This tutorial walks you through the process of setting up a basic scene in V-Ray for Blender.
Overview
This Tutorial includes:
- How to create a backdrop and shade it, using V-Ray materials (alternatively, you can assign a pre-made V-Ray material from the Chaos Cosmos Browser).
- How to create a three-point lighting* setup in your scene.
- How to create and adjust a camera with V-Ray Physical Attributes.
- How to render your scene using V-Ray.
Disclaimers
- This tutorial uses the default Metric Unit system setup in Blender.
- If you have trouble viewing any of the images or GIFs on this page, you can click them to view them in full-size.
Backdrop
Create a cube with a size significantly larger than the size of the donuts (or the main geometry of your scene). Keep in mind that the Size parameter is only available when you initially create an object in the Add Cube rollout, in the lower-left corner of the viewport. If you start any other action, the Add Cube menu disappears, and you can only use the Scale parameter in the Object Properties.
In this case, we are leaving the cube at its default size of 2m.
Move the cube over the donuts (or any other geometry you are using). The G hotkey corresponds to the Grab tool. When you hold down the middle mouse button, you can confine the tool to a single axis for easier operation.
Align the bottom of the cube with the ground in the scene. In other words, the cube's Location Z needs to be half of its Scale Z value, which in this case corresponds to 1. You can then zoom in to find your geometry inside the cube.
Go to Edit Mode. You can do so either through the object interaction menu at the top-left side of the viewport, or by clicking Tab on the keyboard.
Hold down Shift and, using the left mouse button, select the front faces of the cube. Click the Delete key on your keyboard. This brings up the Delete menu, where you need to select Faces.
This is how the cube looks with the deleted faces.
(optional)
If you intend to use a texture file, especially when working with bump maps (Normal Bump, Bump Normal), you need to set the normals of the Backdrop to point toward the camera, i.e., you need to flip them.
In this tutorial, we placed a geometry inside a cube and used the cube's interior as the backdrop for our scene. The normals of that backdrop are now pointing in the wrong direction, as the backdrop still reads as if it is an inside wall of a cube, even though we deleted some of its faces. To flip the normals of any object, follow these steps:
- Go to the Modelling workplace setup from the top toolbar in Blender.
- Go to Edit Mode
- Set the Select Mode to Face (
) - Hold shift and use the left mouse button to select all the faces of the Cube geometry in the viewport.
- Go to Mesh > Normals > Flip. This flips the normals of the selected faces.
Now, you can go back to the Layout workplace setup and continue with the rest of the tutorial. This step is not mandatory; it is only a disclaimer, if you are experimenting with different textures as a backdrop.
Now we need to add a material to the backdrop.
V-Ray functionalities are visible in Blender when the render engine is set to V-Ray. See how to Activate your Product.
Open the V-Ray Node Editor and set it to the Shader Node Tree.
Click on the + New button to create a new V-Ray Material in the scene. Use the middle mouse button (hold for panning, scroll for zoom) to navigate in the V-Ray Node editor.
You can access a multitude of ready-made materials from the Chaos Cosmos Browser in V-Ray for Blender. If you wish, you can use one of the materials and apply it to the backdrop instead of creating one yourself.
You can rename the material if you wish. To do so, click on the Name panel, which is in place of the + New button from the previous step.
You can access the material properties:
- From the Node menu on the right-hand side of the V-Ray Node Editor;
- In the Material Properties. You need to have the material node selected to be able to view its properties.
- Some properties are accessible from the node itself.
Click on the GIF to view it in full-size
- Set the Diffuse Color to a color, which will contrast with the objects in the scene. In this case, we set it to a pastel blue (HSV: 0.637, 0.761, 0.8)
- Set Diffuse Roughness to 0.5
- Set the Reflection Color to HSV 0.0, 0.0, 0.5
- Set the Glossiness to 0.4 and enable Use Roughness
This will create a blue matte background that won't distract from the main focus of the scene - the donuts.
This is how the backdrop looks now. You can stretch it if you like using Scale X in the Object Properties while selecting the backdrop geometry. Our backdrop is complete, we are ready to move onto the next step.
Backdrop
Backdrop with Scale X set to 3.0
Lights and Cameras
Camera View Placement
To create a Camera, you can use the Add menu at the top toolbar in the viewport. Position the camera so that the donuts are around eye level when seen through the camera. To position the camera:
- You can enable camera view
and enable view navigation within camera view 
. This allows you to pan and zoom as if you would in the viewport but simultaneously moving the camera view. As you can see, when you exit the camera view, the camera remains in the position you've navigated to.
- Alternatively, you can set its position manually from the Object Properties > Transform Location and Rotation parameters. In this tutorial, we position the camera as shown here:
- Location X = -2.6 m
- Location Y = 2.9 m
- Location Z = 0.7 m
- Rotation X = 80°
- Rotation Y = 0°
- Rotation Z = 180°
This is the view from the camera when you apply these transformations. This will be our render point of view.
Lights Placement
The scene already has a V-Ray Dome light. It provides even lighting throughout and is useful when setting up a scene to allow viewable renders.
However, we need to add highlights to enhance our scene, so we will need to create a three-point light setup* using three V-Ray Rect Lights.
Let's create our Key Light first. It will be our dominant source of light. Go to the V-Ray menu > Lights > V-Ray Rect Light.
