Do you still have those omnis in the scene? Your shadows are looking really washed out. In fact I can't make out any shadows at all. Everything is over-lit.
well as your rendering in max using the light tracer (arnt you?), unless you are going to lightmap the whole scene you are using HDR, all it really means is that your rendering with values not between 0-1 (or o-255 in the colour channels) but values that could go up to infinity. now the issue is that when it renders it wil only display between o-1, now what you need is to display different ranges depending on whether you are looking at a dark area (brightens it up) or light area (darkens it down), you can do this by adding an exposure control which is in the render menu. you can also fiddle with the controls here to get it to adjust the bias to light spots or dark.
you only really need HDR images if you are going to bake the lighting into the scene and even then game engines quite often just stretch the lightmaps over say 0-2 (which results in some banding and artefacting but you generaly can get away with it. i have got a little something to show you somepoint tonight and ill do it in HDR so that you can see what i mean
Hey Eric, no I removed the omnis. I am only using a skylight and spot light right now. Ya, I dont knwo why my shadows are not as dark as I would like. If I turn the light down it doesnt seem to work well with my shadow map. So, I am trying to figure this issue out right now.
Shep, I am using default scanline render with no advanced lighting turned on right now. When I tried turning the advanced lighting on, it kicked my system in the nuts. Cool, can't wait to see what you have later. Thanks guys..
right yeah the advanced lighting is a bugger for speed but i would say its worth it.
this is a little scene i knocked up its using three directionals and a sky light
i put a gradient ramp in the sky dome colour slot and 1 bounce in the lightracer
two filler directionals with oh so soft shadowmaps
one "sun" light which is ramoped up to 5 intensity and has raytraced shadows
its also got automatic exposure control
and some effects i put n there when bored ;-)
here is a shot from the exposure control preview to show the effect left side has no control on
and heres two renders
Id also like to say that rendering in max is not as good as i remember it, and this could do with quite a bit of fine tuning but id stick with it get a good setup and save that off as a seperate scene, then when it comes to rendering merge the scene with you most recent work to get the render setup/lighting setup back
Also, remember when tweaking lighting, you should set up the rendering dimensions to be super-small, like 320x240 or 160x120, and Ctrl-click the render to zoom it up.
Also take Light Tracer way down in quality, take Rays/Sample from 250 (default) down to like 5 for testing. It'll be super-grainy, but accurate enough for value tweaks.
yep i did that for this scene and it took about 15 seconds at super low (as above really though slightly more rays 32 dont know why but i like to keep te numbers square) when i rendered it out for final it took 5 minutes at 800x600 with no AA, so yeah get your shots setup and tested alot first as a final render will take ages.
funny thing is i can lightmap a scene as complex as yours in about five minutes with allsorts of fancy shit going on at work Max just isnt very efficient at this.
you can also try using the radiosity lighter to get quick results and transfer those over to the lightmapper, the good thing about radiosity is it is independant of rendering so you can do it once and have a good nosy round the scene
Hey Shep, looks good. When you added the 2 extra direction lights, what values did you have them at? I am messign around with 2 new lights to the scene, light tracer, and an environment map. It is still takign awhile to render 320x168 or whatever it is. Damn renders.
Does anyone know why this crazy banding is happening? It is only happening on some of my alphas. I have replaced them to make sure the image wasnt corrupt and still the same thing? Is there an issue with the lighting?
Still looks like you have some kind of upwards-facing fill light in there, instead of using the SkyLight and Light Tracer to bounce light around.
For example the inner columns supporting the roof... their tops should be nearly black. Instead it looks like your temple has a bunch of fluorescents inside. Try lighting with just a single SkyLight and a single Direct light, and increase the Light Tracer's Bounce spinner to 1 or 2 (default 0).
Sorry, dunno what's going on with the alpha. Using uncompressed 32bit TGA?
Edit... also looks like your main light doesn't have Shadows turned on.
Thanks Eric, I need to adjust the fill lights a bit and get the blacks in there. Also my shadows are turned out but it is using a projection. Coudl that cause that making it look like the shadows arent on?
Also, ya I am using 32 tga. They worked fine at one point and now they have that. if I re uv the screwed up objects they seem to work fine. But it is happenign on alot of my leaves and uving them would be extremely time consuimg. So, I was just looking to see if anyone knew something.. Thanks.
Replies
Do you still have those omnis in the scene? Your shadows are looking really washed out. In fact I can't make out any shadows at all. Everything is over-lit.
you only really need HDR images if you are going to bake the lighting into the scene and even then game engines quite often just stretch the lightmaps over say 0-2 (which results in some banding and artefacting but you generaly can get away with it. i have got a little something to show you somepoint tonight and ill do it in HDR so that you can see what i mean
Shep, I am using default scanline render with no advanced lighting turned on right now. When I tried turning the advanced lighting on, it kicked my system in the nuts. Cool, can't wait to see what you have later. Thanks guys..
this is a little scene i knocked up its using three directionals and a sky light
i put a gradient ramp in the sky dome colour slot and 1 bounce in the lightracer
two filler directionals with oh so soft shadowmaps
one "sun" light which is ramoped up to 5 intensity and has raytraced shadows
its also got automatic exposure control
and some effects i put n there when bored ;-)
here is a shot from the exposure control preview to show the effect left side has no control on
and heres two renders
Id also like to say that rendering in max is not as good as i remember it, and this could do with quite a bit of fine tuning but id stick with it get a good setup and save that off as a seperate scene, then when it comes to rendering merge the scene with you most recent work to get the render setup/lighting setup back
Also, remember when tweaking lighting, you should set up the rendering dimensions to be super-small, like 320x240 or 160x120, and Ctrl-click the render to zoom it up.
Also take Light Tracer way down in quality, take Rays/Sample from 250 (default) down to like 5 for testing. It'll be super-grainy, but accurate enough for value tweaks.
funny thing is i can lightmap a scene as complex as yours in about five minutes with allsorts of fancy shit going on at work Max just isnt very efficient at this.
you can also try using the radiosity lighter to get quick results and transfer those over to the lightmapper, the good thing about radiosity is it is independant of rendering so you can do it once and have a good nosy round the scene
For example the inner columns supporting the roof... their tops should be nearly black. Instead it looks like your temple has a bunch of fluorescents inside. Try lighting with just a single SkyLight and a single Direct light, and increase the Light Tracer's Bounce spinner to 1 or 2 (default 0).
Sorry, dunno what's going on with the alpha. Using uncompressed 32bit TGA?
Edit... also looks like your main light doesn't have Shadows turned on.
Also, ya I am using 32 tga. They worked fine at one point and now they have that. if I re uv the screwed up objects they seem to work fine. But it is happenign on alot of my leaves and uving them would be extremely time consuimg. So, I was just looking to see if anyone knew something.. Thanks.