Max Viewport lighting issue
Hey all,
Having a weird Max lighting issue in the viewport. I'm using 2011 Design, and have been doing a lot of pre-rendered Architectural stuff recently, including messing with linear workflow and gamma adjustments so the likelihood I've switched something on/off and screwed something up is high. Problem is, I have no idea what I've done to make this happen.
I'll try explaining it and add some screenshots.
Basically, it looks like I've got hardware shading enabled regardless of whether it actually is. Even with no lights in the scene, I get horribly harsh light/shadows. This is on both standard Max shaders and most noticeably on DX shaders.
Any ideas?
Feel free to ask for more info if I haveb't explained this well enough!
Having a weird Max lighting issue in the viewport. I'm using 2011 Design, and have been doing a lot of pre-rendered Architectural stuff recently, including messing with linear workflow and gamma adjustments so the likelihood I've switched something on/off and screwed something up is high. Problem is, I have no idea what I've done to make this happen.
I'll try explaining it and add some screenshots.
Basically, it looks like I've got hardware shading enabled regardless of whether it actually is. Even with no lights in the scene, I get horribly harsh light/shadows. This is on both standard Max shaders and most noticeably on DX shaders.
Any ideas?
Feel free to ask for more info if I haveb't explained this well enough!
Replies
When you say directx Shader, what do you mean?
It appears to me that your Directx shader has a specular term which is absent or largely reduced in your standard shader (hardware shading or no), but without more details I cannot speculate further.
Good luck!
The DX shader is just a realtime shader, Xoliuls in this case but I don't think it's related to the shader since as you noted, the problem is evident with the standard Max shader too.
The problem is those super harsh shadows, almost like I've set viewport lighting on with hardware shading and aimed a spotlight straight at the mesh, but there's no lights in that screenshot above, just default lights and hardware shading switched off.
I'm sure I've messed with a setting somewhere. I've gone back and reset my Gamma / LUT settings and while that makes things a little dimmer, it doesn't fix it at all.
Ok here's another screenshot, default lighting, no lights in scene. Surely this isn't normal? I haven't got access to any other versions of Max so I can't check, but it doesn't look right to me.
by the way, I forgot to add - I get exactly the same thing if I set to default lighting, 2 lights. There is a key light and a back light. Switching hardware shading on and off changes nothing except the lighting being per vertex in software and per pixel in hardware.
Good luck! (out of interest what are you expecting to see differently?)
Thanks cw!
I am curious, what leads you to this conclusion?
the harsher falloff.
good spot. With 3dsmax gamma correction off, using max hardware shading and xoliul 1.5 shader, the spheres are identical. Ditto with max gamma correction turned on, the spheres are identical, with the harsher falloff. You shouldn't get both in the same scene though unless your shader has its own gamma correction?
Also, despite my best efforts, Max seems to have concealed its default config files in some super secret location on my HDD, even after deleting the Max.ini, I still got the 2 scene lights by default, and the gamma setup was changed.
Fortunately I'm in the AD student program so I can just switch over to Max 2011, as opposed to Design 2011, and with a clean install, all should be well.
Btw, how strange that you seemed to think Hardware shading has anything to do with it, there is no difference in visuals between both of your images, so i would expect you to realize the setting doesn't matter
Yeah looking back at my OP, I've no idea what I was thinking. I think what I meant to say was that regardless of whether I had any lights in my scene, or what shader I was using, everything looked blown out like I had a intense light in the scene and had hardware shading enabled to display the shadows.
So if your shader has gamma already set at 2.2, presumably I'd want to switch it down to 1 if I'm using 2.2 in Max, or alternatively switch Max back to 1 and leave yours at 2.2?
The problem is, Max is defaulting to 2 default lights, rather than 1 (which I'm sure is the normal default right?).
So when I fire up Xoliuls shader, and my VP lighting is set to two default lights I get this:
But when I switch to 1 default light, I get this (the correct result):
I'm not quite sure why it looks darker with 2 lights, if I up the number of lights in the shader, I just get a brighter version of image 1, still with the dark back.
So now I'd like to set Max to default back to 1 default light, but I can't work out how to get that to be default, every time I open a new scene/open Max, it sets itself to 2 default lights.
I've had a look at my MaxStart file, but I can't find which bit refers to default lights.
Hit the [+] in the top right of a viewport, then pick Configuration.
Go to the Lighting & Shadows tab, the top left part that says "Illuminate Scene with:" contains the setting.
You know, I always tell my students not to mess with settings they don't understand yet, so they don't freak out later and need me to fix it for them
(haha just kidding man)
I know how to switch the viewport lighting but I don't know how to save it. Should it save configs automatically? On startup/new scene, it's set to 2 default lights, so I switch to one, but then it'll revert to 2 again on reopening Max or starting a new scene.
This is amazing, i had no idea we could do this.
Thanks