*Fall 2011 Tip: The Fall 2011 tip is all about V-Ray, which is an alternate, higher quality render engine in 3dsMax. V-Ray is capable of producing photorealistic renders that just aren't possible in the default Scanline renderer.

Controlling the quality and capabaties for V-Ray are done though a series of tabs and options in the Render Settings dialog. They're actually pretty easy once you know what each option does, but at first glance it's alot of technical jargan that's pretty tough to digest. So here's my "5 Minute, High Quality V-Ray Settings Guide".

1. First you'll want to create a V-Ray Physical Camera. Make sure Exposure is checked, set the Shutter Speed to 60, and the White Balance to Neutral(white).
2. Under the First "V-Ray" tab in the Render Settings chance the Image Sampler type to Adaptive DMC and change the Min/Max values to 1 & 64.
3. Go to the next tab, Global Illumination and turn it On. Change the Primary & Secondary Bounces to Light Cache. Then in the Light Cache dialog, uncheck Store Direct Light and check Show Calc Phase. *If you're rendering an animation check Use Camera Path and change the Mode (below) to Fly-Though.
4. Under the Settings tab change the Noise Threshold to .003
5. Now just add a few V-Ray lights and you should be all set. Naturally the next phase will involves countless tweaking of the lighting and materials, but V-Ray should now be setup to produce a nice result with minimal rendering times.