Request for V-Ray Tutorial or Example Scene

[AHDD Designer]

Now that I have made several attempts to use the V-Ray plugin with Form.Z successfully, I'm still a bit disillusioned: There are too many settings, the light and the surfaces don't come (or only by chance) as intended.

If I am looking for instructions on the internet, the tutorials are mostly based on other programs, such as SketchUp or the native V-Ray program. But the settings within Form.Z seem to be very different to me - or don't work properly...

Does anyone know of a tutorial on YouTube that explains the processes in interior design? Or could someone even create one (autodessys ?). Could someone at least share or upload a Form.Z sample scene that contains the most important camera, material, environment and lighting settings?

Thank you very much!

Attached are some renders, that illustrate my skills so far:

[Andrew West]

I probably have done more interiors than most on this so I will chime in here. 
There is really no set way to do an interior as the lighting will be different depending on the situation.  Unlike exteriors that rely on a simple sun position or a dome light.  However, there is a process that I use that I will share.

First off set your exterior sun to the desired position for interior shadows. Go to the suns override settings and make the size of it 5 so that the shadows are softer.  Make sure your glass is not casting or receiving shadows.

Now place a light plane that is the size of your window just outside your glass and make it a portal light.  I often give this light a texture map (hdri) so that it adds atmosphere to the image.  Set the intensity to about 50.  Parameters: invisible and does not affect reflections.

Place a rectangular box area light in the middle of the room and make sure it does not touch anything.  Set it to about 30 and make sure that under Parameters it is invisible and does not affect reflections.  This is true for any other interior lights you might add.

Then I go to my camera settings and adjust the exposure to get it close.  It does not need to be exact since you can always adjust exposure during the render process.  I will then turn on AO, adjust the shading rate up, set my render elements and adjust everything else in the V-ray settings while I am there. 

Once I get the lighting about right I can then add specific cone, spot or line lights depending upon the architecture.  These don't seem to add much to the overall exposure but they help to add realism to the scene. 

One thing that I would like to comment on in your scenes is the lack of gloss on many of your materials.  All materials have a certain amount of gloss to them.  For some reason the default for V-ray is set to a black color and a value of 1.  For me I start with a white color.  For dull materials like rough plaster I will set the gloss to 0.2 and for high gloss I will set it to 0.85. 

While we are on the subject of materials I also find it very useful to assign a Material ID color to my most important materials.  If you then enable Material ID in your render elements you can adjust color and isolate the materials very easily post process.  This saves a lot of time later.  It also allows me to place my window reflections perfectly on my exterior scenes since I have my glass isolated.

Finally, for true realism I also use the Glare effect in the render window and sometimes I will even use the Bloom tab.   Some clients hate these and some love them so use them cautiously. 

Hope this helps.  As always there are many ways to set up a scene and this is just my down and dirty approach for a starting point.

[AHDD Designer]

Dear Andrew

Thank you for your comprehensive step-by-step instructions.

Your explanations are really a good starting point

 At the next opportunity I will try to incorporate these inputs.

I would still like to see autodessys produce an explanatory movie...

Theo

[Justin Montoya]

Great stuff Andrew!  Thank you for sharing!

Theo,

I agree we could use a bit more documentation, and I believe that is coming once we get FormZ 9, which will have more features and a changed UI.

Anywho, if you import this Sketchup example, I've found you can do the same things in VRay for FormZ, but the menus are slightly different. - https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAYSKETCHUP/Interior+Lighting+QuickStart