Lighting and Rendering the Villa in Daylight

In this tutorial, the scene of the Mediterranean villa requires lighting conditions for early, mid, and late-day illumination.

To accomplish this task, you will create a Daylight system and customize it to match a specific location and time. Then you’ll set proper exposure and combine the Daylight system with Sky Portal objects that channel light into the interior of the villa. You will fine-tune the late-day illumination by adjusting the aperture setting.

After completing this tutorial, you will see how easy it is to use mental ray lighting options to create realistic daytime lighting conditions.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to:

Use a Daylight system to illuminate a scene based on its geographic location, orientation, and time of day.
Use Sky Portal objects to gather skylight and cast it into the interior of buildings.
Adjust exposure to suit different times of the day.

Skill level: Intermediate

Time to complete: 1 hour

Preparation for This Tutorial

If you have not already downloaded the tutorial files (MAX scenes and other assets), download them now and unzip them into a project folder called \Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2012 tutorials. See Where to Find Tutorial Files.
On the Quick Access toolbar, click (Project Folder) and set your current project to Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2012 Tutorials.

Topics in this section