In this course, author Adam Crespi takes you through the full production pipeline for lighting, rendering, and compositing the exterior of a house in 3ds Max. First he'll show you how to create mental ray materials like wood, metal, and glass; customize the Daylight system for realistic daytime lighting; and adjust the lighting for dusk and nighttime shots with photometric lights. Then he'll render the scenes, optimizing and styling the bounced light with Global Illumination and Final Gather. Finally, Adam takes the image into post, adding the final polish required at the end of the pipeline with Nuke and After Effects.

Topics include:

Creating exterior materials
Adding luster to glass and subtle detail to wood and siding
Positioning the sun with the Daylight system
Lighting using HDR imagery
Lighting interior spaces
Fine-tuning the photographic exposure
Rendering and optimizing rendering
Creating an ambient-occlusion rendering pass with custom materials
Setting up additional rendering passes for compositing purposes
Compositing and adding post effects in Nuke and After Effects