Realistc MAX Materials and Renders

[Dr. Feelgood]

Guys,

I'm looking for tutorials for materials and realistic renders...MAX or Raytrace only...No VRay.

I wanna know if it's possible to achieve the same realistic car-paint results using default MAX/Raytrace materials like the materials used for high-end cars like the ones posted in the Choice Gallery of CGCars.com Thingsmainly like burring reflections, glass, ect. And stuff like lighting and the use of HDRI images (I've got almost 500mb of 'em and have no idea what to use them for!!).

I do have VRay 1.5, and a full version of it, however I'm finding it hard to learn, especially when I've already tought myself quite alot about MAX lighting and materials. VRay's a whole new world!!

So please, any tutorials you know of, or any ideas or knowledge that you'd like to share, let me know!!

[Xoliul]

I don't think you can go really far with just scanline, and definitely not the CGcars Choice gallery level. You'll have to use Mental Ray in that case, and I'd tell you to go for Vray instead then, because it's way easier to learn and works a lot faster, on top of a bunch of other cool features (such as VrayDisplacement and HDRI use).

If you want Vray tips, get started with the stuff on Aversis, that's what got me started about a year ago. You really should be able to get a grasp of Vray once completing all of those. Recently I've also learnt a lot more by looking at some Vray lighting DVD's from Gnomon, great stuff I can tell you.
But if you're really looking on how to attain quality renders like the guys at CGcars, then I can' help ya, still trying to learn that myself.

[Dr. Feelgood]

Thanks heaps Xoliul...

Catlin's has actually almost convinced me to learn VRay, so I think that's what I'll be teaching myself next. I have quite a few Gnomon DVDs, so I'll sift through them and see if I can't find something. Thanks for the reference to the Aversis site too!! :-)

[Xoliul]

No problem man, that aversis site is THE reference to get started with Vray, been mentioned here at SMC quite a few times I think. The Gnomon DVD's are suited for lighting and rendering, most applicable in rendering environments. You can see an example of what I came up with after watching just one of those DVD's at my CGsociety page (the kowloon alley).

[Johnas]

Just doing tuts of Aversis. Really nice ones, thanks for the tip