Advice on Render Settings Please

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I am learning 3d modelling using 3ds Max and followed a free tutorial on how to model and render diamonds. I searched out more tutorials on rendering diamonds and still my results are not quite right.

I noticed that despite following the tutorial my render results were nothing like the tutorials. Also, when they ask for "Mental Ray" to be selected I only have "NVIDIA Mental Ray" is that the same thing?

There are so many settings I have adjusted the last few days, I have attached a copy of my final result. 

I believe it is missing the light reflections that come out of diamonds and touch other surfaces. I thought perhaps it is the caustics settings I need for that?

Any suggestions on settings to get a more realistic result would be great.

Thank you,

Sherie

Not sure of all the specs you would want to see;

CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4900MQ CPU @ 2.80GHz (2793.54 MHz)
Memory: 32692 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-bit (Build 9600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 780M/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 10.18.0013.5887
OpenGL Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 358.87

[darawork]

( https://elementalray.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/diamod_dof.jpg Rendered with iRay in Maya )

Hi,

Yes, I'd say that it was missing caustics too.

I found a few tutorials for Mental Ray caustics (Nvidia Mental Ray is the same thing alright);

http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/max/caustics/

http://mentalraytips.blogspot.ie/2009/11/fire-and-ice-rendering-diamonds-and.html 

There might be another render engine in the list called iRay. This is a real-world rendering engine, so caustics in a situation like yours would appear without user intervention. Could be worth taking a look at it. The GTX780 you have would be utilised in the rendering process because iRay is a GPU calculation based rendering engine and these on average are 4 times faster than CPU based rendering engines like Mental Ray.

[Anonymous]

Hi, yes you will need caustic for realistic render of diamonds. Caustic is not easy to master.

Here's some explanations but you can find some tutorials on that subject on youtube: https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMa...

Also, you will need the refraction index for Diamonds, here's a list of refraction for different materials, for example, diamond is 2.419.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refractive_indices

[Anonymous]

Hello,

thank you for the reply and tutorial links. I do have iRay in my render list, I will spend some time going over the tutorials and giving iRay a try.

Cheers,

Sherie

[Anonymous]

Hi Eric,

thank you for the links, I will check them out, try some different render setups and come back hopefully with a great result 🙂

Cheers,

Sherie

[Anonymous]

I am not able to render the diamonds with Caustics. I have followed the suggested tutorials and other tutorials, however because they are for older versions of Max, the settings are sometimes a little bit different. I am not sure how much of that may be causing an issue.

Is there anyone that could possibly create and render some diamonds to see if they can produce render images close to the pic I shared above, so then I can see the settings that were used?

Or suggestions on where I can go to get help/advice on learning how to render diamonds?

Thanks,

Sherie

[Anonymous]

Oh my gosh! Finally on the right track, still would love some help in getting the right settings 🙂