V-Ray lights are designed specifically to work with V-Ray and optimize its features. V-Ray also provides shadow options for standard 3ds Max lights, and utilities to assist in the lighting process.
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Overview
V-Ray for 3ds Max. V-Ray for SketchUp. V-Rary Next for Rhino. V-Ray for Revit. You can also rely on the new Automatic White Balance feature to automatically remove any warm or cold light tint coming from the sun or skylight. Create scene archives, and keep track of assets like textures, IES files, and proxy objects. COLOR PICKER.
While you can use 3ds Max standard lights with V-Ray, V-Ray includes a set of lights designed specifically for rendering with the V-Ray engine.
V-Ray also provides two shadow options for standard 3ds Max lights: Ray Traced shadows and Shadow Map shadows. These shadow types work similarly to their standard 3ds Max counterparts, but are optimized to work with V-Ray.
The V-Ray Light Meter utility helps evaluate the lighting in a scene so adjustments can be made to improve lighting.
Image courtesy of Sonny Ferian
Types of Lights
As with standard 3ds Max lights, you can create these lights using the Lights tab on the Command Panel:
- Area lights shine from a light source contained within a specified area or boundary. There are several types of Area lights.
- A Sun light simulates the sun, creating a single bright light for daytime exterior and interior scenes.
- Photometric lights use IES files to determine the shape of the light cone and light falloff.
- Ambient light is the kind of flat, evenly-distributed light seen at dusk and dawn in real life.
Depending on the scene and the effect you are trying to create with light, you might elect to use only one type of light, or any combination of lights.
Light Icons at a Glance
Area Lights
Area lights are useful for simulating man-made light sources in an interior environment, such as lamps. An Area light can have any one of many different shapes: plane, disc, sphere, or the shape of a mesh object. A dome light, which creates light within a dome shape to create a traditional global illumination setup, is also considered an Area light. For more information, see VRayLight.
Sun Light
A Sun light is a spherical light source placed at a specific location which simulates the sun in the sky. A Sun light has some unique qualities:
- Sun light rays that strike the scene objects are treated as parallel to one another regardless of how far the Sun object is placed from the scene objects, producing the parallel shadows that our own sun creates.
- A Sun light is designed to be used with global illumination; when the light bounces around the scene, the resulting rendering looks very much like sunlight in real life.
- A Sun light can work in conjunction with a Sky environment background to provide realistic lighting and coloring for the scene when used with GI. Often, Sun/Sky is the only lighting setup needed in the scene to produce a photo-real rendering.
- The Sun/Sky combination is suitable for an exterior scene, or for an interior scene with windows or other openings for the sunlight to come through.
For more information, see VRaySun.
Photometric Lights
Photometric lights are designed to simulate light sources exactly as they behave in real life by loading and using an IES (Illumination Engineering Society) file with details about the light's behavior, such as how the light passes through lenses and its intensity and falloff. For more information, see VRayIES.
Ambient Light
Ambient light permeates a scene and illuminates from all angles equally without providing contrast. For more information, see VRayAmbientLight.
Shadows
V-Ray also provides shadow types that work with standard 3ds Max lights. These shadow types take into account V-Ray-specific features such as V-Ray Proxies, Displacement, and Fur. For more information, see VRayShadow and VRayShadowMap.
Utilities
The Light Meter helper shows how a scene is illuminated, which can aid in troubleshooting or in adjusting lights. For more information, see VRayLightMeter.
Lighting Tools
The following tools are provided by V-Ray to assist with lighting:
- Light Lister - This UI window is a handy way to modify many common attributes of all of the lights in the scene. It works with both V-Ray lights and standard 3ds Max lights.
- Light Meter - The VRayLightMeter helper is an aid for showing how a scene is illuminated and is intended to simulate the use of a real-life light meter that is used in photography and film production.
The information that is presented by VRayLightMeter does not change or otherwise affect the lighting in the scene in any way; it only reports on it. This helper is intended to provide information so you can make adjustments to the scene's lighting at your own discretion.
Notes
- When the Store with irradiance map option is enabled on any V-Ray Light, it is then no longer treated as a direct light source and will not be available within the Light Select Render Element.
![Max Max](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126262796/767145394.jpg)
This page describes the use of V-Ray photometric lights.
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Overview
Photometric lights utilize an .ies file which contains the distribution profile for the light. An .ies file contains complete specifications of a real world light bulb or tube including the shape of the light's cone and the steepness of the light's falloff. Such files are usually provided by the manufacturer of the real-world bulb, and the information in those files, gathered through lab experiments, is extremely accurate in its representation of the light source. By loading an .ies file, the light's properties are recreated within 3ds Max and used by V-Ray during rendering.
IES lights are particularly useful for architectural interior renderings, where it can be important to show the actual result of using specific man-made light sources in the scene.
While 3ds Max has standard photometric lights, V-Ray photometric lights are optimized to render faster in V-Ray.
