This a scenic tour of the interface and the main light sources and materials available in Maya, a quick quality rendering settings and render elements (AOVs) exploration concludes this 45 minutes introduction to Chaos Group V-Ray. This tutorial is aimed at people who want to have an overview of t...

Learn how to light a simple indoor scene by daylight and understand better the concepts of indirect and direct lighting with , how to harmonize directional and light dome light sources with HDR panoramas. Studio lighting with rectangular lights as reflectors will be introduced.

Let’s transform the daylight simulation into night time with the help of render elements (AOVs) and composite them with Photoshop and Nuke. Rendering layers will be explained along. This tutorial is an introduction to compositing.

V-Ray ships with several type of light sources, some versatile and some more oriented to studio lighting:
the V-Ray_rect_light is an area light for soft boxes or reflectors simulation as the V-Ray_IES_light simulates accurately a specific brand of incandescent light bulb or fluorescent neon. Any ...

The V-Ray_mtl is the most versatile shader available, it simulates most of the materials around us: dielectric like concrete, wood, glass, wax, plastic and conductive like brushed metal, gold and a lot more. Part 1 focuses on the diffused lighting components and the reflective components: reflect...

Metal simulations will be talked about with anisotropy, surface perturbations techniques such as bump,
normals and displacement using 8-bits and 32-bits bitmap textures. In the second part of the tutorial, we’ll how to replace the simplistic and boring light sources specular with reflectors.

The sometimes misunderstood rim light role is double: it is a separation light that increase the depth of the picture but as well create a cinematic feel that had been used and abused till the dawn of filmmaking. The concept applies to CGI but has to be adapted and revise with CGI.

Key, fill, rim light are in fact families of light sources: kickers, bounce, high front, top, contre-jour, cross and more, typologies inherited from the silver age of cinematic still applicable to our medium.

The three points lighting technique has been used by generations of cinematographers and photographer with great success and
totally apply to CGI although we must the-evaluate its relevance today, it is the cinematic combination of key, fill and rim lighting, each style will be talked about at le...

Maya native light sources can be used in V-Ray, albeit not as physically correct than V-Ray light sources, they are invaluable for the artistic flexibility they provide. Directional, point and the invaluable and versatile spotlight are dissected in this tutorial, custom light decay, gobo filterin...

Creating a believable skin material and light it realistically is a daunting task, this is certainly the “Graal” for most CG artists !
V-Ray has two specialized materials that simulate the triple layered nature of the skin translucence: epidermal, subnormal and hypodermis.
Tutorial to watch next:...

This is an agnostic tutorial, the renderer, V-Ray, Arnold or Redshift is unimportant as the tutorial is more than just about lighting fundamentals with a specific software,
Using simple polygonal meshes, I will demonstrate what “lighting really” is about: describing and enhancing any story with o...

V-Ray 5 was released in August 2020 and comes with a refreshed frame buffer and numerous changes notably:
simplified GI tab, LUTs, ACES color space and OCIO color management integration, Light mix and light select elements relationships,
V-Ray_mtl sheen and coat usage and compositing. In my opini...