This tutorial will teach you how to create a realistic looking object using V-Ray which is a very popular renderer that is widely used in the making of movies and videogames.

Creating a Realistic Looking Object Using V-Ray In 3D Studio Max

This tutorial will teach you how to create a realistic looking object using V-Ray which is a very popular renderer that is widely used in the making of movies and videogames. V-Ray is not a built-in tool in 3D Studio Max and will have to be installed before attempting this tutorial. You can learn more about V-Ray from the official website of Chaos Group - the makers of V-Ray. This tutorial is only involved with the process of creating a V-Ray render and will not involve any modeling. You may want to have a view at other tutorials hosted at Oman3D if you would like to learn about other topics such as modeling.

There are three different elements in our scene above, the teapot, the floor, and the surrounding environment. We will have to create and apply three different materials to each of these objects to create our final scene. The texture on the floor was created using an external image editor, and the same goes to the image reflected on the pot as well. We have uploaded the textures that we have used so that you can follow this tutorial easily. Please download the zip file at this link and extract the two files in it before we start this tutorial.

We will start by setting up our scene; go to Create>Geometry>Plane to create a simple plane in the centre of our scene. Your plane should have the following specs: Width: 150, Length:150, Length Seg: 1, Width Seg: 1, Render Multipliers: 100.

We are using the 'Teapot' object in our tutorial. You may use any object that you wish, but for the sake of the tutorial add a 'Teapot' by going to Create>Geometry>Teapot and set its parameters as illustrated in the image below:

Our scene is now ready, before we start creating our materials, we need to setup the render engine to use V-Ray. Start off by going through Rendering>Render>Common>Assign Render>Production>Vray Render and set the initial parameters of the renderer under the "Renderer" tab as illustrated in the image below:

Under the same tab, find the "Environment" rollout and activate the two available "Overrides" - Namely, the GI Environment and the Reflection Environment effects. You will have to assign a material for both which will work as environment map, click on the button that says "None" to access the "Material/Map Browser" where you would have to look for and select "VRay HDRI". After clicking on OK, you can simply drag the now "Map#1 (VRayHDRI)" to the button below it saying "None" to duplicate its content.