This short tutorial on how to use VRay's Global Illumination feature will show you one method for creating realistic looking lighting for a scene

Using VRay Global Illumination GI (Realistic Lighting)

This short tutorial on how to use VRay's Global Illumination feature will show you one method for creating realistic looking lighting for a scene. VRay is a very powerful external render engine for Max made by Chaos Group. VRay has many features including the ability to to physically accurate full global illumination, advanced material shaders and enhancements for speeding up rendering time. You can check the Chaos Group website to learn more about the various VRay features.

This is an intermediate level tutorial and it will not explore any modelling techniques, you will have to create a simple scene with a few objects laying around to follow this tutorial.

Assigning V-Ray As The Max renderer Engine

Start 3DS Max and assign V-Ray as the renderer engine. To do this access the Render Scene window by hitting F10, scroll down to the Assign Renderer"..." button next to the Production field and select V-Ray from the list.

rollout and expand it by clicking once on it, then click on the

Creating and Setting Up the Lights

Access the Modify tab and go through light>VRay Light to start creating VRay lights. The number of VRay lights that you will need for a scene will depend on how big it is, for our project here I am going to use six VRay lights, I placed them on the inner upper part of the box, in other words, on the ceiling, the light always go there, right?

Access the Parameters rollout to change the default settings of all the VRay light you added to the scene, I applied the changes illustrated in the image below.