3ds Max 2010 Skylight Problems
polycounter lvl 11
Well after a few hours of searching online with no prevail, I decided to ask the community here at polycount.
Up until recently, I have yet to use 3ds Max for anything other than strictly modeling. If I wanted to render out a scene with global illumination, I would just put a skylight in, allow it to cast shadows, and hit "Render".
After stumbling upon a Racer445 tutorial titled "How to Bake a Flawless Normal Map in 3ds Max" I decided to test it out, and use it to render my normal and AO maps on a simple wall section (xNormal was giving me problems, so I was looking for an alternative).
The first two bakes came out perfect. I followed his video precisely and got great results. I finished around 1AM, so off to bed I went, planning on finishing the next variation (using the same low poly, but a different high poly) when I woke up. After waking up, opening the tutorial again, and following along the same as I did before I began getting terrible AO bakes. Instead of nice, decently sized dark shadows, I got very light, almost unnoticeable shadows, which made it impossible to see any of my obvious detail from the high poly.
After trying to mess with a few obvious settings (the ones which Racer445 says to adjust or turn on/off) I gave up and ended up figuring out my issue in xNormal. A few clicks later and I have all 4 maps baked out of xNormal.
Now here comes my problem. I am back inside Max today and I am trying to render out a basic high poly using my simple global illumination as stated before, and I am getting very low quality shadows. I tried adjusting the presets to a few that looked familiar, but the only change I can get is back to the way the old AO maps came out when trying to bake my wall a few weeks ago. The shadows are very fair, and most of the obvious detail is lost.
So what am I doing wrong? I'm sure its just a rogue check box, or fairly obvious setting I have tweaked, but it is giving me a headache
If anyone knows what my problem is, or has a simple solution (like restoring my default render settings, or giving me another simple way to render out global illumination) than I would love to know it. I can't stand not knowing what I've screwed up inside Max...
Thanks
Up until recently, I have yet to use 3ds Max for anything other than strictly modeling. If I wanted to render out a scene with global illumination, I would just put a skylight in, allow it to cast shadows, and hit "Render".
After stumbling upon a Racer445 tutorial titled "How to Bake a Flawless Normal Map in 3ds Max" I decided to test it out, and use it to render my normal and AO maps on a simple wall section (xNormal was giving me problems, so I was looking for an alternative).
The first two bakes came out perfect. I followed his video precisely and got great results. I finished around 1AM, so off to bed I went, planning on finishing the next variation (using the same low poly, but a different high poly) when I woke up. After waking up, opening the tutorial again, and following along the same as I did before I began getting terrible AO bakes. Instead of nice, decently sized dark shadows, I got very light, almost unnoticeable shadows, which made it impossible to see any of my obvious detail from the high poly.
After trying to mess with a few obvious settings (the ones which Racer445 says to adjust or turn on/off) I gave up and ended up figuring out my issue in xNormal. A few clicks later and I have all 4 maps baked out of xNormal.
Now here comes my problem. I am back inside Max today and I am trying to render out a basic high poly using my simple global illumination as stated before, and I am getting very low quality shadows. I tried adjusting the presets to a few that looked familiar, but the only change I can get is back to the way the old AO maps came out when trying to bake my wall a few weeks ago. The shadows are very fair, and most of the obvious detail is lost.
So what am I doing wrong? I'm sure its just a rogue check box, or fairly obvious setting I have tweaked, but it is giving me a headache
If anyone knows what my problem is, or has a simple solution (like restoring my default render settings, or giving me another simple way to render out global illumination) than I would love to know it. I can't stand not knowing what I've screwed up inside Max...
Thanks