Beginners guide to FStorm Render

Johannes Lindqvist covers the basics of this fairly new and easy to use GPU renderer for 3ds Max.

FStorm Render is young, unbiased GPU renderer for 3ds Max. It is easy to learn and gives nice, predictable results with default settings. It is based on CUDA technology – it works only with Nvidia GeForce cards. As each GPU renderer, it’s scalable, because it can work with multiple GPUs simultaneously.

Fstorm is interactive, you can move camera and get realtime update in frame buffer window. In this version you cannot have realtime view if you move object in the scene, but it’s incoming with future Fstorm updates.

Johannes Lindquist talks also about lighting and materials in Fstorm. Watch the video below:

Fstorm has kernel settings section, where you can adjust parameters for increasing rendering quality – but you can leave them at default in the most cases. You also have environment settings to control skylight colors. Fstorm provides also Tonemapping section to control the exposure and allows you to load LUT tables.

In the camera tab you can enable depth of field. You can set focus directly in the RT window, by choosing the point of the image that should be focused for the chosen camera.

In the Tools you have the scene converter – you can convert from V-Ray, Corona or Octane scenes to Fstorm. Mostly it works right of the box, although it is not perfect.