In front viewport draw a rectangle like in pic. Turn on enable in renderer and enable in viewport and instead of radial choose rectangular. For thickness put around 5. That is the frame. Move it next to the wall but just a bit away. Call it frame1 and clone it with chift click and copy and call that object canvas1. In canvas properties turn off enable in renderer and viewport and add edit mash modifier. With this in a couple of moves we got a frame and canvas perfectly positioned inside the frame. Group them and name. Make another picture if you wish (well I did).

Table looks a bit empty. We will add another plain bowl on it. In front viewport zoom so that it is easy to make a contour of a bowl. When you are done with that go to vertex sub object mode and on two middle vertexes add fillet from properties so that contour is slightly curved, like shown here.

To this object add lathe modifier. Don’t worry if it looks strange when you start. Under align group properties lathe modifier turn on max and weld core. If bowl looks strange you will have to probably turn on flip normals.

Now for rendering. Select all objects with CTRL + A, and add the same material from the material editor from main menu, with assign material to selection. Make it like some white material (diffuse and ambient to white color) This is just our test material.

In render dialog from main menu under common tab on bottom find Assign render. There under production group probably says default scanline. Click the button with three dots and choose mental ray from the list. Now you got mental ray renderer on the scene. Render dialog will change and you will get a new tab (Indirect illumination). Go to indirect illumination and turn on final gather. Under samples, instead of default 500 it will be enough to test render 50. Select viewport with camera and click render and you should get something like this.

Not bad but we are missing materials. We will use mainly materials that max has when installed. They will be sufficient for start. Go to next slot of material editor. We will choose material for armchair construction, table, lamp from maxes library of raytraced materials. Click the get material button in material editor and under browse material group choose library. Maxes libraries with materials are in matlibs directory of your installation. Find and open raytraced_02 library and choose metal silver (click twice and material will find itself in the selected material editor). Go to next slot and open raytraced_01 and choose glass_clear material. Now we are left with materials for picture frames, picture, bowl and leather seats, walls and floor.

For frames make another standard material in a new slot, for type put blinn, under diffuse color put black, increase shiness to 50 and that’s it. Go to next slot and make a material we will use for seating and backrest of armchair. Choose phong for type and under diffuse put white. For highlights select white. Put specular level to 90 and glossiness to 80. This will be the white leather material (don’t forget to name materials accordingly) Switch to a free slot and with get material find architecture materials finishes, choose finishes/plaster/stucco/fine/white material for the wall. From the same library in the next free slot put finishes/massonary/flooring/terrazzo/white for floor. For picture materials we will make two new materials. Go to a free slot and open maps, click the “none” button next to diffuse and find abstract shimmer.jpg picture in maps/misc directory. For next picture in new material find ABALONE.jpg in the same directory. Increase specular leve of both materials to 50.

For the lamp light we will also make a simple material. It will be enough to put white as ambient and diffuse colors and than turn on self illumination and with drag and drop move the white color to the new color slot. Material should be totally white and luminescence. Now we have only the bowl material left. In a new slot choose type Phong, specular level 80 and glossiness 50. Under diffuse map in maps group find wallnut3.tga in maps/woods/   directory of your max installation. You can like I add raytrace on the reflection slot. Turn on reflection click “none” button and from the list material map/browser (browse from: new) choose raytrace. Lower to 25 as we do not want the bowl to look like a mirror.

All you need to do now is add all these materials to object on scene. If you followed our advice and named everything it should not be hard. Ungroup everything you did until now and open Select by name from main menu. There you can choose more objects on scene and give them a material. Metal silver for armchair, table, and lamp. Clear glass for glass on table, bowl and white material for seating and backrest of armchair, picture frame and pictures.

When adding materials to walls and floor we will use a small trick. Select wall and add finishes.plaster.stucco.fine.white material and then go to polygon sub object mode. Select the floor and add material for floor. Now one object has two materials. Your scene is ready to be rendered. Don’t forget to experiment with materials. All maps in materials can be changed or added bigger tile value.