05 Oct 2011 4 Comments
3DS Max Design: How To Create A Great Looking Sky
In the following tutorial, we will create a skydome that accurately projects light onto your scene. This tutorial is based largely (entirely) from the master of Mental Ray rendering, Jeff Patton.
Tutorial will take you to youtube–> 3DS Max Skydome creation – Try replacing “http://www.youtube.com” with “https://www.youtube.com” in order to view the video.
If you cannot or don’t wish to view the video, you can follow these simple steps:
1. Create a ground plane object and a sphere that is about the same diameter as the plane and has its center at the same elevation as the plane.
2. Select the sphere and convert it to an editable poly (right click menu) – name it “skydome”
3. Convert the sphere to an editable poly and delete the bottom half of the sphere beneath the plane
4. Add a “Normal” modifier to the sphere and flip the normals
5. Use “Select and Squash” to flatten the cylinder to make it half-spheroidal
6. Add a “UVW Map modifier” and set it to cylindrical – then click the fit button
7. Open the Slate Material Editor (type M)
8. Right click > Materials > mental ray > mental ray to create a new mr material
9. Left click and drag from the Surface Shader node (left side) to the left and let go of the button you get a menu of choices, select mental ray > Color Override/Ray Type Switcher
10. In the Slate Material Editor right click > Maps > Standard > Bitmap and select your panoramic sky bitmap image
11. Connect the right bitmap connector node to the “Eye Rays”, “Reflections” and “Final Gather” nodes of the Color Override/Ray Type Switcher
12. Connect the right Color Override/Ray Type Switcher connector node to the mental ray Material “Surface Shader” node
13. Set the “Output Amount” to between 30 and 50 on the Bitmap. edit: <—-scene scale is the driver of that value. The bigger (dimensionally) the scene, the higher the value.
14. Open the “Environment and Effects” dialog (type “8″) and on the “Environment” tab set the Exposure Control to Logarithmic Exposure Control
15. Check “Process Background and Environment Maps” and check “Exterior Daylight”
16. With the skydome selected, open the material editor, select the sky parent material (Color Override/Ray Type Switcher) and click the “assign material to selection” button to assign it to your selection
17. Do some test renders, adjusting the output of the bitmap each time to see how the different levels affect the scene lighting. If you see black, keep upping the value or double check this list. It’s easy to skip a step.
18. Finally, create a daylight system and do more test renders.
Oct 08, 2011 @ 20:59:49
Great guide Dave. Keep up the great work.
Oct 08, 2011 @ 21:42:40
Thankss, Chadders! Hope it helped!
Oct 11, 2011 @ 16:39:57
Dave,
If I could make one comment on this: I found using “Select and Non-uniform Scale” was not a good idea for squashing the skydome hemisphere since non-uniform scaling affects all types of UVW mapping. When I used this accidentally instead of “Select and Squash” as you noted above, I was unable to used the “Real-World Map Size” option to get my bitmap scaled properly. I ended up with many, tiled bitmaps instead. Just a note of caution to noobs like myself.
Oct 11, 2011 @ 16:45:20
ah! I must say that I have tended to avoid using real world map size on my UVW maps. Also, not sure if I did it in the video but I recommend scaling after applying the UVW map