V-Ray Exterior Destruction Scene

Taught by Amid Rajabi
Duration:
5 hours 29 minutes
Software Version:
V-Ray 7 
Launch Date:
July 2025 
Course Number:
VRY208
3D
Master high-end environment creation, shader blending, and multi-pass compositing in this epic V-Ray workflow. This course is your complete guide to building a realistic, post-apocalyptic exterior, covering everything from high-density scene assembly to final multi-pass rendering. You'll create a richly detailed cinematic environment inspired by one of the most iconic video games of all time, and finish with a polished composite in Nuke that's ready for your reel.

Set within the Lost Haven environment, based on one of the most famous video games in history. This course is the second instalment in our intermediate-to-advanced V-Ray series. You'll learn how to assemble complex scenes, optimize them using V-Ray Proxy and Decal, and create detailed textures using Substance Painter with UDIM workflows. You'll also explore layered shader blending with V-Ray materials in Maya, set up dynamic lighting, and render a full multi-pass sequence for compositing in Nuke.

Amid Rajabi is a senior 3D artist with over two decades of experience in VFX, animation, and education. A Nuke Certified Trainer and longtime fxphd contributor, Amid's expertise spans Maya, V-Ray, Arnold, Bifrost, and more. He's also a closed beta tester for Bifrost and V-Ray, and was the first Iranian artist to be certified in Nuke. His work, deeply influenced by cinema, video games, and Japanese art, emphasizes both technical mastery and creative storytelling. Amid is known for pushing the limits of procedural tools to craft visually stunning, emotionally resonant scenes.
 

Class Listing

Class 1: Scene Assembly

A large scene with a very high number of polygons and full of details requires very good management of objects and their grouping. In the first class, we will learn all these points and see how, with proper categorization, object management, and naming, we can accurately and correctly proceed with the next stages, such as UV mapping, texturing, material creation, and more.

Class 2: Camera Setup and Composition

In the Lost Haven project, we aim to show the audience that the world has ended, nothing is stable, and everything is destroyed. Therefore, we need a camera angle that shows this feeling. As a result, in this class, we will discuss composition and its related rules, and how we choose the final camera based on the Dutch Tilt.

Class 3: UDIM

In the third class, after finalizing the camera angle, we identify the hero objects and start the UV creation process based on UDIM rules for the most important objects. For example, we see that the buildings in front of the camera are among the most important objects in this project, and some parts of them, like the walls, are UV mapped with more than 18 UV tiles in Maya to ensure the texturing process in Substance Painter is carried out in the best possible way.

Class 4: UV Creation Process

In the second part of the UV creation process for the scene objects, we use Planar Mapping, Automatic Mapping, and other features to create UVs for the most important objects in the scene, including the car and street lamp. This will allow us to finalize the process of transferring the objects to Substance Painter.

Class 5: Substance Painter Part 1

In the fifth class, we will learn how to import objects into Substance Painter and how to bake various maps, including Curvature, AO, and more. This will allow us to use Generators in Substance Painter and carry out the texturing process in the best possible way.

Class 6: Substance Painter Part 2

In the sixth class, we focus on the texturing process for buildings. Using the procedural features of Substance Painter, we create dirt and details on the walls and windows of the buildings. We will also see how Substance Painter can recognize different UV tiles and assist us in the texturing process.

Class 7: Substance Painter Part 3

In the seventh class, we continue the texturing process for the most important objects and test the final result using IRay in Substance Painter. Finally, we will see how to export the final textures from Substance Painter so that we can recreate all these details using VRay shaders in Maya.

Class 8: Create Materials Inside Maya

After exporting the textures, it’s time to recreate the entire material creation process in Maya and VRay using VRay Material and VRay nodes. We will then compare the results obtained with the results from Substance Painter.

Class 9: V-Ray Blend Material

Continuing with the creation of materials using VRay, we will see how important materials, such as the car material, are created in Maya and VRay. After that, we will focus on one of VRay’s most important features, the Blend Material. We will learn how to combine materials and mask them together to create the material for one of the most important objects in this project, the main street ground object.

Class 10: V-Ray Proxy and V-Ray Decal

This class is one of the most important classes in the course because, due to the large number of objects and polygons, we need to be able to manage RAM effectively. This is exactly where VRay Proxy comes to our aid, allowing us to render billions of polygons. After that, we can use VRay Decal to add as much detail as we want to the textures of our objects.

Class 11: Lighting Setup, Bifrost Ivy and Chaos Scatter

The eleventh class is about finalizing all the details, from setting up the lighting to adding ivy using Bifrost and finalizing details with Chaos Scatter.

Class 12: Rendering and Multipass Compositing

In the final class, we finalize the render elements, complete the render settings, and render all the passes in VRay. We also render the sky for this project separately. Then we bring all the details into Nuke, combine the various elements, and add effects such as Depth of Field , Chromatic aberration and etc to finalize the project.