Nails – Light balance and Reflections

Lesson by Ciro Sannino Official 5SRW study material

LESSON#16 – Lighting

HD VIDEO Narrated 5′

MAX FILES to download with all the V-Ray settings

Creating global lighting with HDRI

Creating basic metal chrome for Nails

Using a V-Ray Light to create nice reflections

Learning how to fix black splotches

This is the image you’ll be able to create at the end of this training
Light Balance – Step 2

This scene does not have complex lighting, but the important thing in this case is to create nice and
catching reflections. This is because we have a metallic object. The easiest way to create a good global
lighting with nice reflections is an Hdri map.

The process is also explained in the V-Ray Lesson #9, and it’s quite simple

Add a V-Ray Dome in the scene (wherever you want)

create VRayHDRI in the “texture” channel

Drag and drop it in the material editor, then load an .hdr file

Create a basic Metal chrome for the nails and here the test reder
Following the 5SRW rules

V-Ray Physical Camera Shutter speed = 50 (as always for dailty interiors)

Ceonsequently V-Ray Dome multip. = 10 (units default)

CREATING HIGHLIGHTS WITH V-RAY LIGHT (Soft)

Let’s create the reflections – Reflections are crucial to ‘communicate‘ the nature of the materials,
especially working with glass and metals. The professional way to get nice reflections is not just “put a
light and see what happens“, this is for beginners! You should figure out the best place for your
reflections, then play with a V-Ray Light to create what’s in your mind. Reflections are never casual, they
are ‘designed’.

To see how to do that watch this video

VIDEO

CONCEPTS

HDRI is not enought to ‘communicat’ the idea of metal;

use a V-Ray Light (soft) ti add reflecions;

find the right position for a better

Turn off HDRI and work with the V-Ray Light alone;

Turn on all the light

Verify shadows after adding the new V-Ray Light;

If the shadows do not change, the light balance is fine;

Check here the different light contributes.

STRANGE BLACK SPLOTCHES

As you can see the nails have strage black splotches on the surface. To check if the problem is related to
the material add a new cylinder, and apply the same material

Metal Chrome on the cylinder appears correct, so the problem is the 3d nail probably “overlapped
faces“. There are many reasons for this artefact imported model, strange manipulations with edit poly…
it doesn’t matter, I just want to give you a simple tip on what has saved my life so many times. Here’s
how to fix this problem

SECONDARY RAYS BIAS = 0,001

A small positive offset that will be applied to all secondary rays; this can be used if you have overlapping
faces in the scene to avoid the black splotches that may appear. This setting also help in more situations
Check here more examples.

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/examples_switches.htm#ex1

NOTE If you load a preset, remember to set again Secondary Rays Bias! The preset overwrites this value.

EXERCISE

In the START file, the V-Ray Physical Camera is already placed with shutter speed 50 and white balance
on Neutral (as 5SRW requires).

Place the V-Ray Dome + HDRI maps and add a soft V-Ray light to create reflections as shown in the video

NAILS STEP2—START. (hdri is included) (nails-s2---START.zip)

OBJ Version (nails-s2---START-OBJ.rar)

To verify your exercise, please downlad the final version

NAILS STEP2—FINAL (nails-s2---FINAL.zip)