OMG, Horrible Shadows and Renders in Max- Both Scanline/MR

spectre1130

I have been working on a problem all day. I have a very simple scene of a Medieval bench I'm working on and my shadows and renders are completely F%$#ed. In either Scanline or MR I'm having the same problems. Shadows are only showing on one side of objects correctly, and also picking up the color of the ground plane W/O bounces enabled.

I have tried everything in my knowledge to try and fix this. I've checked all my object properties to make sure shadows enabled is on. Checked all my faces for flipping. Checked my render settings over and over to see if I tweaked something by accident. Deleted lights, and remade new light from scratch. Checked my camera settings and have remade a camera several times-even in just my perspective view the problem persists. Anyhow, I hope a few pics might help me show this better. It is so hard to explain 3D problem in words for me.

Here is my Top down view with some of my settings tabs open:


Here is the view with the camera almost at the same viewing angle as the Key Light. Notice the shadows look quite right except for the massive amounts of color they are receiving from the ground plane even with bounces off-I used a highly colored plane to really accentuate this problem:


This view is with the camera now moved about 35 degrees counter clockwise. No shadows were they should be on the vertical leg from this view. The fill light is turned way down as well. Notice the extreme color bleed in the shadows only here. Even if I try moving the light around different ways, or rotate the bench this persists. IDK what to do anymore:


I know I can keep modeling, but what about when I want to render this later on?? I have even tried opening a new file several times and merging just the bench objects to no avail. I even went as far as totally wiping all my GPU drivers, and re-installing the newest builds. Help please if you can.

Ziggurat2013

Try narrowing down the issue by activating and de-activating your lights. Turn them all off except for one light. Set it to something simple where you know what the result should look like. Tweak each light on its own while the rest are turned off. This way you can narrow down what the culprit is.

Secondly, I would turn off Global Illumination and stick with Final Gather set to Draft for test renders. GI and FG are supposed to bounce light all over the place and if you're getting inaccurate shadows they're just going to make it more difficult.

Lastly, what type of shaders/materials are you working with? Stick with standard for Scanline and Arch and Design for Mental Ray.

spectre1130

Yeah I've been using just a simple Standard Mat for all the renders with just some slight spec. and such. At first I thought it was my Mat giving me the problem but I've redone my materials several times. I have run out of ideas.

As far as turning off lights 1 by 1 I have done that as well. If I turn off my fill light, everything on the opposite side of the key light goes 100% blacked out. I have used a skylight as well for my general illumination, and the same thing happen as with just having the 2 spots.

Thanks for the response, I'll keep trying. I go to school tomorrow for Unity Game Production, and am hoping that my instructor might be able to help. I'm sure though that I'll open the file on the school PC and everything will be peachy keen-isn't that the way it always happens?? Then I'll know maybe my GPU is finally $!&##ing the bed.

Axi5

It does look like it's bouncing light somehow, try disabling final gather all together? Or make sure that default scanline isn't using any advanced lighting. You probably know all of this though. I think you can also turn off object's reflection in object properties, don't quote me on that I don't use that dialogue often. It looks like the whole object is a warm colour though not just the shadows.

spectre1130

after careful troubleshooting some more I think maybe I'm just trippin. I mocked up the same type of scene several times on 2 different PC's at school, an the same shadows persisted. I think just the angle of the light is not picking up the horizontal shadow on the opposite side like a real world scenario. IDK.