Introduction

Right, in this tutorial I will not go into depth of either VRay render options or materials. But I will go through creating your own materials rather than downloading them from internet. So, lets say this one is for real ultimate beginners.:P

Final Render

So for this tutorial, naturally, you will need a model of a bulb. So, you should first read and complete Modeling light bulb tutorial and create yourself a model. Oh, you’ve done it already? No you actually just took the finished model from the tutorial? Ah well, it is up to you actually.

If you haven’t already, download light bulb model here:

Final model

Ok, next step would be to set up your texture files. There is going to be some text written on the body of this bulb. So since I don’t have this kind of bulb at home, and I don’t know what is actually written on this one, I did some google searching and gathered some images. From Fresh2 website you can download some nice material like vector logo in .eps format and some images. And using some images from google I managed to recreate somewhat real looking textures. To save you some work, I will attach my finished textures here. You need one real texture that you will wrap around your model, and another called mask. It is basically black and white version of an original texture which tells our VRay where it will be transparent and where not. So, white color is marking the transparency, and black non transparency.

Texture image

Mask image

STEP 1

Ok, now that we have all our material, we can actually start. You can delete all layers except “default”. Now using SelCrv select all curves and delete them. We don’t need them anymore.

Rotate the bulb 90 degrees counter clock-wise in front viewport and using Line (or PolyLine) command make one line:

image 1

Again, using Rotate command rotate bulb from one line end to another as first reference point, and then using Ortho rotate so that line gets in a horizontal position. Then using Snap position it so the line is on the x axis like on the image 2:

image 2

Now, from the top viewport using SrfPt command create one surface. If you use Ortho and STrack it can help you create equal sizes surface.

image 3

Using Rotate (click on the Copy option in command line so it copies when rotating) create a copy of that new surface. Copy in right viewport:

image 4

Using FilletSrf fillet the two surfaces with around 100-200 units as radius. It depends how big surface you created. Ok, now we have created some simple scene for our model.

Next, we will start creating materials, but before that we need to set up couple of vray settings. Like output dimensions, you can set to 640×480 or 800×600 for testing purposes. In the Global Switches uncheck Batch render so you can work inside Rhino while rendering. Otherwise Rhino is “blocked”. You can hit the Render just to see the test. It is always a smart thing to do, to hit the render just to see the changes you’ve made to either materials or vray options.

image 5

Ok, now, instead of GI we will use HDRI for our scene illumination. To do so, go to Environment rollout and click on the small m next to GI (Skylight). A window will open, and there under Common, set the Type to Bitmap, and then on the right where it says Bitmap, File, browse for a HDRI map you have on your computer. If you don’t have one, use this one.

image 6

If the scene is too bright or too dark you can adjust it using multiplier just under the Bitmap drop down menu where you put the HDRI map.

Download files.zip because you’ll need it (you have the model from where I started, the texture I applied and some setting you’ll use).

RESOURCES

files.zip

STEP 1 – Settings

First we will load the Settings we are going to use for our studio shot. If you haven’t download Files.zip do it now and load Studio.visopt

To increase or decrese the quality of the render, click the QMC Sampler tab and change the Treshold. For less treshold more quality and viceversa. I used 0.005 for my final render, but I use .05 for a very fast render in some sections and 0.01 or 0.02 for others.

STEP 2 – Illumination

Now we are going to set up the plane, the lights and the camera for our scene. These can be changed later but we need something to work with.

First, draw a Curve like I do on my image. This is done so that we don’t see the separation between the floor and the wall.

Now ExtrudeCrv that Curve selection BothSides. This is going to be our plain

Now we are going to set up the camera for our shot. This will probably change a little bit later on.
So, in the perspective view position the camera on how you want the shot. After that, we are going to save that view, so if we move in the perspective view we can always go back to that perpective we want for our shot.
Save your view with whatever name you want.

Now we will make our lights. We will make 2 _RectangularLight for our scene this time. When making this lights, you have to keep in mind that the size of the light, the distance from the object, and the multiplier will change your scene drastically. Here’s how I set up the 2 lights.

