Vray Lighting For Architectural Visualization

So here we are, the very first Premium Tutorial from DKCGI is alive. Right at the beginning i’ll leave a link where you can get the tutorial.

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Who is aimed for?

Well since you are here reading this, there is a pretty good chance this is aimed at you. Namely this course is meant for people that are working with Vray, and Architectural Visualization.

Ok then, what do i need to have and know to follow along ?

Fair question. Anyone that has ever watched any of my YouTube tutorials you will know that i always try to explain everything. I’ve done the same thing in this premium tutorial as well. This does mean that you will need a functional knowledge of the 3ds Max User Interface. So pretty much anyone should be able to follow along.

As for the software version, i’ve used Max 2018 and Vray 3.6 in the videos. The Max scenes have been saved so they can be opened with 3ds Max 2011. As for the Vray version, as long as you have any of the 3.x versions you are good. If you are using a prior version of Vray, then the lesson theory will still apply but you will need to dig through the menus for the options.

Sounds good, what topics does the course cover ?

Another very good question. The way that i made this course it will cover all the most common scenarios for lighting.  This means we will go over topics like :

Setting Up a Daylight Environment, Using Light Portals, Setting Up Sunlight lit scenes, Lighting Up your scenes with HDRI, Multiple Different types of Lighting Fixtures, In depth look at Global Illumination, Using Materials to help with lighting and also using Environment Effects to help with lighting your scene.

Ok i’m still reading and it does sound interesting, where do i get it ?

Now this is the question that i got so many times on the live streams on YouTube. As i said it there i’ll write it here. The course has been made available thanks to Gumroad and that is where you can get it. It’s actually pretty easy, once you purchase the course you will be able to download all the files and they will be yours forever. So if you didn’t click on the button at the start of the post here it is again to get the course.

Get The Vray Lighting Course

Everything sounds great, anything else ?

Well yeah, the thing with Gumroad is that i can add files and videos to it in the future and you will get it without having to pay anything extra. This means that i can update this course with new tricks and tips and you will always get it first.

So that’s pretty much it honestly, except for one thing. This one goes out to everyone that gets the course. I would like to personally thank you for directly supporting me. What i would love is that after you get the video, leave a rating on it. Also if there is anything that is missing or you would like to see explained feel free and reach out to me either on the YouTube Channel, the Facebook group or directly on Discord.

So having said all of that, i hope you all enjoy this course and learn bunch of new tricks and techniques.

Once again at the end.

Thank you very much for supporting me.

3ds Max To Unreal Engine 4 Asset Creation Workflow

What will this cover?

From the get go we will jump straight to the point. In the last couple of years Unreal Engine has started creeping in the ArchViz scene. Nowadays though, it’s almost like the next industry standard. With the new standard, we have a new set of challenges we need to address. This post will try and cover the basics you will need to know in order to create assets for UE4.

I went ahead and divided this into five videos so it’s easier to follow.

Modeling The Low Polygon Model

When you are creating a model you can either start from a high poly model, or a low poly one. The main difference is that if you start from a high poly, you will need to do a retopology run. In this particular case since we didn’t have any sculpting, we start from scratch. This is by no means a bad thing. In the first video you will see how to logically divide the model. And then start modeling the base of the model.

After we go over the first video, in the second one we will still be doing the low poly model. The reason here for the two videos was because i didn’t want to have one extra long video. So go ahead and check out the second part of the video.

So if you watched these two videos now you should have a base on which to start.

Modeling The High Poly Model

In the second phase of the creation of the model we go over how to create the high poly model. The main plus that we have going for us is that we have a properly created low poly model. With that model we can create the high poly model with ease. Check how i did it in the video below.

UVW Unwrapping

Ok so if you followed along, you should have both the low poly and high poly models done. Next step would be to prepare the model for baking the textures. What this means though is that we will have to prepare the low poly model by UVW Unwrapping it. So in the next video we will see how to take the Low poly model and unwrap it with Unfold3D.

Preparing And Baking The Model with Substance Painter

In the last part of the process we will see how to prepare the model ready for baking. It is here where we will address the importance of normals.  After that we will do the actual baking inside Substance Painter. All in all an interesting topic to help finish up the whole process. So go ahead and check out the video below.

Conclusion

Provided you followed along with all the videos you should now have an idea about the workflow. You can see everything from the concept, down to the baking of the maps. The only thing missing here i guess would be to do the actual materials. But that’s a whole different topic for another day.

So in short that would be it for this topic. If you found this helpful, and you learned something new then share these videos so it can reach more people.

Creating a Quilted Leather Chair model in 3ds Max

In today’s post we will take a look at how we can create a Quilted Leather chair. After finishing with this tutorial you will know how to approach any similar model. This whole topic will be divided into four phases.

Modeling The Backrest

     In the first part we will see how to start with the modeling of the back rest. First thing that we will notice here is that we won’t be modeling from a blueprint, but rather an image. Knowing this it means that we will have to deal with a bit of a perspective distortion. Since this is a simple geometry to create we will start off with a simple plane. But instead of me explaining what you can do is check out the video below and see me doing it.

Modeling The Seat and Legs

     In the second part of the tutorial series we will focus on the seat and the legs of the chair. Similar like in the previous video we we do some basic box modeling techniques. Since there isn’t really all that much to explain you can go ahead and check out the video below.

Modeling the Quilted Leather

     Now for the third part we go a bit deeper on the modeling front. For this we will start by selecting the surface that will be covered by the quilted leather. After this we will add a quick UVW unwrap so we can use SlideKnit. I have covered how to use this script in a previous video, but shouldn’t be hard to figure it out. After we have that we will create a base for the quilting and wrap it around the surface. All in all you will see me use a few tricks on how to fix up some issues and problems. So go ahead and check out the video below to see me do it.

Unwrapping The Model

     In the last part of the series we will go over how to unwrap the model. For this we will use Unfold3D and will see how to get the model ready for texturing. Since this is a pretty straight forward topic as well check out the video below.

Final Thoughts and Resources

     This was a fun model to create, and it did have some challenges but in the end we made it. I did use couple of scripts so here you can go and get those scripts.

Vertex Cleaner / Shiva 3D

SlideKnit Script

And also i would like to leave the reference images that i was using if someone wants to follow along.

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