Luminous objects as a light source?

[Ls3D]

Objects can emit light with a 3rd party plug-in. Used to be called lumaobject but I think it is now a part of cebas?...

Radiosity, global illumination, etc is possible with many third party plug-ins and will likely be a part of max 5. You can play with some for free such a the Brazil rendering system over at splutterfish.

Remember to try direct light sources, attenuation and non-uniform scaling of lights.

BTW - When I had Lightscape at the office I used to bake up radiosity solutions and then just use standard max tools and photoshop (textures) to emulate the results without all the hassel of tweaking lighscape scenes. The results where then baked into textures and ported to SGI Onyx workstations.

-Shea
www.Ls3D.com

[xynaria]

There is a free plug in here:
http://www.gfx-inside.net/lightmesh/
that may help you acheive what you want though I'm not totally sure, but it should be worth a try. :)

[toast]

that's a cool link xynaria, I remember visiting that site a few months back when he announced that fluid simulation, but I guess I just glossed over the lightmesh plugin.

from what I could tell it gives pretty decent results, altho sometimes you gotta do some extra tweaking. Otherewise for a free plugin, it does a nice job. Won't put any GI or radiosity plugs out of business but it's a great little tool for quickly setting up 'object based' light models.

try it out

[Tathar]

Thank you very much for the replies and the link.

I am a visualization tech. I do animation shorts for civil designs (i.e. highway designs, structural design photo sims and such. I am at the moment doing a photo sim for a propose fish screen, fish ladder and pump stations for irrigation in California.

For the light that is reflecting off the water I have been setting up omni lights. This has proven to be some what time consuming. Especially since I am not a ligting expert by no stretch of the imagination. Although it has been a great learning experience it is certainly not the most efficient way.

Once again I appreciate your input.

Cheers. :bounce:

[xynaria]

If it is the caustics you have been trying to emulate via lights, one of the fastest solutions available is Bunch of Volumes from Cebas and it's not that expensive or hard to set up. :)

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