How to illuminate HDRI in 3ds Max and Maxwell Render?

High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) is a powerful tool for achieving realistic lighting effects in 3D scenes. When combined with advanced rendering engines like Maxwell Render in 3ds Max, HDRI can elevate the quality of your renders to breathtaking levels.

In this blog, iRender will delve into illuminating HDRI in 3ds Max and Maxwell Render and explore the steps to ensure stunning, lifelike results.

Before exploring HDRI lighting, you need to prepare a 3D scene. Actually, the scene is optional because, in 3ds Max, you only need to create a simple scene consisting of a geometry and a plane at the bottom of the geometry to see the shadows emitted by the HDRI. But it is better to have a complete, well-structured scene in 3ds Max.

You need to set up 3ds Max to work with the Maxwell Render render engine by opening the Setup window (F10 or Rendering > Render Setup…) and attaching the common tab to the Maxwell render engine.

In the Renderer > Environment Settings tab, disable Sky type to ensure there are no other lighting types other than HDR lighting. This doesn’t mean you can’t combine lighting, but for now, we only want HDR lighting.

Under Image Based Environment, check Background and select Activate On. This setting will load in the HDRI Image field, causing the scene to automatically load the same HDR for lighting, reflections, and refractions. We’ll see how to control multiple HDRs separately later.

In General Settings, if you set 30 Time (min), you are saying that the render will take up to 30 minutes. In the Sampling Level section, 10 means performing 10 sampling levels (SL sampling level), which tells us how many interactions are going on in the lighting calculation to find the right solution.

Then, when the render starts, the engine will render up to one of the two values ​​to complete even if one is missing.

The 3ds Max camera works great on Maxwell. Set the Target Distance to 55.25, this is important because in Maxwell the camera works like a real camera, creating an accurate depth of field with real life. This means that we will set the Target Distance to the focal point of your objects, but away from this point, they will fade out.

Below are the Maxwell Parameter controls for the camera, and we will set it to Manual Exposure Mode so we can have full control over the parameters.

Here are some concepts you need to know to control the camera using Maxwell parameters, which are also applicable to professional cameras:

• Lens: Is the distance in millimeters from the optical center of the virtual camera lens to the focal point of the virtual lens mirror, or camera. Here, the Lens is 43.456 mm.
• F-Stop: Is the depth of field of the rendered image, set to 8.
• Shutter Speed: This parameter controls the shutter speed, i.e. the exposure when rendering, with a value of 2.
• Film ISO: The image in this parameter represents the sensitivity of the sensor, the chip sensor that falls where the light enters the lens and is responsible for capturing the photo. We set the value to 100.

Now we can start rendering (Shift + Q or Rendering> Render), a new window (Maxwell Render) will open with many parameters because Maxwell Motor is not integrated into 3ds max. Rendering is complete when the top yellow bar reaches 100%. Here, we set the Sampling Level to 10.

Now, let’s focus on the final result. If Sampling Level 10 is not enough to get good quality, we can change it in Maxwell Render window at the bottom. Click on Render Options tab, which has Scene settings, and increase Sampling Level to 16, while keeping Time at 30 minutes.

Select the yellow RENDER button and a window will appear giving you the option to start rendering from 0 (Start) or continue calculating where the render is finished (Continue). This is a big advantage of Maxwell, press Continue to save the time you had in the first test render. Now just wait and it’s done.

Here are some tips for better HDR handling.

• Control different HDRs separately

In step 4 when you load HDR in Background > Image it will automatically load for Refraction, Reflection, and Illumination. Change this and load different resolutions for each HDR. This is important if you want more control over your scene because usually the same resolution of HDR is not used for everything. Usually for pixels in HDR, lower light, medium-high resolution for reflections, and ultra-high quality for backgrounds.

• Change the direction of HDR

In the same window where you load HDR are the Offset U and Offset V options that change the direction of HDR. Where Offset U rotates the HDR horizontally and Offset V rotates it vertically, both values ​​are in degrees in the range of 0° to 360º.

• Change Settings from the Maxwell Render Window

One option with Maxwell as you saw in step 7 is that if you change the Resolution, Time, SL, and F-Stop measures, save the render from the same Maxwell Render window without having to go back to 3ds max.

But even better when doing render calculations, you can change the Shutter Speed ​​and SL next time you visualize. And even when you are 100% done with the render, you can change the Shutter Speed ​​and save. This saves a lot of time not having to render when you have to change the exposure.

• Default Gamma 2.2

By default, Maxwell is installed and configured to save renders in Gamma 2.2. Check the Maxwell Render window, Camera tab, Tone Mapping drop-down, and Monitor Gamma option.

• Image lacks depth of field

As mentioned before, Maxwell uses the camera as a real camera, so, inevitably, some objects will often be blurred due to the depth of field. To fix the blur, you should apply a technique called Stacking Focus (Stacking or Bracketing Focus method) which involves a series of renders varying the Target Distance and then merging those renders into a single render that shows the right side of each focus point.

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Images and References: giancr.com