Max6 Radiosity + vertex baking + indoors

Joshua Stubbles

I was wondering if any of you guys have had a lot of experience with vertex baking radiosity in max6. Specifically, for indoor enviornments. Regular omni lights have to be set to very high values in order for lighting to show up (values of 30 or more), and can cause some unusual results at times. For outdoor enviornments, I'd usually start off with the "skylight" light, but that is rendered useless when you enclose your enviornment.

If any of you have ideas on what works good for indoor radiosity in max6, please share!

Eric Chadwick

Haven't done it personally, but here's a tutorial.
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=168514#post1571734

Joshua Stubbles

Hrm. I already knew about this thread. I know how to do prelighing, that's not a prob. I'm just having a difficult time getting max6 radiosity to work in a closed out, indoor enviornment. I would normally use a skylight in conjunciton with a directional light, for outdoor enviornments. When your scene is enclosed though, the skylight is rendered obsolete. To get omni's to affect radiosity indoors, you have to bump up their value quite high, which is something I want to avoid.

Eric Chadwick

OK, sorry about that. I'm still in max5 here, but I've baked an indoor closed scene. I used the Adv Material Override to make an opaque window material emit light for the radiosity solution. Also I turned on Auto Exposure Control, increasing the Exposure Value spinner after the solution, to tweak the intensity. I ended up baking to a bitmap, but the lighting is initially stored in the verts, so I gather you know how to bake those.

Here's what I ended up with...
http://www.whatif-productions.com/Images/20040312_crates_0008.jpg

Joshua Stubbles

Ahh okay. Yea, baking the verts and rtt I already know. The adv material override worked wonders for the scene. Thanks a lot, Eric.

Eric Chadwick

You're welcome. Can you show the results?

Joshua Stubbles

Unfortuneatly no. It's for our console title. Shouldn't be too much longer before I can post some shots though