Hello!
I`m learning Mental Ray renderer (3dsMAX 2009). I`ve already modeled a flower and now trying to add some water droplets on it/ I want to render something like this:

My model is lit by single mrSyn\mrSky system with Photographic exposure control:

I`ve been advised to use A&D material for water. But when I apply classic water A&D material, droplets become almost black!

I`m using production shaders (Environment\Background switcher with CameraMap Shader as background and ChromeBall with HDR-map as env\reflection). So I`ve tryed to increase the multiplyer of the ChromeBall shader (HDR-map becomes overbright), but it doesn’t help! Droplets are still dark while reflection highlights become white :-(

Here is my material settings:

How to make droplets shine?!
Thank you!

I think it’s looking pretty good so far.  I wonder if maybe you need a bounce card or something bright for it to reflect.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

What if you change the diffuse colour of the water material? Currently it is black so I’m guessing that might be the cause of the black looking water.

Oh, I`ve already tried to change diffuse color, weight, roughness etc, but there was no visible effect :((((

I wonder if maybe you need a bounce card or something bright for it to reflect.

What is it, bounce card? Can you explain more detailed? Now I have HDRI map in the environment channel.

In the older version of this project i`ve lit this scene by four independent photometric area lights. The waterdrops look more realistic, but the overal scene lighting does not seem natural. So I changed the lights on the single daylight system. Now scene looks better, but the droplets become black :-( Where`s my mistake?

If you liked how the area lights lit the droplets, why don’t you bring them back but make it so that only the droplets are included for the area lights? And light everything else with the daylight system.

A bounce card is something used in photography to bounce light, or induce a nice specular highlight.  Make a pure white place behind the camera, give it a little self illumination.  The raytraced reflections will pick up the bright white behind you, and give a lighter reflection.  The size and placement will be a little trial and error.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

cogliati 17 July 2009 02:28 PM

If you liked how the area lights lit the droplets, why don’t you bring them back but make it so that only the droplets are included for the area lights? And light everything else with the daylight system.

I`ve already tried this. But the exposure settings for daylight-based lighting and for area lights only, are different! With new exposure settings (tweaked for daylight sun&sky) my old ara lights doesn`t get good results.

Let`s try the bounce card....

I just place a white self-illuminated plane behind the camera (over the flower and waterdrops). And frankly, I don`t see any visible effect :-(
I create a light-weight version of my scene with only three petals and no bitmaps (standard MAX`s maps for background and environment). I`ll be very glad if someone tell me what`s wrong with my settings.

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I looked at your scene and noticed that the white cards were placed in the wrong location. Check out where I put them and notice how the specularity is now visible in the scene.

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The problem is almost certainly the environment map. I’d test it with something simpler - maybe mr Physical Sky, which should be pretty foolproof. Also, try sticking a refelctive sphere in your scene, which will immediately show you if there’s a problem with the brightness of the enviroment map.

Thanks for your advise!
The bounce card as it was described by Cogliati and Chris Medeck made my render much better. Now i try to find a way to fade a little the sharp highlights from self-illuminated planes beside the camera and keep some natural reflections same time. I think i’ll put new images tomorrow and maybe do some test renders with different environment maps.

By the way, there is another one question appeared! What if i make “thin-walled” A&D glass material instead of “solid” mode? In the last case i have double reflections on some droplets: one from upper droplet surface and second from its bottom! When it happens i see unnatural overbright highlights in render (while other droplets are still pretty dark).

OK. I think i found the right way. Last image with different HDRI-environment just needs some tweaking of RGB level, but now it definitely looks better!
Thanks for all!

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