Place the light at about 45° from the subjects of the scene and slightly higher, with the lights pointing towards the subject. For this tutorial, the Key Light is positioned as shown here:
- Location X = -5 m
- Location Y = 2 m
- Location Z = 1.7 m
- Rotation X = -26°
- Rotation Y = -61°
- Rotation Z = -14.5°
Now, let's place the so-called 'Fill Light'. It is placed approximately mirrored to the Key Light. The point of this light is to soften the shadows and allow areas of the object, which would normally be totally in shadow, to have some light on them.
Create another Rect Light from the V-Ray menu (see the previous step). For this tutorial, we position the light as shown here:
- Location X = 0 m
- Location Y = 2 m
- Location Z = 1 m
- Rotation X = 190°
- Rotation Y = 107°
- Rotation Z = 226°
However, you can adjust the location to your liking, as long as the Fill Light is roughly mirroring the position of the Key Light.
It's time for the third light from the three-point light setup - the 'Backlight'. Its purpose is to separate the subject from the background.
Create another V-Ray Rect Light ( see Step 1 of the Lights). The Backlight, as its name suggests, needs to be placed behind the subject. For this tutorial, we position the light as shown here:
- Location X = -2.55 m
- Location Y = -0.6 m
- Location Z = 0.4 m
- Rotation X = 85°
- Rotation Y = 0°
- Rotation Z = 0°
However, feel free to adjust according to your scene if you are not following along with the sample one.
TIP
You can rename objects from the Object Properties tab by clicking on their Name property, located at the top of the Object tab.
This is how the scene looks now from the camera view. As you can see, the lights are far too strong. Let's adjust the lighting and the camera to create a more balanced scene.
Lights and Camera Adjustments
Camera
Let's add V-Ray Physical Camera Attributes to our camera. To enable them, select the camera and go to the Object Data Properties tab in the Properties Editor. The Data tab will now show a camera icon. Then, enable the V-Ray Physical Camera rollout.
Enabling the V-Ray Physical Camera immediately darkens the render, but this is expected. In the next steps, we will adjust the settings to our liking.
Set the V-Ray Physical Camera's properties:
- Set the Shutter Speed to 150
- Set ISO to 800
Leave the other properties at their defaults.
The V-Ray Physical Camera attributes allow you to adjust Depth of Field, Motion Blur, White balance, and much more. See the V-Ray Physical Camera Attributes page for more information.
Backlight
Let's enlarge the backlight a bit so its reflection on the 'ground' is larger.
Select the backlight (either from the viewport or the Outliner). Go to the Object Properties tab, and set Scale X to 1.5.
Then, let's adjust its options to match those of a backlight:
- Go to the Data Properties tab. In the General rollout, set the Intensity to 5.
- In the Data > Options rollout, enable Invisible. This removes the bright white light on the background 'wall'.
- In the Data > Options > Decay rollout, enable Near Decay and set Near Decay End to 2.
For more information about these options and how they affect the light, see the Rect Light page.
Fill Light
Let's now set the Fill Light's properties. Feel free to experiment with the settings; these are just suggestions for the current tutorial.
- Go to the Data Properties tab > General rollout, and set the Intensity to 20. We don't want this light to overpower the Key Light.
- (optional) You can add color to the Fill and Key Lights to create contrasting highlights. In this case, the Color of the Fill Light is set to HSV: 0.0, 0.5, 1.0. But you can leave the light at its default white color, and the scene will look just as good.
Key Light
For the Key Light, the intensity can stay at default, or you can increase it a bit for a more prominent light. These settings are more like guidelines, so feel free to tweak them as you wish:
- Go to the Data Properties tab > General rollout, and set the Intensity to 40. This light needs to dominate the scene.
- (optional) You can add color to the Fill and Key Lights to create contrasting highlights. In this case, the Color of the Key Light is set to HSV: 0.2, 0.45, 1.0. But you can leave the light at its default white color, and the scene will look just as good.
Render Settings
To refine the sharpness of your render, you need to adjust the V-Ray Render Settings. The defaults achieve good results, but a sharper image is needed for a final render.
- Go to the Render Properties tab > Sampler to access the image sampler parameters.
- Set the Noise Threshold to 0.007.
The Max Subdivs, Noise Threshold, and the Max. Render Time In Min parameters are relative to each other. V-Ray stops the render once one of these three conditions is met. So, a common practice is to set two of these parameters to an unreachable value and use only one parameter to control the render quality.
In this tutorial, we leave the Max Subdivs and the Max. Render Time In Min to their default values which cannot be reached, and we use only the Noise Threshold to determine the quality of the render. The value of 0.007 is quite refined, but you can go as low as 0.001. Keep in mind that more render passes take a longer time, slowing down your render.
Additionally, you can add a Denoiser Render Channel and enable it in the V-Ray Frame Buffer for additional noise removal. However, denoising is not necessary for a simple scene such as this one.
For more information about the render settings and how they affect the final result, see the Render Settings page.
Our scene setup is complete. All that remains is to render the scene and see the result. You can start a production render:
- From the V-Ray menu > Start Production Render
- Through the Render button in the Render Settings
- Open the V-Ray VFB from its dedicated button in the V-Ray menu and select Render
V-Ray menu
Render Settings
V-Ray Frame Buffer
This is the final render with the settings mentioned in the tutorial. Feel free to experiment with this scene. To read more about lighting setups, see the References section.
References
- Birn, J. (2000) ‘Three-Point Lighting’, in Digital Lighting and Rendering. Indianapolis, Indiana: New Riders, pp. 35–60. (https://theswissbay.ch/pdf/Gentoomen%20Library/Game%20Development/Designing/Digital%20Lighting%20and%20Rendering.pdf)