Making my pic for portfolio better + questions.

jimpaw

Hi Everyone.

1.I am putting some light on a lowpoly level i did for a game company. The idea is to make it look a little more intresting, and then render a picture + animation for my portfolio. The texturing is done and the lightning is okay but still needs alot of work. but what i really miss is Ambient occlution. how do i put ambient occlution so that the shadow effect gets "on top" the diffuse texture when i render?

I have tryed an ambient occ tutorial but it just render it on a seperate image.

2.after i have done theese picture i am planning to use flatiron to bake an lightmap for the entire scene. is it possible to set up ambient occlution so that the flatiron kan bake that light in aswell directly into the lightmap ?

3. I have tryed making a torch fire by the fire effect in 3dsmax. but frankly it looks like shit. how can i get a little more nice looking effect.

4. what is the best way to really get a good quality on the .avi render file in max without getting the fileseze to get enormous ?

thanks.

r_fletch_r

If your going to the trouble of doing a light map I'd spend a bit more time on your lighting.
If your lightmapping in max I'd use mentalray. Scanline is slow at raytracing.

Some things that stick out to me.

You have inconsistant direct shadowing from your lights. the torches arent casting shadows and alot of your props aren't either. If a light is representing a visible light source then it should really be casting shadows.

Your ambient light is much too strong for a torch lit room, I would consider dialing it right down and letting bounce light fill out the lighting.

The mouth is a nice feature and id try and sell it more. If the ambient was lower and you put a shadow casting light in the next room. the spill would look quite dramatic.
I did a quick paint over.


for the flames i would find a sprite. Max fire is crap, and totally not relavent to a realtime piece.

gsokol

I have tryed an ambient occ tutorial but it just render it on a seperate image.

You can just overlay this in photoshop. Set the image on top of a render and set the layer type to multiply.

I agree with r_fletch_r. Your whole scene is just washed out looking.

jimpaw

Thanks man, i will use flatiron for the lightmap, so i wont be using any function in max. the reason i did it brighter is becouse this scene will be in a iphonegame, i feel that it whould be wrong to do it so dark. But actually i will try to light the scene light you pointed out for the portfolio. that looks really good. This is the first lightning i have ever done as you probably can see.. ohh and i cant get the shadow to work on that head.. really strange, the light acts as the head isnt there, (you can see this on the floor becouse the light in leaking) throught.

jimpaw

thanks for the answers, i can undertand that, but i want it in my animation, how do i do it then ? point taken about the lightning. i really feel that ambient occ is the most important part here.

r_fletch_r

FlatIron is not a renderer though. its a RTT plugin that makes the unwrapping and setup easier. You still need to choose a renderer.

So far as darkspots go keep in mind that you don't need to see everything. so long as your focal points are clearly visible then you afford to leave some darker areas for contrast. This will make your render more interesting while giving you an additional control over the focal point.


So far as ambient occlusion goes you can add a render pass in the RTT dialog called MR Ambient Occlusion (Mental ray must be the current renderer)

If your feeling adventurous i would also consider doing a final gather map. that'll give you a much nicer end result but will take more work to get right.

jimpaw

i will keep that in mind, thanks. do you know how i can get ambient occlution into the .avi clip i am rendering ? , i have managed to get ambient occlution but only as a seperate rendered image, not blended with the diffuse, so how do i do it if i want to make a 20 sec movie ?

r_fletch_r

The ambient Occlusion should be part of the lightmap, this should be done totally seperately of rendering a fly through.

Are you infact asking how to do an AO Pass to overlay on a render?

also dont render to AVI, you loose detail when it is compresses then you lose more when you composite it and compress it again. Render to TGA or PNG.

jimpaw

when i render an still image the ambient occlution comes up on a seperate image (b & w ) , normallt you fix that in photoshop, but how do you you get the max to apply amb occ. when you are rendering a movie. to get i on everyfram so to speak.

tga,png are not a movie format ? thanks.

r_fletch_r

Exactly, you use another program to make them into a movie. like after effects or even RAM Player. Thats just good working practice.

So far as the AO goes bake it into your light map. using multipass rendering is not relavent for a game art portfolio.

So far as making the light map goes i would do a lighting map and an ao map in mentalray and combine them in photoshop. then render with that map applied to the scene geometry

If you want to render what you have with AO then id use mentalray. Create a composite map in your diffuse channel and put your diffuse map as the first slot, with a ambient occlusion node multiplied over the top.
This is a bit of a dirty way of doing it as AO isnt supposed to effect direct lighting but it sound like what you want.

jimpaw

okay, thanks man, i am really bad at lightning. i am having troubles with max fire, the creates shadows over the lights !! , is it possible to make the shadows from the fire go away ?