This is a tutorial series designed to show you the essential steps in creating stunning photoreal exterior and interior renders for your architectural projects with V-Ray for SketchUp.
Follow along with your host, Boyan Petrov, a 3D artist at Chaos, as he creates beautiful scenes and explains the best practices in lighting, material creation, and more. The scenes are available for download, so you can practice on your own time.
Introduction
In this video, Boyan Petrov, a 3D artist at Chaos, takes you on a tour around the scene, a Scandinavian-style house, and gives an overview of the series’ content. Suitable for beginners as well as more advanced users, he will go over important concepts like lighting, materials, cameras, real-time rendering, and post-production.
Populating your scene
Part 1: Placing Chaos Cosmos Assets
In this tutorial, Boyan demonstrates how you can build a beautiful and memory-efficient environment for your design. Learn how to set up V-Ray Interactive, use an infinite plane, and import vegetation from Chaos Cosmos, our smart 3D content library. Plus, you’ll learn a neat tip on downloading missing assets from your project.
Download the practice scene: https://bit.ly/3a1OySy
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 2: Iterating with V-Ray Vision
In this tutorial, Boyan continues enriching our model’s environment by introducing procedural grass. Boyan also showcases the ins and outs of using V-Ray Vision’s real-time capabilities for iterative design and work-sharing. You’ll also learn some shortcuts for lighting studies directly inside Vision and the settings for the best visual fidelity.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3Awkutl
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 3: Object Scattering
In this video, Boyan Petrov puts the final touches of realism to the exterior environment by аdding scattered vegetation to the procedural grass. Watch along as he combines Chaos Cosmos models with V-Ray Scatter’s powerful capabilities to effortlessly craft detailed terrain in a memory-efficient way.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3OySut7
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 4: Staging Your Interior
In this tutorial, we direct our attention to the interior of the house. Boyan Petrov, a 3D artist at Chaos, wraps up the buildup stage of our scene by placing furniture and accessories in the living room and shares his composition tips.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3NFAH2g
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Lighting
Part 1: Using the Sun and Sky System
Discover how to work with V-Ray’s Sun and Sky system. Chaos 3D Artist Boyan Petrov demonstrates how to set up sun tint, shadow softness, and disc size to create everything from a blistering high noon to a sedate sunset. You’ll find out which sky model works best in certain daytime scenarios, whether you should override materials during light studies, and how to use shadows to focus your compositions.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3uf5MCK
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 2: Finding the Best Light with Light Gen
Finding the best environment lighting is an iterative and constantly evolving process. In this episode, Boyan demonstrates how you can use the Light Gen tool and let V-Ray do the heavy lifting. Follow along as he explains how to set up Light Gen, create light sets, and keep your artificial lights on.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3ua15Kn
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 3: Creating Evening Skies
In this episode, Boyan sets an evening scene using the V-Ray Sun & Sky system. Tune in as he creates a vibrant sunset with beautiful bloom and sun flare effects and sets the sun below the horizon to create an evening sky.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3PbmxH0
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 4: Evening Exterior Artificial Lights
Wondered how to highlight your design in a night scene without overemphasizing it in your render? In this tutorial, Boyan sets an evening HRDI dome light, demonstrates two artificial lighting techniques, and talks about color balance.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3oeiNcF
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 5: Evening Environment Illumination
In this episode, Boyan continues putting liveliness in the evening scene by lighting the environment around the house. Watch as he employs a new artificial light type - IES light; demonstrates how to best light exterior assets and adds a finishing touch of realism with Chaos Cosmos lanterns.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3AONgp1
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 6: Light Mixing and Compositing
In this video, Boyan polishes the evening render using the V-Ray Frame Buffer. Tune in and learn about the powerful capabilities of render elements, light mixing, and compositing techniques that eliminate the need to use third-party image editing apps.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3IOZHDj
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Materials
Part 1: Working With Generic Materials
Here’s how to use generic materials to tweak interior furniture and objects. Boyan goes through fundamental concepts such as diffuse color, reflection, and refraction and applies a bitmap texture and bump map to create a wooden material. Finally, he demonstrates how to customize the materials of Chaos Cosmos models.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3I3sG5O
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Part 2: Working with Chaos Cosmos
Chaos Cosmos materials can make any project come to life. Boyan аpplies materials from our render-ready library to the exterior of a house, showing you how to avoid repeating concrete and wood patterns with the UVW Randomizer. Then, he introduces an HDR image for lighting and demonstrates how to illuminate the scene with a dome light.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3bsbtXt
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Tips on Optimizing Scene Geometry
How do you keep your project’s interactivity high when you have lots of geometry? Boyan’s tips make it super simple. He demonstrates the difference between proxy meshes and proxy scenes, as well as what makes Chaos Cosmos models “smart.”
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3PaepXB
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Adding Atmospheric & Volumetric Effects
Always wondered how to get a misty environment for your exterior renders or how to create god rays in your interior? Creating a volumetric environment is your answer. Follow along with this tutorial as Chaos’ Boyan Petrov demonstrates how to employ the aerial perspective and environment fog effect, so you, too, can add that extra piece of realism to your work.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3Ae92SM
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
V-Ray Frame Buffer and Post-Processing
In this tutorial, Boyan goes into the topic of render post-production. He takes you on a tour of the V-Ray Frame Buffer, adds various color correction layers, and explains the various ways to save your work.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3P3zfYl
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Daytime Interior Lighting and Material Techniques
Something a bit off in your interior render? In this video, Chaos’ Boyan Petrov demonstrates how to properly expose your daytime interior using an adaptive dome light. He also gives away a few easy material workflows that simulate real-world response to lighting and increase the overall realism of your image.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3Pzx1k5
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Camera Settings for Virtual Photography
In this tutorial, Boyan turns to one of the most important storytelling tools: the camera. Tune in as he demonstrates how to create interesting shots of your design by employing physical camera parameters. Learn how to set the exposure, use depth of field to focus on specific scene elements, and more.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3zxbkul
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Interior Night Scene Lighting
In this tutorial, Boyan demonstrates his workflow when lighting nighttime interiors. From placing lights to color corrections in post, Boyan shares all his tips and tricks to create well-exposed and balanced interior renders.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3dojOMJ
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Enhance the Quality and Speed of Your Renders
What are the best render settings? In this episode, Boyan answers one of the most frequently asked questions. Learn the fundamentals of the different parameters and what to set depending on your project production phase.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3wbt5yo
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
Creating and Exporting Animations
What’s a great project presentation without a photorealistic animation? In our series wrap-up episode, Boyan demonstrates how to export a quick preview animation before committing to production rendering using V-Ray Vision. Then, he’ll create the final animation using the power of the Chaos ecosystem.
Download this practice scene: https://bit.ly/3pLA0ee
Download scene assets: https://bit.ly/3AhHLPo
