Lighting Tutorials > Lighting and Rendering the Villa at Night >
Improving the Background

In the previous lessons, you used photometric lights to illuminate the foreground of your mediterranean night scene. In this lesson, you will complete the picture by changing the color of the sea and using a bitmap image of a sky as a backdrop.

Set up the lesson:

- Continue working on your own scene file, or open the scene file med_villa_lighting_env.max.

Correct the color of the sea:

First, you will change the sea to a more realistic color.

1. Press H To open the Select From Scene dialog. Click the the Sea object to highlight it, then click OK.
2. Activate the Camera-Terrace viewport, then on the main toolbar, click (Rendered Frame Window) to display the rendered frame.
3. On the Rendered Frame window Area To Render drop-down list choose Selected, then click the Render button.

   This rendering takes some time, so feel free to cancel the rendering once you get an idea of the result.

   The color of the sea water is suitable for a day scene but not for nighttime.

4. Open the Slate Material Editor.
5. In the Material/Map Browser, scroll to the Scene Materials group, and locate the the Water - Sea entry. Drag this entry into the active View, and when 3ds Max Design asks whether to use an instance or a copy, make sure Instance is chosen, then click OK.
6. Double-click the Water - Sea material node so you can see its parameters in the Parameter Editor panel at the right.
7. On the Water rollout, open the Color drop down list, and choose Custom.
8. Click the Custom Color swatch and on the Color Selector that opens, pick a deep blue color: Red=0.005, Green=0.025, Blue=0.1.
9. Render the sea again. Again, you can cancel the rendering once you get an idea of the result.
10. On the Area To Render drop-down list, choose View so that the next time you render, the entire scene will be included.
11. Minimize the Rendered Frame Window.

Add a background image:

1. Open the Rendering menu and choose Environment to open the Environment And Effects dialog. On the Common Parameters rollout, click the Environment Map button (at present, the text on the button says (“None”).

   3ds Max Design opens the Material/Map Browser.

2. On the Material/Map Browser, double-click the Bitmap map type. (Bitmap is in the Maps Standard group.)

   3ds Max Design opens a file dialog.

3. In the file dialog, navigate to the \sceneassets\images folder, click desert.jpg to highlight it, then click Open.

   The image is a desert landscape, taken during the day.

4. On the Exposure Control rollout make sure Process Background And Environment Maps is off.

   When this option is turned on, 3ds Max Design applies the exposure control to the background map itself. For most bitmaps (those that don’t save a high dynamic range), in effect this makes the background and other environment maps invisible.

5. Make sure no object is selected, right-click a viewport, and from the quad menu, choose Hide Unselected.
6. Render the Camera01 viewport.

   With all objects hidden, 3ds Max Design has rendered only the background image. It is apparent that you will need to make the image darker so it suits the nighttime scene.

   Leave the Environment And Effects dialog open for now.

Adjust the background image:

1. Open the Slate Material Editor.
2. In the Material/Map Browser panel on the left, navigate to the Sample Slots group.
3. Drag the Environment Map button from the Environment And Effects dialog and drop it onto an unused sample slot. The sample slot shows a red bar across it when you are able to drop the map.

   3ds Max Design asks if this should be an instance or a copy. Make sure Instance is selected, and then click OK.

4. Close the Environment And Effects dialog.
5. Drag the sample slot with the environment map into the active View.

   Once again, 3ds Max Design asks if this should be an instance or a copy. Make sure Instance is selected, and then click OK.

6. In the active View, double-click the Bitmap node so you can see its parameters in the Parameter Editor panel to the right.
7. On the Output rollout, decrease the Output Amount to 0.033.
8. Render the Camera01 viewport again.

   The result is a heavily underexposed image, resembling a night sky: a digital version of filming “day for night.”

   Background bitmap heavily underexposed to suit night scene

9. Close the Slate Material Editor.

Render the scene to see the background changes:

1. Right-click the Camera-Terrace viewport, select Unhide All from the quad menu, then render the Camera-Terrace viewport.

   The darker ocean is more realistic, and the background of a cloudy sky gives depth to the scene.

   This completes the rendering of the villa at night. If you wanted to further reduce the amount of antialiasing in the rendering, you could move the Rendered Frame Window Image Precision and Final Gather Precision sliders one notch to the right. However, increasing these settings greatly increases the rendering time.

Save your work:

- Save the scene as my_villa_nighttime_completed.max.

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned how to use photometric lights to illuminate a scene at night. You specified the color of light sources and defined how shadows were cast. You used self-illumination and a Glare shader to improve the appearance of light sources. You also learned how to take a background image and reduce its output level to make suitable for a nighttime scene.