How to setup a clay render in 3D Studio Max

IntroductIon: In the following tutorial we are going to walk through the steps to properly setup 3D Studio Max such that you can render a well lit and detailed clay image of your model for use on SFM. The goal of a “clay” render is to show modeling detail.

This tutorial will be using Mental Ray render engine which comes standard with 3D Studio Max. The focus here is on speed of the render and quality. There are many different ways to achive the end result of this tutorial, such as a multiple light systems. Speed of the render is reason for this tutorials method. This tutorial does not address modeling issues, that’s something that needs to be covered in another tutorial. Let’s get started.

Step 1: SetupTo start go to your Render Settings and select “Mental Ray Render” as your assigned Pro-duction renderer.

In this example I have my model (a mech-spider) in the middle of my scene with a plane used as a ground plane. (some of your scenes my not have a ground plane) There are no lights, cameras, or textures used in this scene. All objects have been assigned the same material which is a “standard” material with all settings at default. Ie.. it’s gray.

(Max 2010 Specific) Let’s setup the preview window such that we can see how the shadows from our light are going to fall on our model. In the top left of the “perspective” window goto “Light-ing and Shadows” and select “Illuminate with Scene Lights”. Make sure that “Enable Hardware Shading”, “Enable Exposure Control Viewport” and “Enable Shadows” are turned on.

Step 2: Add a single Key Light.1. Select “mr Area Spot” from your Standard available lights list. The light can be placed

anywhere on your scene that you feel will best showcase your model’s detail with shad-ows. For my scene it’s 45 degrees back from the model and 45 above the model.

2. Make the following setting changes to your light.• Shadows: On – Ray Traced Shadows• Multiplier: .7• RGB Color of light: 255, 255, 255 (white)

You can pick any color here. Use blues for cool images or a light orange for an warmer image. A very light orange is recom-mended for models which you forsee as being lit by the sun. For most space-ship types I’d recommend the cool blue but

that’s entirely upto you.

This render is way too dark you can’t even see the face of the spider. So let’s correct that.

Step 3: Add a SkyLight

To help add some realism to our scene add a Skylight to your scene, placement isn’t important, I usually place it just off camera for easy of viewing in viewport. The settings for this light are left at default. However for my scene I changed the color of this light to: 206, 206, 255 which is a light blue tone. This light will play an

important role in our scene when we enable Final Gather, as it will add some light to darker areas and the bounce of light off surfaces will help to illuminate those areas.

Step 4: Final Gather (FG) Setup

We are only going to have the computer do a DRAFT level FG. We want light bounce but not at the expense of render time.

• Open the Render Setup window.• Select the Indirect Illumination tab.• With Final Gather options visible, check the box to enable Final Gather.• Set the Multiplier to .4 (you can adjust this later to ligthen or darken your renders)• Set the FG Precision Presets slider to Draft. • Set the Diffuse Bounces to: 2. Leave everything else at default.

While we are in the Render Setup goto the “Renderer” Tab.

• Under Sampling Quality change the “Type” from BOX to LANCZOS. This will sharpen the edges of your render.

Step 5: Material Setup

The best way to show the detail in the dark areas of the model, while maintaining a good render time is to use a Mental Ray material called “Arch & Design (mi)” because this ma-terial offers us some options not available with a standard shaders. Specifically it offers Ambi-ent Occlusion.

Quick settings for our “Arch & Design” mate-rial:

• Reflectivity: .1 (no need to process re-flection for this render)

• Glossiness: .3 (our surface is not shiny)• Under “Special Effects” check the box for “Ambient Occlusion”.• Samples: change to 24. (default is 16) This controls the graininess of the shadows

on the material. • Distance: Leave at 10. This controls how far out from edges the system will calculate the shadow falloff.• Click on the BOX next to, “Shadow Col-or”.• Add a Falloff Map to this slot. • Set the Fall Off Type to: Shadow / Light. • Change the two color slots found just above Fall Off Type such that the top color

is a dark blue and the bottom is a softer shade of the same blue. • Test Render your scene.

Now you will start to see some detaling. Note around the mouth of my spider, the blue shadows are visible.

• Check the box next to, “Custom Ambeint Light” and put another fall off map into that slot.

• Set the Fall Off Type to: Shadow / Light. • Change the two color slots found just above Fall Off Type such that the top color is

a warm orange and the bottom is a softer shade of the same orange. (this changes the overall tone of the model. So you can play around with the colors here till you get the desired look and shade that suits your object.

Step 4: Prepping the Ground Plane

There are several ways to texture the ground plane (if your using one) to show the shad-ows of your model. One method is to use a MR Matte/Shadow/Reflection (mi) material and set the Ambient/Shadow color with fall off like we did for our model material. But the easiest method I’ve found is to simply copy the model material (which is a Arch & Design shader) and modify the settings such that the ground plane is a darker color the the model your showcasing. For the scene I’ve got going these are the settings I used and applied to the ground plane.

• Copy the Model material to another material slot and rename it to: “Ground”.• Color: .3, .3, .3 which is a medium gray.• Reflectivity is 0• Glossiness: 0• Under Ambient Occlusion change the Shadow Color Fall Off colors:

• Top value: 55,55,55• Bottom value: 121,121,121

• Custom Ambient Light change the Shadow Color Fall Off colors:• Top value: 111,99,72 (light brown)• Bottom value: 164,156,139 (tan)

• Apply the “Ground” material to your ground plane.

At this point your render should look something like this:

At this point your pretty much done. Of course you can adjust all these color values to modify the render such that the entire image is gray-scale however I’m a fan of varied color. Play around with the settings till you get the render you want.

BONUS:

Render your same model with HIDDEN LINE effect. It’s rather simple and now that your materials are all setup. Creating a nice hidden line render is a snap.

In a empty slot on your materials editor make a new “Composite” material.

• Discard the pervious material• In the Base material slot drag your MODEL matieral.• Uncheck Mat. 2 - 9 as we will not be using them. • In Mat. 1 slot click on “none” and select “standard”.• Set the Ambient and Diffuse to Black. (this is the color of the lines that will overlay

your model. So you can use whatever color you feel works for you. I’ll use black in this example).

• IMPORTANT: Check the box next to “wire” in the Shader Basic Parameters rollout.• In the Extended Parameters Rollout: Change the WIRE Size to .75 (play with this as

you like).• Apply this material to your model and snap a render. You should get something like

this:

High ploy models will render like this, but as you get closer you’ll see more details.

NOW GET RENDERING AND PUT THEM ON SFM!!!!

Chris Canada.