White render

[vedranm001]

Hi! I'm new to 3ds max but I'm getting the hang of things quickly with my studies, but I have a problem that I don't know how to fix or why it's even happening. My renders are always white and unintelligible which renders all my work virtually useless. I attached the result of one of my renders. I'm hoping someone has a solution or just a quick fix that I'm missing. I'm just stuck.

Thank you in advance!

[10DSpace]

@vedranm001 

You didn't say what renderer you are using or how many lights are in your scene, but in general terms your overexposed render is a result of the interplay of:

1. The number of lights you are using

2. The intensity setting for each of these lights

3. the exposure setting you are using (see Environment and effects dialog hot key = 8).

If you have more than 1 light in the scene, try turning off all but 1 light and lowering it's intensity first.  With Arnold renderer the light rollout looks like below and you can lower both intensity and Exposure values to eliminate the overexposure.   You may not have any Exposure Control selected, but if you have some type of exposure (below shows Physical Camera Exposure control) this can be counterintuitive control in that you have to increase Exposure Value in Global Exposure section to get less light.

If you want more specific help, please provide more details on which renderer and lights and exposure control settings you are using with screenshots.

[vedranm001]

At the time of my first screenshot I was using ART renderer. After seeing your reply I tried using other renderers which yielded the same results. In this particular scene I only had 1 light source, which was the sun. Turning off the sun completely also had the same result. I noticed that creating new scenes with and without different lights did the same.

With this I assume that lights aren't the issue and that it's something in my settings I shouldn't have touched or my software might not be correctly installed if that is even possible. I'm a student and have the 2020 version. It also might be worth mentioning that I worked in autocad with which I had no problems regarding renders. 

[hugh.wyeth9RYLJ · Accepted solution]

Try changing the "Exposure Value" under "Global Exposure" from 6.0 to 15.0 when using a sun. 

In addition, when importing geometry from some formats, Max sometimes makes the material self-illuminating (no idea why). You can make a new material and apply to those objects if the above Global Exposure change still produces white objects in render.

[vedranm001]

Hey it worked! It was the automatic self illumination in the material as you said, so I had to make materials from scratch and assign them to everything. Thanks a lot!

[hugh.wyeth9RYLJ]

Glad it worked! For different renderers there are automated tools - vray has "vray scene converter" that changes max's generate materials to the appropriate render-engine specific material and will usually also fix this issue. I don't use ART so not sure if it has such a tool though. 

[CiroCardoso3v]

https://www.masd.dk/arnoldconverter/