We will change the color lights too. Go to Object Properties (F3), select one of your lights and click on Light in the Properties. Both light need to have No Decay unchecked. If you don’t do this, Vray won’t pay attention to where your light is. There you can change the color of the light, the intensity and stuff. In my scene, the big light has a multiplier of 4, and the little one a multiplier of 2 (that’s the intensity). For the colors, I have R:251 G:247 B:237 for the big one, and R:237 G:243 B:251 for the little one. Keep in mind that the multiplier will depend on how far is your light from the object and how big it is

STEP 3 – Materials

Now the fun part. There are a couple of things you need to know about materials. We’ll have only reflective materials here so that’s what I’m going to explain

Each material has an Index Of Refraction (IOR) which could be find googling it. When that number is bigger, then the material will have more reflections. For a very reflective material you could apply an IOR of 16, while for a very unreflective material 1.4 for example.
The other value to keep in mind is the Reflection Glossiness. That will determine how sharp is your reflection. For a higher value you’ll get a more sharp reflection, and for a lower value you’ll get a more blurred reflection. These are some images from Vray Manual that you should download from their website

For the steel material, we’ll just import one. So import “steel_blurry.vismat” to the scene.

Then select the objects you want the material into, and right click on steel_blurry and apply to object

For the plastic, we’ll import one too but we’ll tweak it. Import “matte_plastic.vismat” and change it’s name for something you want. After applying to object and rendering, I found that it was too reflective, even if it said matte.
These are the settings I used, but you can make your own . Select that “matte_plastic” material or whatever you named it, and in the diffuse tab change it’s color. I used R:38 G:52 B:123 . I also changed the reflection. Next to Reflection there’s an M, click it and change the Fresnel IOR to whatever you think (i used 1.5). Remember, larger the number, more reflective it is. Also, change the Highligth Glossiness and the Reflection Glossiness to .65 to get more blurred reflections. These 2 values should be the same.

Now Duplicate that material and we’ll make the black plastic.
Change the Diffuse color as you changed to blue to something near black. I used R:10 G:10 B:10 for mine, and change the Glossiness (both values) to 0.7

Duplicate that last material and we’ll use it for our button. Change Glossiness to 0.8

STEP 4 – Texturing

Now it’s time to texture the button. There are many ways of doing this, I’ll show you the one I think it’s best for this type of situation. While in the perspective view, orient your camera to the button’s surface.

Print the screen so you can work with it in Illustrator, Photoshop or the program of you choice. Then open that image on that program. Make the circle and the line in black, and crop the image approximately to the edges of the purple button. Then make a white rectangle and position it below the circle and the line. Export this image as a .bmp. The reason why the image is black and white is because we are going to use this as a mask in Rhino.

Back to rhino, select the button and apply to it the material we made before. In diffuse color, in transparency we need to load our texture image and make a new diffuse layer.

To do this click the “M” besides transparency, put Bitmap as type and browse for the file. Click on Invert too because when we made our mask we did it the other way around, what’s black should have been white and what’s white should have been black. Or you can leave it this way and invert the Diffuse colors (you’ll see what I mean).
Add a Diffuse layer like on the image and use some the color you want the texture to be. I used a very bright gray, almost white.

Ok, now we need to position our texture. Select the button and slick F3 to see his properties. Click on texture mapping, show advanced UI, a put planar as the type of projection. Then click on show mapping.

Rotate the mapping widget until you align it to the button. We are going to planar project on the mapping widget our texture for it to project it to the button.

You can make also a material for the floor if you want to, i made an almost white diffuse color with no reflections in my scene.

STEP 5 – Rendering

Go to Named Views and look for that perspective we’ve saved in the begining of step 1 or save the one you are now so you can easily come back to the exact position.

Check the Treshold settings are low (0.01 or 0.005) and define the size you want in the Output tab.

Click Render and It’s done!

Any questions or things you think should be changed, post them In the forum and I’ll look for it. I’m not a pro in this stuff so if you know a better way of doing things let me know