Question about rendering and colour [3dsmax]

shadowl00t

So I've been working on a assignment for my internship, and I have to turn some 2d icons in 3d which is al fun and games.

But I need to render these models to have a low dynamic colour range (Only darker on edges of the model)

I'm pretty new to using rendering techniques. So I have a hard time figuring this out.

http://i.imgur.com/n2DfbsX.png

On the left is the actual render with lighting used, and the other one is a render with standard skylight.

But with skylight i'm not getting any shadows that I can use for my model.

Mr Digital

You could try the ink & paint material, a nice setup for ink edge size and using mental ray could be more interesting trough.

Vailias

Remove, or turn off your lights.
Set the color to whatever you need.
Set the self illumination to a falloff shader.
Set the front to white, back to black, falloff to fresnel or whatever looks good.
it will ramp the opacity down along the surface normal and should result in a fairly flat lighting look that will shade darker as the surface turns away from the camera.

Its hard to tell if that's actually what you're looking for without knowing your target end result.

Eric Chadwick

You can do something similar with Falloff, but your example on the left is made with a spotlight and GI. With Falloff you get more control, but a different look (dark around all edges of the model, except where the main light is hitting).

This is done with a shadow casting spotlight above and to the right. A white surface under the model, and global illumination for the bounce lighting under the car. You don't need a Skylight for this example.

shadowl00t

Thanks for all the comments, it helped alot.