Lighting and 3D rendering tutorial

This is a tutorial on making a 3 point lighting scene with backscatter and a anaglyph (red/blue) 3D camera rig in 3DS MAX and how to combine the rendered images in Photoshop

First create a Sphere at 0,0,0 of about 2000” and set hemisphere to 0.5 and name it “Stage”

Turn the sphere 90 degrees and move it up so that three horizontal sections are below the 0 line

convert the sphere to poly, then use polygon selection to remove the upper most end cap

Use vertex selection to flatten the bottom of the sphere

Under the modifier roll out select normals (not edit normals) and make sure that flip normals is checked, Under the modifier roll out select mesh smooth

Open the material editor then open the material browser and select architectural materials, select paper from templates, then change the diffuse to white (255, 255, 255) and apply to sphere

freeze stage

create a target camera, make sure that the target is at 0, 0, 0 and that the camera is at 0, 3000, 0 Name the camera “RED” clone a copy of the camera and name it “BLUE”set camera position to 2.5, 3000, 0

create a dummy at 1.25, 3000, 0 and name it “camera helper” link both cameras to it then freeze the cameras, create a dummy at 0, 0, 0 and name it “focal point” link both camera targets to it, then freeze the targets

create a dummy at 0, 1500, 0 and name it root then link camera helper and focal point to root.

create a target spot light, make sure that the target is at 0, 0, 0 Name it “Key light” Turn shadows on and select Area shadows,, move the camera to the behind the cameras

under spotlight perimeters change the hot spot to 30 and falloff to 50 under area shadows set shadow quality and shadow integrity to 15 Set light color to 255, 255, 255

clone a copy of the light, move it to the left of the cameras and name it “Fill light” set multiplier to 0.5 and light color to 255, 245, 180

clone a copy of the light, move it to the right of the cameras and name it “Back light” set multiplier to 0.25 and light color to 180, 245, 255

create a target spot light, make sure that the target is at 0, 0, 0 and that the spotlight is at 0, 0, 65000 name it “Backscatter 1” Turn shadows off set multiplier to 0.2 and light color to 180, 250, 255

clone a copy of the light and move it to 0, 0, -65000 and name it “Backscatter 2”

The scene should look something like this

To create a 3D image render from RED then BLUE camera separately and with the same resolution

open both images in Photoshop

in the rendering from the RED camera open the channels window, select the red channel and copy it

in the rendering from the BLUE camera open the channels window, select the red channel and paste the red channel from the RED camera into the BLUE camera's red channel