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Florence Design Academywww.FlorenceDesignAcademy.com

Illumination Tutorial for Industrial/Product/Furniture Design

This tutorial was created by the Florence Design Academy.On the F.D.A. gallery ( http://www.florencedesignacademy.com/gallery_eng.html ) you can see a fewexamples of designs of our students who have used this technique.Since our students need a effective way to display their concepts and ideas, our teachers have developedmany tutorials in order to give them an additional tool that every designer should have.This tutorial explains all steps to illuminate an object with a technique which simulates the illuminationtechniques of a photo studio.Before we begin it is very important to inform you that we will use "Mental Ray" as render engine (version 8and 9 of 3D Studio Max).Mental Ray is a very stable render engine and it allows you to have very realistic renderings. Since we areusing Mental Ray for this tutorial it is very important to use "real dimensions" for all the objects that we haveto create. Otherwise the result will not be realistic. It means that you have to go to CUSTOMIZE -> UNITSSETUP and choose the units that you want to use. In any case you should get used to create objects with

their real dimensions so that you get a feeling for correct dimensions and proportions.The first step to do is to create an "environment object" (it is similar to the rooms which are used in theprofessional field of photography) on which later we will place our object to illuminate (this is ideal for product/industrial design and furniture design).There are different shapes that you can create to have an environment-object which will be reflectedcorrectly on your object and will give very good render results ( image 0 ).What many designers don't know is exactly this last point: in order to have a good rendering, the object hasnot only to receive a good lightning, but it needs to receive a good reflection of the room in which it is placed.

Image 0

The color that you should assign to the environment-object (the room) should be white like the walls of aphoto-studio ! The material should not have specular highlights. In this way the color of the environment willnot affect the color of your product design (especially if you use reflective materials). Of course it is thedesigner's choice to change the color to a different one.Let's do the first steps for an environment-object. Create a spline like the letter "L". Then select the corner vertex and go to "modify", select the "fillet" tool and smooth the corner like in image 1 .

Image 1

If you like to have a very smooth environment you should put a very big value in the fillet slot. Now we needto create an outline of this shape (the thickness of the walls). Select "spline" and go to outline the spline withthe command "outline" that you can find again in the modify panel.From this point you can create both environment objects (the linear or the circular one). To create the"straight" one (which will be the one that I will use for the tutorial) you must assign to the spline an "extrude"modifier from the modifier list ( Image 2 ).

Image 2

To create the circular environment object you must first move the PIVOT/GIZMO to the correct location(image3 ).

Image 3

Just go to hierarchy, click on the button "affect pivot only" and move the pivot (this button allows you tomove/rotate the pivot independently from the object)! After this step assign to the spline a "lathe" modifier from the modifier list. You will see that you will create an object similar to a tube. Go to the modify panel andincrease the segment number to have a smoother shape. Now go to Degrees and put 180 in the slot. Youshould have the result of image 4 .

Image 4

Both of these two objects are really useful. It is your choice which one to use for your renderings.

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For now you can leave the standard multiplier value=1.To be able to render correctly with a skylight you must enable final gather in Mental Ray (without final gather the skylight will not work image 6 ).

Image 6

For the first test rendering put a low number like 40 in the Final Gather Samples slot (in Max 9 you must use

the Rays per FG point slot). Make now a test rendering. You should have the same result like in image 7 .Tip for test render : a smaller render size will allow you to have a shorter render time.

Image 7

The skylight is NOT able to create specular-highlights on the object. The specular-highlights are of courseVERY important to simulate different kind of materials. This is the reason why you should never use only oneskylight in your scenes. It is important to have an additional light. If you want to have a very strong specular-

highlights like on car paint materials you should use Mr Omni lights (you can find the tutorial of the car paintmaterial in the FDA tutorials for materials). For this tutorial I will use a photometric target area light. This lightis very soft, it gives very good and realistic results. Let's create an target area light like on image 8 .

Image 8

It is important to consider that the softness of the shadows of this light will change with the size of the light

(big size:soft shadows, small size: sharp shadows).The shadow type MUST be "raytraced shadows", onlythis kind of shadow will give optimal results with mental ray. Don't create a light with a too big size, otherwisethe shadows will be too soft and will cover too big areas, this will darken the environment and will not lookrealistic.Since now we have two lights you should reduce the multiplier of the skylight. Try to put a value between 0.4and 0.7. I have reduced it a lot in my scene, in this way it is clear that the main light source is the area light. Ilike the contrast between strong illuminated surfaces and darker surfaces like on image 9 . But at the end itis your taste which will decide about the multiplier amount of the two lights. Sometimes I create an additionalarea light on the opposite side of the first one. If you like to have more than one area light you should disablethe shadow of the light with lower intensity. Too many shadows are confusing and really ugly in a rendering.Make a rendering. You should have the result of image 9 .

Image 9

This is how I normally render objects with no reflections. If you have an object with reflective material youneed to do a few more steps. Let's see why (chrome and other materials are in another FDA tutorial). If youcreate an object made of chrome and you go to make a rendering you will have the result of image 10 .

Image 10

We can have a better result with a few more steps...Let's create two big boxes. like on image 11 .

Image 11

Create a white self-illuminated material and apply it to the boxes. If you make a rendering you will see a bigdifference between image 10 and 12 .

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The result of image 12 is already very good, but we can improve it. I also teach to my students thatPhotoshop is a tool which is able to improve a rendering in many different ways.Let's apply a glow effect to our highlights ( in our case we will assign a glow effect to the reflected boxes onthe teapot to give the impression that there is a lot of energy coming from the white panels). Select the"magic wand tool" to create a mask on the brightest parts (which are in this case the white boxes) of theteapot surface like on image 13 .

Image 13

Now press on your keyboard CTRL+C and than CTRL+V (copy and paste). You will see in the layer panel(F7) that automatically you have created a new layer on which there is only the masked part of the teapot(image 14 ).

Image 14

Now make a left double mouse click on the blue bar of the new layer. You will enable a window (layer stylepanel) with really great tools (try them, they are really interesting). Choose "OUTER glow" and change theyellow glow color to white. Now select the size slider and move it to the right side. Now you have a very niceglow effect on the teapot.

Another very interesting effect that you can create on a image is a Depth of field effect (DOF). In this wayyou can simulate a sharp focus point on the teapot. The part of the object which is far away will be a bit

blurred (like in photography).First of all we must fuse the background image (original rendering) with the glow effect layer. Just go to"layer" and select "flatten image" (image 15 ).

Image 15

Now make a right mouse click on the layer and choose "duplicate layer" ( image 16 ).

Image 16

In this way you will have two layers, one is the perfect copy of the other. Apply on the copy a gaussian blur effect ( image 17 ).

Image 17

The last step is very important. Choose the "eraser tool" and delete the part of the image which should besharp ( image 18 ).Try to use a soft brush and set it to opacity 60.

Image 18

That's it:)

I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial.

Best regards

Mario Malagrinowww.MarioMalagrino.comwww.FlorenceDesignAcademy.com

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