Another basic tutorial that talks about natural interior lighting and the “theory” behind it. A must, if you just can’t seem to get your interior scenes to look right. This 3DS Max tutorial will walk you through lighting a small room, using “natural” light casting through a single window.

This tutorial will help you create great-looking, volumetric lights in 3DS Max. In the real world, this effect is visible when there’s a lot of dust in an enclosed space. The tutorial also skims through basic interior lighting techniques, without going into too much detail. Enjoy.

This tutorial will help you master the art of caustics in just a couple of easy-to-follow steps. In essence a caustic network is the projection of reflected or refracted light rays passing through a transparent surface. In 3DS Max this is handled by the renderer, in this case Mental Ray. It calculates the angle at which light hits a surface and how it is affected by the surface’s properties.