Image courtesy of Sonny Ferian
Create menu > Lights > V-Ray > V-Ray IES Light >
click and drag in a viewport
click and drag in a viewport
||Create panel|| > Lights > Choose V-Ray from dropdown > VRayIES >
click and drag in a viewport
click and drag in a viewport
||V-Ray Toolbar|| > V-Ray IES Light button >
Click and drag in a viewport
Click and drag in a viewport
Visualizing IES Profiles
The properties of an IES file can be visualized with Photometric Viewer software, which you can easily find online. Visually, the IES profile uses a graphed curve to show the shape and intensity of the light's emission. Depending on the software used, you might also be able to render a grayscale representation of how the light will look in a scene. Using a Photometric Viewer will help you better understand how the IES files you are using will affect your scene's lighting.
The graph below shows the IES profile of a typical bollard or post light, a type of light commonly used in architectural outdoor scenes. The rendered thumbnail is shown as an inset.
Parameters
enabled – Turns the VRayIES light on and off.
enable viewport shading – When enabled, the effect of the VRayIES light will be visible in the viewport.
show distribution – Shows the IES profile distribution as a mesh around the light source in the viewports.
targeted – Makes the VRayIES targeted.
ies file (button) – Specifies the .ies file that defines the light distribution.
rotation X/Y/Z – Rotates the light shape in relation to the target.
cutoff – Specifies a threshold for the light intensity, below which the light will not be computed. This can be useful in scenes with many lights, where you want to limit the effect of the lights to some distance around them. Larger values cut away more from the light; lower values make the light range larger. If you specify 0.0, the light will be calculated for all surfaces.
shadow bias –Moves the shadow toward or away from the shadow-casting object (or objects). If the Bias value is too low, shadows can 'leak' through places they shouldn't, produce moire patterns, or make out-of-place dark areas on meshes. If Bias is too high, shadows can 'detach' from an object. If the Bias value is too extreme in either direction, shadows might not be rendered at all.
cast shadows – When enabled (the default), the light casts shadows. Turn this option off to disable shadow casting for the light.
affect diffuse – Determines whether the light is affecting the diffuse properties of the materials.
diffuse contribution – A multiplier for controlling the light's contribution to the diffuse illumination.
affect specular – Determines whether the light is affecting the specular part of the materials.
specular contribution – A multiplier for controlling the light's contribution to the specular reflection.
use light shape – Determines whether and how the shape of the light specified in the .ies light will be taken into consideration during the calculation of shadows and illumination.
No – The light shape will not be considered for illumination and the light is going to generate sharp shadows.
For shadows – The light shape will be considered only for the generation of soft shadows. The illumination will not be affected by the light shape (i.e. it will behave as a point light).
For illumination and shadows – The light shape will be considered for the calculation of the illumination and shadows.
For shadows – The light shape will be considered only for the generation of soft shadows. The illumination will not be affected by the light shape (i.e. it will behave as a point light).
For illumination and shadows – The light shape will be considered for the calculation of the illumination and shadows.
override shape – When enabled, the light profile within the .ies file is ignored. The shape parameter defines the light shape for calculating shadow softness, otherwise IES lights will generate shadows as a point light, casting sharp shadows.
shape – Specifies a shape (and its orientation) for the IES light when override shape is enabled. Some shapes (shown below) enable additional options for size.
- vertical cylinder
- horizontal cylinder (length)
- horizontal cylinder (width)
- ellipse (length)
- ellipse (width)
- ellipsoid (length)
- ellipsoid (width)
height – Specifies the height for applicable light shape types.
width – Specifies the width for applicable light shape types.
length – Specifies the length for applicable light shape types.
diameter – Specifies the diameter for applicable light shape types.
shape subdivs – Most users will not need local control of subdivs, however this parameter controls the number of samples V-Ray takes to compute lighting locally for this light. Lower values create more noise, but render faster. Higher values produce smoother results but take more time to render.
To activate this parameter and specify a value, use the Use local subdivs parameter under the V-Ray tab > Global DMC rollout in the Render Setup window. Note that the actual number of samples also depends on the Global DMC Settings. By default, this parameter is controlled by the Min shading rate parameter in the Advanced/Expert user modes of the Image sampler (Antialiasing) rollout.
color mode – Specifies the mode in which the color of the light will be determined:
color – The light color is directly specified by the Color parameter.
temperature – The light color temperature (in Kelvin) is specified by the Temperature parameter.
temperature – The light color temperature (in Kelvin) is specified by the Temperature parameter.
color – Specifies the color of the light.
color temperature – Specifies the light color temperature in Kelvin.
intensity type – Specifies the units for light strength:
power (lm) – Sets the units of power in lumens.
intensity (cd) – Sets the units of intensity in candela
intensity (cd) – Sets the units of intensity in candela
intensity value – Specifies the strength of the light.
![Vray Vray](/uploads/1/2/6/2/126262796/915116526.jpg)
area speculars – When disabled, the particular light will be rendered as a point light in the specular reflections
viewport wire color – Changes the wireframe color of the light in the viewport. This is useful to visually recognize groups of lights from one another.
icon text – Turns the viewport icon text on or off.
Exclude – Brings up the 3ds Max include/exclude button which allows the user to exclude objects from illumination and shadow casting.