3DS Max: Darker shadows, darker AO?

adam

Hello!



I have a question for rendering from max. I am trying to render a scene that has 2 things:

1. Ambient Occlusion
2. A sun as a single source of light

TO do this, I am using 2 lights in my Max file:

1. SkyLight
2. Omni

Both are set to cast shadows. Both have their light intensity/multiplier set to "0.5"

Right now I am getting results that are very bright. The shadows are too light and the AO isn't hardly noticeable. I am using Max's default scanline renderer. I know that the reason is that I have 2 light sources filling in each others values (lights/shadows). So I am wondering if there is a solution here where I can control the AO values and shadow values to get darker results? Simplying upping the intensity of the shadows from the Omni isn't working, either.

I am wondering if anyone has suggestions for getting back control out of my lights and AO? I'd like to make the shadows darker and the AO darker, while spreading it more as well.

The reason I am using Scanline is that I can turn off anti-aliasing and texture filtering, which is important to the style I am trying to achieve.

adam

I spoke to Uly at work today and his suggest was to render the AO in Mental ray, the lighting/diffuse in Scanline, and merge the 2 in photoshop. I'm keen on that idea if there is no other single-pass solution here.

Noors

The issue with AO is that if you render with no filtering, you'll need a very high samples count to have no grain.
Tho you'd certainly have more control on falloff and spread than with a skylight.

You can put a ambien/reflective Occlusion in the diffuse of the standard mat and put your diffuse in the "bright" channel.
For no AA and no filtering, go to the render setup>renderer>sampling quality min and max to 1, filter to triangle.

You could make 2 passes aswell for full control over blending in photoshop, so you could render 1 pass with skylight or AO, 1 with direct and composite...I just thought that normally AO isn't multiplied but overlayed with luminosity -50%. So, if you want to fine tune, then 2 passes. Atleast you can make both with MR or both with scanline, so no need to switch between renderers.

Popeye9

If you didnt want to composite you could render to texture the ao in mental ray then transfer it to vert color. Louis Marcoux has a tutorial on his site for this. Third post down in the Archicve post

http://www.louismarcoux.com/MaxTips.htm

I also use light tracer for controlling AO when rendering in scanline. I also get more control with renders using exposure control.

Bubba91873

It was my understanding that ao from MR in 3ds max is quite broken and or very ugly results when compared to scanline renderer.I''ll also set samples in rtt to 220-256 range.

What I typically do with ao for tanks/vehicles is to render with the base coat of paint instead of going for a ao /black/white result with nice highlights and color transitions and mix 2 or more results together to get what I want. Edit in photoshop as needed.

Also mixing maps with a flat plane and or a half open bowl that goes to the top of vehicle gives good results and a map without.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=55161

As for the spread of the ao play with spread and max distance in the rtt dialog box.
http://fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=425097

adam

Thanks everyone. I got the AO baking great (did it in passes).