Set the world on fire

While some 3D artists like to keep an illustrated quality in their images, making the pictures’ CG origins obvious, the ambition for others is to capture the most realistic feel they possibly can. Which approach you prefer is a matter of project needs and creative preference, of course, but if you fall into the latter camp, investing in a specialist rendering engine can pay dividends. Maxwell Render, the software we use for this project, is capable of eerily naturalistic results that can make onlookers question your claim to have created the image yourself.

Like other third-party renderers, Maxwell operates as a plug-in within your existing 3D studio software: plug-ins are available for 3ds Max, Maya, LightWave 3D, Rhino, Houdini and a selection of CAD tools, as well as the application we’ve paired it with for this tutorial: Cinema 4D. Drop the Maxwell plug-in into your tool’s Plug-ins folder and start up your software to see additional menu options, providing access to Maxwell facilities. Some options open up Maxwell tools that you can also use on a standalone basis.

For this tutorial, we’ll assume that you have a model ready to render – we’re using a toy fire truck that’s available for download, but you can apply the techniques shown here to any of your own models. We’ll focus on your options for adding the materials, cameras and lights that will generate the most effective result. In many cases, Maxwell’s features differ significantly from what you might be used to in your host software.

Before you start, however, you should make sure that every part of your model is on a 1:1 scale to your reference source: if an element is 10mm long in the real-world source, make it 10mm in your 3D application. This is important for setting up the camera and light emitters for realistic rendering: if your scene is too small or too big, it will affect how the emitters light the scene as well as how the camera focuses on the objects. In Cinema 4D, you can set the unit used for measurements to suit the size of object you’re modelling – from kilometres and metres to centimetres, millimetres and even nanometres. Set the unit before you commence modelling: select Edit > Preferences > Units, and use the Basic Units pulldown menu.

Click here to download the support files (15.9MB)