your doing something very wrong. zip the file

3Ds Max 2012+Sp2 +SAP, Vray 2.2, Photoshop CS5.1
OS - Windows 7 Pro x64 Sp1
sys1: i7 2600k (OC to 4.2GHz), 16GB 1600mhz DDR3 Ram, MSI GTX 580 (3GB) (295.51), OCZ vertex 2 120GB SSD, Wacom Intuos 3
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I don’t mean this in a rude way, but if you don’t know what a fill light is you should look at some basic tuts on 3D lighting. By basic I mean start with normal 3 point lighting before you worry about GI and everything else.

If I had to light this scene I’d just use an MR Area spot light shining through the windows onto the floor in back. (You can use sky portals, but they don’t really work like lights, they amp up the environment lighting...) Then I’d place some lower intensity area lights in front of the car. I would turn on FG to smooth everything out. It would not be physically correct at all.  But it would look nice.

Looser

I few quick points about your mental ray settings:

- Firstly, enable gamma correction and set it to 2.2. This will solve the burned-out highlights. It’ll also make your scene look a bit washed out so adjust the materials as necessary.

- I normally use the mr photographic exposure control with highlights set to 1.0, midtones to 1.0 and shadows to 0.0. Then I’ll save as an HDR file and do any adjustments with Photoshop’s curves tool—usually a gentle S-shaped tone curve does the trick. You’ll need to make sure your 3ds max frame buffer is set to 32-bit for this.

- In the final gather settings, disable the noise filtering. In a scene like this, with relatively small windows, it’ll be considering most of the (correct) incoming light as “noise” and removing it.

- You shouldn’t need to use the FG “high” preset. Try the “low” one (which will smooth out the blotches) and increase the rays per point if necessary to pick up all the incoming light.

Hope that helps.

From my previous life as a professional photographer and borrowing form an Ansel Adams example he used in his Lighting basic photo book.

In order to get the correct balance between the inside lighting and exterior lighting on a single exposure (the Max equivalent of a single render) Ansel Adams’ example was to photograph the interior at night with the room lights on. Then, double expose the scene, using a different exposure, with the daylight/sunlight coming in through the windows onto the same piece of film.

In the digital age, two exposures are now used and composited in Photoshop.

In Max, to do it in a single render additional interior illumination is necessary. Supplimental lighting is standard practice in photography and cinematography. We, the audience are usually not aware of the extra lighting if the photographer or cinematographer/lighting director have done their jobs correctly.

Max renders to a mathematical precision.
Visual artists tweak, alter, modify, adjust, and beat that mathematical precision over the head until the resulting image looks the way the viewer would expect to see it.

As far as I know, there is no algorithm developed to simulate human perception. And if there was, it would only have limited use and still would need to be modified.

Tim Wilbers [FA]

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Visual Arts
University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
3ds Max: 7.5, 8, 9, 2008, 2009, 2010

here is compressed scene, someone please have a look and tell me whats wrong and why i get lit walls.

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02_1.zip

dude, i didn’t have a whole lot of time to look into your file...but man, you got all kinds of problems going on with your lighting setup and exposure controls.  (FG isn’t even enabled???) I understand your frustration why max just wouldnt render things perfectly the first time round just by adding a daylight system and sky portals… but it’s a lot more complex than that to get realistic renders… 3ds is built with total control in mind for professionals that understand all the variables. I suggest you grab a book on 3ds lighting etc, tutorials, go thorugh at least one good tutorial with the type of scene that is similar to yours and get aquainted with what is going on with those lights in relation to your scene, being indoor, outdoor or both.  maybe somebody will jump in and give you some sort of explanation about what is going on with your scene to help you get what you need.

Attaching your 3ds file may have been the first and best step for you to get help on this.

Intel i7 930 2.8Ghz 8 CORE HT / CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus (no OC yet!)
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Wish light portals would have shadows settings like raytrace shadows and shadow map settings like all other standard lights have ? To bad they dont.
Anyway i followed the “Fake it” tutorial and result was somewhat satisfying as shown on the picture attached, but i still wish that light portals would not effect the ceiling so much. i mean doesn’t light portal know that light is pointing down and not from the right at 90 degrees ? caz if it was then it would make since to see it effecting the ceiling this way.
To bad it takes 8 minutes to render this image :(, it is unacceptable and not very inspiring to continue doing any further work on this or any other project for that matter.

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Hi Looser,

See all the Attachments and the zipped file.
I simplified a bit the scene, just to show the main issues and to give you a basic setup; there is much to be done. (Img03)
A couple of points:
The way this scene is modeled brings sub-objects (faces) sharing the same place (coordinates) in space; MR doesn’t like that per definition, creating artifacts.
(See Img01.).
You must avoid that. I would remodel the Walls to get rid of the doubled faces.
Just build the walls like they are in the real world.
I deleted some of the mesh but not all, the doubled faces are everywhere.
That’s due to the kind of modeling philosophy, the inside and outside wall are two objects partly sharing the same place in space. (I moved the inside wall a bit just to show the issue.) See Img02.
Using Mental ray, try always to copy the “reality” as much as possible,
that is the right way;
MR is expecting it; the engine needs real data to bring acceptable results, keep that always in mind. Or just forget MR and fake it all using the default render; it is also an option.
I deleted your Portal lights and created a couple of new ones just for the particular camera view; take a look how they are done and positioned.
The fact that Portals “effect” the “potolok” is not unusual that is diffuse and reflected light what can we do..
Scaling the Portals using the transform tools is not a good idea use their Width and Length value instead. Those are not the good old standard lights; (the non-uniform scale
of a standard light was something usual in the past)
Actually they are not real lights, just a kind of engine tunneling the skylight inside.
It is not good if they are much bigger than the opening.
Read all about MR in the help.
Your GI multiplier was = 1000, why; the portals had multiplier = 5 (?)
Mental Ray likes the fair play.
Find Tutorials, there are plenty of them on that topic and you will be a winner. :)

ivan

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02test.zip

Looser,

Good thing you sent your file.  Ivan always seems to take the extra time to help. He definitly deserves a nice thank you! (and he knows what he is doing!) : )

Take his advice and help.  Be patient, and continue to keep learning and you will soon be happy with your results. Lighting is one of the more complex elements of 3d.... It either makes or breaks a render.

Intel i7 930 2.8Ghz 8 CORE HT / CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Plus (no OC yet!)
Nvidia EVGA GTX 260 v296.10 driver (Nitrous in max) / Dual Dell Professional P2311H 23” Displays
ASUS P6X58D-E / Corsair Dominator 12GB 1600 DDR3 / Antec tp750 blue / Antec 300 Illusion
Windows 7 Pro x64 SP1
3ds max design 2012 x64 SP2 (since the 1st DOS version!), Mudbox 2012 x64 SP3, Softimage 2012 x64 SP1, Maya 2012 x64 HF2, Adobe CS5.5 x64, CorelDRAW x5 SP3, Painter 12, etc etc
Wacom Intuos4 v6.2.0w5 / 3DConnexion Space Navigator (drv6.15.2)/ Logitech Performance MX mouse (5.33.14)

i deleted the skyportals and set up the renering parameters according to what i posted yesterday. looking good! ill light to see the final!

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