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wkornf
10-30-2008, 01:54 AM
Hello there,

im trying to setup some renders for my demo reel / student show at university. I was wondering what the common practice is for lighting/rendering character models of the low poly/normal mapped sort?

ive tinked with raytracing, which causes anomalies in the lighting with my normal mapped character.

dmap shadows, which dont handle my transparancy, however, look nice with fast renders

GI, which i cant really seem to do my model any justice, i think this is more suited to environments?

also FG, which seems to work fine for brightening up the overall image, but doesnt seem to cast shadows.


ANy help on standard practices for a model with normal maps and transparancies?

thanks wayne
mister3d
10-30-2008, 05:14 AM
If you use transparency maps, you don't have a choice and have to use raytraced shadows. What kind of anomalities did you have? In general it's better to avoid transparency maps as you start running into troubles with lighting and compositing later. Normal maps are usually rendered well with different kinds of GI. If I were you, I would fake Gi with standard lights. You animation will be flicker-free and rendered fast.
SImulating Gi for animation does not mean less quality. It takes some time to learn to setup, but when you choose between 2 minutes fof a freme and an hour, it makes much sense, espeically if you render thouands of frames. Faking Gi was used for a long time in movie production and many realistic shots were made with it. There is a video on this topic called "lighting the hallway" by gnomonology, I'm sure it may be interesting to you.
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