What you'll learn

Having a solid understanding of mental ray's core features, and how they work, is a crucial step toward becoming an efficient and productive rendering artist in 3ds Max. We will begin our training in this series of tutorials by learning two different methods for simulating realistic indirect lighting in 3ds Max, the first method will use global illumination, then we will learn about the second method using final gather. We will also explore how you can use caustic photons to simulate the detailed light patterns that are created when light passes through refractive surfaces. In addition, we will also explore Image-based lighting techniques, we will learn how to minimize rendering artifacts such as final gather flickering from our animated scenes, as well as many other tools and techniques that will allow you start generating high quality work for a multitude of projects.