How to create Ambient Occlusion in Autodesk 3Ds Max

                                Ambient Occlusion use for contact shade which used in compositing for gettingthe depth. Now we will see how to create AO.

After creating the scene, go to in render setup,change the render engine from scanline to mental ray. Now take a material  and apply mentalray map - Ambient/Reflective Occlusion in the diffuse of that material . Then apply on your scene and take the render. Now we got the basic occlusion . Now we can work on the various parameters like max distance and Spread. For the quality enhancement we have to increase the sample value, but remember more sample value means more render time.
                                                       When you turn on the mantal ray the final gather automatically will on,but for Ambient Occlusion its not need . You can turn off the Final Gather.

                  A small tips ,by selecting your AO material and increase the Self illumination value to 100.Now check your render .It will give you the Good result. For further details follow the below video. Hope you all will enjoy.

How to Bake Textures in Autodesk 3Ds Max

   

Texture Baking is one of the most important segment in Game industry as you need to optimize your texture and shadow for the game engine. This tutorial will help you to get it done easily in Autodesk 3Ds Max. Here I have created a very simple scene with only two lights and a teapot over a plane.

Now I need to bake the lights in the texture itself so that we can have the same feeling og the texture and the object even without the light. after that we can call them into a game engine like unity or unreal. In this scene I want the shadow of the teapot to be there as a part of the texture.

For baking the texture select the shadow casting surface as well as the shadow receiving object which is in this case the teapot and the plane respectively and then go to the rendering menu > render to texture. Here add the diffuse map as output, also the most important thing is light and shadows, Don't forget to turn them on from the output section. Next you have to switch into render option in baked under the automatic mapping section. Now when you hit the render you will get the texture baked in your hard drive and also applied on the objects respectively. After you render it,even if you delete the lights from the scene you will still get the effect of the lights.

   

How to create Caustics in Autodesk 3Ds Max

Caustics are special light calculations which happens after the light ray hit any reflective or refractive objects like glass or shining metal. Caustics can be generated in 3ds max through Mental ray indirect illumination.

To start with you will be needed an object which is a reflective or refractive in nature. Like for this tutorial I have created a glass object. It will be good if you already went through our tutorial on how to create a glass in 3ds max .

Before start rendering we have to switch on the caustics option from the render setup > indirect illumination tab, but even before that we have to do two more important steps without which we can't even see the result and constantly get some error message from mental ray saying "There is no caustic generating the scene" and " There is no Photon emitter in the scene". These two are the most common warning or error message people get while creating the caustics.

To get rid of the first message you need to right click on the glass object > object property > mental Ray > and have to turn on the generate caustics option. For the "no photon emitter" message you have to right click on the spot light > Object properties > mental Ray tab > then turn on the generate photon option.

Now you can start to look at the basic render output for the caustics , and later on customize the caustic option from the Lights or from the render setup > indirect illumination. Follow the video below to get the details of the properties you need to control for the desired caustics effects.

LOD or Level Of Detail in Autodesk 3Ds Max

Level Of Detail in Autodesk 3Ds Max is very important technique for CG users , through this process we can save lot of precious rendering time, as it help us to calculate different level of detailing of a single model according to the distance from the camera. This technique is highly recommended for games and for large amount of background scenes.

First you have to select the models you want to use for LOD. Make at least three version of details of that particular model. then make it a group. Remember the three model will position in the same place. Then you apply the modifier as we shown the details in the video tutorial below and rest of the job is like piece of cake.

Distance from the camera is kind of tricky , you cannot preview it in your viewport you have to do the render. SO it will better you put them in a layer while testing it.