and combine render elements all within the new VfB you'll see that all of the back to beauty render elements were neatly organized into a folder for us here whenever you add the v-ray back to Beauty render element before starting your render v-ray automatically creates this folder containing the necessary render elements for reconstructing the Beauty pass you'll see that we can select a render element layer to reveal its properties below we can also hold shift and select multiple layers and view their properties below together if we press the visibility or eye icon to hide multiple layers we can reveal them one by one to see how the layers stack on top of one another as you can see the layer system applies Corrections from the bottom to the top meaning layers on top of the stack are considered in the foreground and the result of all layers below is considered the background the only exception to this is nested layers which are executed after their parent which we'll cover in a moment also note that the display correction layer at the very top specifies the display color space of the resulting image or composite in the frame buffer all right let's take a look at the v-ray lighting element here and explore its properties below you'll see here that I can adjust the layers multiplier value control its opacity and select from a wide variety of blending modes at our disposal alright let's explore how we can do some further color Corrections here to improve our image with color Corrections like exposure and white balance you can choose to apply them to a single layer instead of the entire composite to do this simply select the layer and then create a new correction or you can drag a correction layer onto another layer let's select the v-ray reflection layer and from the create layer drop-down let's add a curves correction you'll see that the curves layer has been applied to the very reflection element specifically as indicated by the downward arrow icon that is pointing to its parent now let's tweak the curves a bit to help boost the reflections in our image if we double click on the curve will create a new Bezier point we can drag on its handles to tweak it or right-click on the handles to get a context menu where you can choose from different interpolation modes or edit the point values to input specific X&Y coordinates if we right click elsewhere in the curve editor you can switch the graphs theme save and load B curve files or a CV curve files from Photoshop or unable to snap to grid mode we can also select between different RGB channels to tweak those colors specifically for this image I'd like to simply increase the strength of the reflections without altering their color so I'll just click and drag this point to bring out the reflections a bit okay great now that you've seen oh we can do color Corrections using curves let's take a look at another powerful new correction tool the filmic tone map first let's deselect any layers and then create a filmic tone map direction so that it is added to the top of our layer tree the filmic tone map allows you to control different types of mapping curves as well as apply gamma correction and select the color space tone mapping is the process of rescaling the high dynamic range values in an image who was then the visible interval this is usually done in a nonlinear fashion for example with a custom curve and the user has control over the parameters of the tone mapping operator note that all our filmic tone map operators act globally on the image and lack any local function let's take a look at how the different tone map types here impact the image by clicking on the drop down I'll first select the linear type now we can use the up and down arrow keys to switch between the different types for quick comparison as you can see each tone map type has a different effect on the overall light and dynamic range of the image in this case I'm gonna leave it on the power curve option and then let's make a few more tweaks below the toe and shoulder controls here allow you to adjust the tone maps curve which you'll see adjusts along with the image when I bring the toe length slider down let's also adjust the toast strength and lastly bump up the shoulder strength just a tiny bit you can see below that the curve visualization is updated to reflect the changes we made to these parameters there we go now you can see all these different tone map types can be used to give your image a much more contrast II and dynamic looking result once I finished compositing I can also save my layer tree setup as a preset by simply clicking the Save layer tree preset button up top I'll save this as layers preset zero one note that layer tree presets are not seen unique meaning if you save a layer tree preset with composite Corrections you can also use the preset with another image so long as the image is rendered with the same render elements that are saved with the preset you can also easily save Universal presets that exclude any composite or light mix Corrections if you only add and/or modify layers above the source layer just to show you what it would look like to load in different settings let's click the load layer tree preset button to the right and select layer preset zero - which is a preset that I set up in advance now you can see that the new layer tree has replaced the one that we had just set up and the results are clearly visible as our image is a noticeably warmer look and feel to it now similar to the light mix presets we can also use the quick access icon to quickly switch between different presets for comparison note that the quick axis searches for presets at a path you specify in the VfB settings under the layers tab when you're all done compositing and happy with your image just don't forget to save your render out of the VfB by clicking on the Save icon if you click and hold on the icon you will get a drop-down with additional options that let you save all channels to separate files or save all channels to a single file using the EXR or VR image formats in this case I'll save all channels to a single file as a VR image all right now you've seen how easy it is to quickly customize and composite your renders using the new v-ray frame buffer with a powerful suite of color correction controls blending modes and the ability to tweak specific render elements to your liking you can now go beyond rendering to get stunning looking production images all within v-ray 5 now I'd also like to mention a few more features available to you in VRA 5 we've added a brand new car paint material and flakes material which have more precise flakes filtering and reduced memory usage to get you stunning and photorealistic looking images in addition we've also added material presets to the v-ray here next material you'll find a wide selection of hair stylings out of the box ranging from natural colors like sandy blond or dark brown to dyed hair styles like scarlet red or even white fur just like with the v-ray material presets once you select a hair preset you can further customize and tweak its parameters to find a look that's most suitable for your image we have added a new exposure value setting which lets you input a straightforward exposure value to control image brightness using this mode will replace the ISO value giving you a simple and straightforward way to tweak the exposure while still giving you control over the shutter speed and f-number values promotion blur and depth of field respectively we also now support an experimental out of board GPU render mode specifically for CUDA graphics cards when your GPU runs out of memory or triangle mesh data is no longer needed out of core takes this data out of the GPU memory and stores it in system RAM this way you have the option to render on GPU even if your scene exceeds your GPU VM limit note that since this is currently an experimental feature it is not yet supported for our TX cards light path expressions are a very powerful and advanced tool within the very light select render element which allow you to extract specific lighting events from the scene to a separate Channel this gives you very fine control of the image in compositing for example to capture the global illumination that comes from the environment only you can check out our documentation if you'd like to learn more about light path expressions and how to construct them all together these powerful new features give you an incredibly robust and versatile upgrade to your render tool kit making v-ray 5 an all-in-one solution to serve most of your needs the new material library asset browser and presets help you to create high quality materials quickly while the randomization options save you time and help you to make your textures even more realistic together the material library and randomization options serve as a powerful combination giving you both the starting point for your materials while making it easy to quickly customize them further in addition the incredible versatility of the new built in post-production tools such as the light mixer and compositor take you beyond rendering and give you creative freedom to further polish your production ready images all within viewer a5 if you'd like to try out be a 5-4 3dsmax please visit our website PS group.com for more information and to download a free trial if you have any further questions please feel free to check out our docs page for additional information about these new features as well and for the latest updates click subscribe on our youtube channel PS group TV for more videos about new products and releases thanks for joining me for this webinar session and I hope to see you next time

Channel: ChaosTV

Views: 151,363

Keywords: V-Ray, V-Ray for 3ds Max, V-Ray webinars, V-Ray 5

Id: rAE9_lRjx00

Length: 58min 9sec (3489 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 20 2020