Our new course, taught by Amid Rajabi, is part one of a comprehensive introduction to V-Ray rendering. It begins by explaining the basics of rendering and how ray tracers work. Next, it covers V-Ray’s lighting features, including the various types of lights. In addition, the course covers V-Ray’s physical camera, global illumination (GI), V-Ray Sun and Sky, creating procedural clouds in V-Ray Sky, and working with Chaos Scatter.

To wrap up the course, you are guided through through a project-based lighting scenario within V-Ray. In the next course (still in production), we will dive into V-Ray shading and texturing features.

This course is the first of a planned series of four offerings: two introductory level courses and two intermediate level courses.

Amid is a highly skilled VFX artist with almost two decades of experience in look development, compositing, and instruction. He is a Nuke Certified Trainer and a closed beta tester for Chaos Group’s V-Ray and Autodesk’s Bifrost. Since 2016, he has created multiple short films, some of which have been featured or received honorable mentions at international film festivals like Santa Cruz (Argentina), Pachuca (Mexico), and Cinalfama (Portugal).

Class Listing

Class 1: Rendering Basics

The basics of rendering, which includes a discussion of what rendering is and why we use rendering engines.

Class 2: Ray Tracing

Time to dive into ray tracers. We explore how ray tracing has revolutionized the world of rendering, enabling us to achieve modern renderers like V-Ray through advancements in rendering capabilities. This allows us to render many elements in a physically accurately manner, achieving highly realistic results.

Class 3: V-Ray Lights, Part 1

We thoroughly examine all the features of the rectangle light in V-Ray. Most of these features are consistent across V-Ray lights, and there are similar options in other V-Ray lights. However, each light type also has its unique settings, which we will explore in the next class.

Class 4: V-Ray Lights, Part 2

An examination of the features of Sphere lights, Mesh lights, Dome lights and IES lights. We explore the appearance and specific attributes of each of these lights.

Class 5: Image-Based Lighting

A dive into the important topic of IBL, which stands for Image-Based Lighting. We explore what HDR images are, their characteristics, and how they can transform the world of lighting, making it easy for us to achieve highly realistic lighting based on the real world photos.

Class 6: V-Ray Sun and Sky

We cover how to use V-Ray Sun and Sky. This feature allows you to easily create sunlight in V-Ray and accurately simulate the sky based on the sun’s position. Among the new features in V-Ray’s sky, you will see how you can accurately simulate clouds in a completely realistic manner.

Class 7: The V-Ray Physical Camera

The V-Ray physical camera functions are like a real world camera, allowing you to control the exposure of your final output with parameters such as shutter speed, f-stop, and ISO.

Class 8: Global Illumination

We cover the crucial topic of global illumination (GI). In V-Ray, we have two algorithms for calculating GI. One of them is called Light Cache, created by Chaos Group and used in V-Ray. The second one is a more precise and physically accurate method known as Brute Force. Both algorithms are comprehensively covered in this lesson.

Class 9: Course Project, Part 1

The start of the main project in this course begins with an initial examination of the assets used in this project. Subsequently, we cover Chaos Scatter, enabling us to distribute various elements within the scene. Following that, a dive into lighting, discussing how to adjust the light angle, camera settings, and simulate clouds using specific parameters.

Class 10: Course Project, Part 2

We continue with the project, focusing on simulating fog in V-Ray with Environment Fog Shader, which is a crucial element for our lighting project. Additionally, an examination of important features of V-Ray Frame Buffer.