Radiosity Light arrangement

[mouj]

Howdy !

I might be wrong here, but i think that radiosity is best used in indoors situations, for it needs a closed mesh to be calculated right (or so i think, maybe someone can pull up a more technical explanation on this), and that may be why you get a blotchy output.

My guess would be to try to use the Light Tracer instead, assuming your character is standing in an "open" environment (like a plane).
Now, if you're using the LT, i think you'll only need a skylight and any pretty standard lighting setup - you'd have to check that but i think that photometric lights are really usefull when using radiosity, since they provide "real-world" parameters, enabling replication of "real-world" lighting situations.
I think any kind of lights, doesn't have to be photometrics, will work.

mouj

[TimWoods]

what radiosity mesh and iteration settings have you used?

[pika]

I set the mesh and iteration setting in Radiosity default. Is there any good setting to start experimenting from?

Thanks

[celticdog]

sounds to me like you have to increase the refine iterations and probably the filter setting on your radiosity. Also, did you make sure that your physical scale in the logarythmic exposure setting matches the setting of your skylight?

[pika]

Thank you very much. I am starting to get it right, but I am having trouble putting Logarithmic Exposue setting back to
default value. It happens to any other tool in Max that remembers the last values when creating something. Is there
any way to put those value to default as I creat new object or
use a new control?

[celticdog]

i don't think so, but I could be wrong. Thats the b!tch about radiosity; lots of trial and error, and.........................................waiting for test renders

[TimWoods]

low settings are ok, but wont give you an idea of how it will look. the comparison between a final solution and a test solution are massive. Increase mesh size and iterations. You can increase these on the object properties, which is usefull for optimising.
For extreme quality try thr regathering, but dont be supprised if you have to wait a life time for the render.
radiosity is like women, very unpredicatable :thumbsup:

[pika]

After many try and fail, I sort of started to figure out how the radiosity work. The first big mistake was I did not place the object
in a closed closed environment.

Another problem I encountered was that one photometric light did not do much in the scene and ended up too dark. So I added a couple of more lights as I do in a normal rendering. Although I had to reduce some intensity of each light.

Then, I cameacross another issue. The backgroun ended up too bright. The reason was that I put a pure white material on the walls and the floor, ended up getting overall washed out scene.

So I darkend the BG color a little bit and then it started looking much better.

Sometimes I don't get any shadow even though I turn the shadow on, and also Cast Shadow on for each object. So I started from scratch and this time it worked, without finding out
what was wrong.

Maybe I had a room created by using a box with no divisioin in it? or I had some strange setting in the light?

Well I'll play a bit more and see what happens.

Thank you all for the help.

[TimWoods]

ive found that shadows can disappear, you have to set the advanced light parameter to use none, then select radiosity again. Shadows will then work again. its a weird glitch.
keep practising. maxs radiosity isnt great and takes alot of tweaking, but it can make a great model look fantastic, so its worth the effort.
:beer:

[claudio.rizzi]

I heve download a script that simulate Enviroment Light. It' s perfect for your work....

If you want it mail my(rizzi1979@libero.it) and i sent it to you...

here is a sample of my character rendered with this lighting script...

bye

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