in this QuickStart tutorial lesson we
will walk through the process of setting
up a nighttime exterior render for an
arc vis workflow using v-ray next for
Sketchup I'm using Sketchup Pro 2019 and
I'll be working in the project labeled
zero to two exterior lighting night
start which you can download from the
link in the description of this video
let's begin by taking a look at what is
already set up in the project and then
I'll walk you through a workflow for
creating nighttime lighting first in the
v-ray asset editor head to the render
settings and let's make sure that the
material override switch is toggled on
this way we can focus more carefully on
the lighting without any distractions
from our materials now let's go ahead
and start an interactive render also
note that we have the Nvidia AI denoiser
on as well so we can get noise free
results faster as our preview loads
you'll see that some objects do not have
their material overridden for example
the glass material for the windows if we
head to the materials tab we can search
for glass and if we select the glass
window neutral material you'll see that
a parameter that is normally on by
default called can be overridden has
already been unchecked for us any
materials with this setting unchecked
will not be overridden by the material
override this is useful for transparent
materials like glass so that we can do a
clay render and still see inside the
interior of our house through the
windows for a night scenario especially
this will come in handy when we want to
play with the lights inside the house
later in order to add some warmth to the
image okay if we head to the lights tab
you'll see that our image is currently
lit by a dome light with an HDR I loaded
in its color texture slot let's click on
the texture slot then on the folder file
path and swap in a different image I'm
gonna load in an HDR I called the sky is
on fire 4k and give it a moment for
v-ray to update in the interactive
render as you can see the image is
tremendously overexposed so let's click
on the dome lights intensity value here
and lower it down to 1
that's looking much better already now
let's head to the texture placement
settings of the HDRI so we can tweak the
rotation I'm going to set its rotation
to 150 again let's give the interactive
render a moment just to see how that
looks and alright I'm happy with that
now we can move on to place some lights
around in our project and make the image
a bit more interesting and lifelike
let's stop the interactive render close
the VfB and the asset editor then let's
zoom in the perspective here so we can
take a closer look at the exterior
lights on our house
now from the very lights toolbar let's
select the very sphere light and then
click and drag to place it above the
wall lamp next select the sphere light
and then select the move tool and let's
use that to lower the lamp into position
inside the cylinder
and then going to duplicate the sphere
light to the other wall lamp fixtures on
the exterior of our house by holding the
control key while clicking on the light
with the move tool
you
okay once I've got these in position
here for all the lights let's head back
over to the front of the house again and
take a look at the windows in front of
the windows here let's select this rail
and then apply a V or a mesh light to it
by clicking on convert to view a mesh
light this way when we render the image
the rail geometry will emit light acting
as an outdoor porch lamp for our house
now let's double click on the render
camera scene to return to our render
view and move forward back in the asset
editor you can see that I have already
created and prepared a few other lights
for this project in a similar fashion
I've named them respective to their
location to keep things organized and
they're also all turned off except the
dome light let's go ahead and switch off
the new lights we created as well this
way we can turn on and tweak our lights
one by one so that we can better
understand their contribution to the
image all right now let's start an
interactive render
I'm gonna draw a small render region
around the front porch windows for a
faster preview of this area then let's
turn the interior light back on and
start adjusting its settings at first we
can't really see anything that's because
its intensity is far too low
let's try increasing it in increments
starting with something like five
thousand there's no exact science behind
this you may simply need to test that a
few different values and get a feel for
them before narrowing in on what looks
aesthetically pleasing I think a value
of ten thousand looks right for an
interior light in the house let's also
click its color swatch in the asset
editor to change its color to a nice
warm orange and make this setting feel a
bit more homely and cozy okay now let's
move forward to tweak the mesh light
that we created I'm going to draw
another render region around the general
area of the mesh light and then let's
switch it on from the asset editor
it's also not strong enough at first so
let's crank up the intensity to
something like 3000
now let's do something different this
time to tweak its color if we click on
its color texture slot we can add a
temperature texture this will enable us
to set the color of the light using a
temperature value in the Kelvin scale I
think a value of around 20 300 Kelvin
complements the interior lighting quite
nicely so let's leave it at that
now let's draw a new render region on
the left side of the house for a faster
preview and then let's adjust the other
lights following the same workflow
once again I'll give them the
appropriate intensity and the same warm
color that we applied to the interior
light an easy way to do this is to
simply right-click on the color swatch
in the asset list click copy and then
right click on the color swatch for the
other light and choose paste this way
we'll have even inconsistent lighting in
our overall render result without any
conflicting color tones as you can see
the general idea here for the look I'm
going for is to create a nice contrast
between an evening themed exterior using
the natural light from an HDR eye and
some simple warm artificial lighting now
I'm also going to draw our render region
on the bottom right here and let's
enable the garden' sphere lights and
tweak them as well these will help to
give the lower third of our composition
a bit more contrast than lighting
similarly I'll draw a render region on
the left over the grass and enable the
rectangle garden lamps and tweak them
over all these ground lights will help
to make our image more aesthetically
pleasing by creating some more light
shadows and contrast in areas beyond
just the exterior and interior of our
house all right now that we have set up
the lighting for our image let's turn
off the interactive render for a moment
and disable the render region then let's
head to the render settings and switch
the material override off so that we can
see how our image looks with all our
materials supplied now let's start
another interactive render
okay I'm liking how that looks if you'd
like you're welcome at this point to
tweak anything else in the project
before preparing to do a final
production render when you're happy with
your interactive preview let's stop the
interactive render and prepare our
settings for production I'm gonna turn
off the interactive switch and make sure
my quality setting is on high then let's
set the resolution to 1600 by 720 in the
render output settings
finally let's switch the denoiser engine
from the nvidia AI denoiser to the
default v-ray denoiser okay once you're
ready we can go ahead and press render
you
and there you go now you've completed a
final production render of an exterior
night setting using very next for
sketchup as a final step don't forget to
save the render result to your hard
drive by clicking on the little disk
icon at the top of the VfB
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