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Courseware Highlights

• Modular: All the essential V-Ray knowledge is divided into modules to easily fit different types of curriculum.
• Easy to learn and use: Users have all materials in a ready to teach, learn and use format.
• Quality: Our curriculum has been developed with professionals and educators around the world to ensure we’re up to date with cutting edge trends in visualization.
• All training needs: Each lesson includes lectures, lesson plans, handouts, demonstration tutorials, scenes, assets, and practice assignments.
• Designed for adult learners: Based on the proven concept of learning cycles, which splits each lesson into lecture, demonstration and activity.
• Creative control: We’ve done all the hard work of creating a curriculum, so educators and users can focus on teaching, learning and artistry.
• The industry standard: Top studios around the world rely on V-Ray every day to visualize world-class products, buildings and visual effects. Students will learn industry standard skills to kick-start their careers.

Content Overview

The courseware is based on the concept of learning cycles, a proven method for teaching adults. This concept splits each topic into three distinct cycles:

1. Lecture – This introduces the theory of the topic. This is the time to show imagery, discuss theories, make the connection between CG and the real world, and explain what settings do.
2. Demonstration – Topics discussed in the lecture are put into action by the educator. It is important that students do not try to copy what is being shown so they can pay full attention to the demonstration and explanations.
3. Activity – Students gain vital hands-on experience be reproducing what they have seen, and can do their own experiments. This cycle gives the students the chance to try out settings, solve problems, and ask questions.

The courseware provides you with materials for each of the three cycles for every Topic:

1. Lecture –  This includes a PowerPoint presentation, and a sample lesson plan to help your preparations.
2. Demonstration and Activity  – We provide you with 3ds Max scenes, and Lesson guides. Lesson guides include a sample exercise sequence for the demonstration, and they can be distributed to students. The PowerPoint presentations and Lesson guides can be downloaded separately from the page for each lesson as well as in the Download section of this courseware.

Scenes and assets are packed into a project file. These must be downloaded together to ensure that all textures and other assets will load correctly.

Topics covered by the courseware

UI & VFB

The lessons in this category provide an overview of V-Ray’s components, what they do, and where to find them in the interface.

• User Interface – A guide to the most commonly used V-Ray components
• Frame Buffer – What the V-Ray Frame Buffer is, and its most useful features

Render Engines

This section covers the two main rendering engines of V-Ray.

• V-Ray RT – How to use V-Ray RT as an ActiveShade renderer, and how to set it up to render animations.
• V-Ray Production – An overview of the standard V-Ray rendering engine, and how to use it.

Sampling

• Sampling – An in depth explanation of how to optimize antialiasing and render times.

Lighting

• V-Ray Light – The most commonly used settings of the V-Ray Light.
• V-Ray and 3ds Max Lights – How to use the Standard 3ds Max Lights with V-Ray.
• V-Ray Ambient Light – An overview of the settings of the V-Ray Ambient Light.
• V-Ray Dome Light – The workflow to generate Image Based Lighting with the V-Ray Dome Light.
• V-Ray IES Light – How light profiles and V-Ray’s IES light can create realistic lighting.
• V-Ray Sun and Sky System - Set up day time illumination with the V-Ray’s Sun and Sky system.

Global Illumination

• GI Introduction. The theory of tracing global illumination, and the technical differences between the different GI Engines in V-Ray.
• GI for Exterior Scenes – The workflow for setting up GI for Exterior Scenes.
• GI for Interior Scenes – The workflow for setting up GI for Interior Scenes.
• Caustics – How to generate sharp photon mapped caustics.
• GI for Fly-Through Animations – Optimize the rendering of fly-through animations.

Camera

• Physical Camera – Physical Camera settings, and how they affect the exposure of the rendered image.
• Physical Camera: Motion Blur and Depth of Field – How to use Motion Blur and Depth of Field effects, and how to balance the exposure of the rendered image.

Shading

• V-Ray Material – V-Ray material settings, and how to use them to simulate a wide range of real world materials.
• V-Ray SSS Materials – V-Ray FastSSS2 and V-Ray Skin materials, and how to use them tocreate translucent or sub-surface scattering materials.
• V-Ray 2-Sided Material – V-Ray 2-Sided material, and how to use it to create thin translucent materials such as fabric or paper.
• V-Ray Blend and Bump Materials – How to create more complex materials.
• Random Color Techniques – How the V-Ray Multi Sub texture and the V-Ray User Color node can generate random colors in a shading network.

Volumetrics

• Volumetrics – V-Ray Aerial Perspective and V-Ray Environment Fog atmospheric effects in an exterior scene

Dynamic Geometry

• V-Ray Displacement – Adding fine detail to scenes with the V-Ray Displacement Modifier.
• V-Ray Proxy – Optimize high poly count scenes with V-Ray’s Proxy geometry.
• V-Ray Instancer – Instance multiple V-Ray Proxy geometries with the help of a ParticleFlow system and the V-Ray Instancer helper.
• V-Ray Fur – Generate realistic grass with V-Ray Fur.

Render Elements

• V-Ray Render Elements – How to split the rendered image into render elements, and combining them in compositing.

Scenes and assets requirements and setup

To use the scenes and assets provided you need to have 3ds Max and V-Ray 3.5 for 3ds Max installed.

To get the scenes click here and wait for the download to complete.

Once the download completes, extract the scenes into a folder of your choice. For example: C:\Coursware for V-Ray 3dsMax\

Start 3ds Max 2017 and go to Application Menu > Manage > Set Project Folder:

Select the folder in which you extracted the zip file. For example: C:\Coursware for V-Ray 3dsMax\