Hi, Samuel Conlogue here! Our schedule has been pretty stacked lately, but when 3D Total asked if I’d like to contribute to their book “3DS Max Projects” I made some room on the schedule and got to writing. My work on the 5 “Introduction to Lighting” chapters I was responsible for was based off an original 3D Total Lighting tutorial written by Andrew Finch. Andrew was busy working on another book for 3D Total so I filled in to do the updated version for this book.
The areas covered:
- Fog/mist at nighttime
- Sunrise/sunset
- Moonlight
- Midday sun
- Overcast
So the assets were handed over from the original tutorial with my task being to rewrite and re-render everything with updated lighting techniques in Max using Mental Ray and Photometric Lights. I also added a post work section to each chapter covering compositing your rendered stills in Adobe After Effects. I went with After Effects for it’s native 32-bit support and the fact Photoshop post techniques have been pretty well covered online and in books at this point.
Below are a couple pages of my work on the book. In total I believe I wrote somewhere in the order of 25 pages for the book, and had a blast doing it!
Misty Night shot:
Mid-day scorching sun: