TOPICS COVERED:

1. General Scene Setup
2. Material Settings
3. HDRI for reflections only
4. Environment Lighting

A short animation which utilizes the topics covered in this tutorial.

Global Switches Settings

- Default Lights are off
- Everything else is basically default settings

Irradiance Map Settings

- I set the preset to custom and used the settings shown on the left

Note: I like to enable Show calc phase just so I can see the Irradiance map calculation.

Global Illumination Settings

- Global Illumination is Enabled
- Irradiance map for Primary GI engine with a multiplier of 1.0

-Quasi-Monte-Carlo for Secondary Bounces with a multiplier of 1.0

- Post processing settings are all default

V-Ray Environment Settings

Note: There are no lights in this scene...as in zero. The only thing lighting the scene is the environment light shown on the left.

- GI Environment Skylight override is enabled.
- Reflection/refraction override is enabled.

Note: I used a HDRI map for the reflections in the scene but the the HDRI map does not contribute to the lighting. I could easily use the HDRI in the reflection slot to light the scene by dragging "Map 15" into the "None" slot of the GI environment.
For this particular scene, basic GI environment lighting worked well so I chose not use a HDRI map in the GI environment slot.

The Ground Plane

In order for the shadows, reflections and GI bounces to render over the background image we need an object in the scene to catch all of that data. For this we will use a matte object.

Note: To match the perspective of the background image I simply rotated the camera by hand until a suitable match was achieved.

Matte Object Settings

Note: to access the V-Ray properties dialog box select an object in the scene and right-click in the viewport. Select V-Ray properties from the quad menu.

- Matte object is enabled and shadows are checked.. This will make the selected objects invisible at rendertime but things like shadows, reflections and GI bounces will still show up.
- Notice you have control over many options like reflection and GI amounts. This is a very useful dialog box because you can control how V-Ray treats scene geometry on a per-object basis.

Here is a closeup of the red metal on the tractor. Notice all of the nice subtle hightlights. This is a combination of the material settings and the HDRI reflections.

Settings for the red metal are on the right.

- Reflections have been set to a dark grey
- Reflection glossies have been lowered to .75
- Fresnel reflections were enabled and Index of Refraction (IOR) was set to 2.0
- Max depth was raised to 8
- All other settings were left default.

Here is a closeup of the dark metal on the tractor. Notice the nice subtle hightlights/reflections. This is a combination of the material settings and the HDRI reflections.

Settings for the dark metal are on the right.

- Reflections have been set to a dark grey
- Reflection glossies have been lowered to .75
- Fresnel reflections were enabled and Index of Refraction (IOR) was set to 1.6
- Max depth was raised to 8
- All other settings were left default.

Here is a closeup of the large tireon the tractor. Notice the nice subtle hightlights/reflections. This is a combination of the material settings and the HDRI reflections.

Settings for the tire material are on the right.

- Reflections have been set to a dark grey
- Reflection glossies have been lowered to .75
- Fresnel reflections were enabled and Index of Refraction (IOR) was set to 1.6
- Max depth was raised to 8
- All other settings were left default.

Small Details

Since I knew the camera wasn't going to get to close to certian things I was able to get away with just mapping a few things in the scene.

- The headlights and grill are simply textures mapped to the geometry.

- For the hoses I used renderable splines.