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3ds Max Rain Setup

July 30, 2024
In this (hopefully brief) tutorial, we are sharing how the rain on this simple scene was created. If you want you can download the file here to follow along, we have replaced the robots with teapots as we do not own the rights to share these models.
The amount of Objects on the Scene has been kept pretty minimal; in the Objects layer are the objects that will be visible on the render, everything else is just part of the setup that will be explained below.
Lets start by keeping just the basics on and work on the materials of the main 4 objects (water being the focus of this article).
GROUND & WALL MATERIALS
For the ground and other assets we will use some free textures from polyhaven we are only going to use 2k as we dont think we need more resolution, also chose the ZIP option so you get all the texture components you need; also check the type of files you want… EXRS may be needed for some very high res details, in this case JPG will suffice
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
You can create the material manually, connecting each JPG to the approrpriate slot, or if you want to speed up the process this is a great script that will do that for you
Download Material Texture Loader script

For the backwall anything can work (even an HDRI) in this case we have just a plane with a photo of some buildings as texture; this will be out of focus anyway so no need to spend time on it.

We will leave the Teapot without Material for now as it is just a dummy placeholder
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
THE CAMERA
has a few settings that need to be adjusted for the proper depth of field setup, besides that is a very generic type of camera
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization

LIGHTING SETUP

For the lighting we are using an HDRI from polyhaven and our script to work with lighting
Download Quick Environment Script V2
And so far we have this:
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization

Below is how the distance map look if connected to the diffuse of a blank material; this is usually one of the best ways to really understand what every component is doing to your map

WATER

For the water we are creating a duplicate plane just above the ground. (distance can vary, should not be coplanar); The basic material is basically like a glass but with thin shell so we do not get refractions calculated…
One extra detail is to use the maps connected to the opacity as a multiply to make the floor darken, like what happen when a floor is wet, but water hasn’t yet accumulated…. if additionally the distance is modified, a transition zone can be made where border close to water is already getting wet to help it look more consistent

Autodesk 3ds Max rain setup tutorial for architectural visualization
RAIN

Up to this point everything is pretty much what most 3Dmax users at mid level are comfortable doing; this next part, is not complicated but is what makes this scene stand out and requires the use of Tyflow (although could perhaps be done with standard particle flow, TP, or other methods following the same logic)

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