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[3DSMax] Radiosity Advanced Lighting.


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How to render Vertex Colors using a Radiosity Solution.

 

First, what's Radiosity ?

 

It's basically the best way to light things, for rendars, and for prelit models, just like GTA uses. Radiosity is a very powerful calculating process, that can simulate real life lighting. With particle effects, expositions, exposure controls, volumetric lights, fog light simulation and reflect-refract uv each others.

 

Vertex Colors, What you need to know (read carefuly) :

 

When rendering a vertex color system to a mesh, you need at least two parameters to be filled.

 

- First is the quality of the scene lights. Lights needs to be alway 3/4 view from the model for exteriors, and need to use soft shadows parameters (shadow map). The exterior light is never white. Always use a small ammount of yellow-grey to it.

 

For interior lights needs to be diffrent, you need to work with renders before starting to apply the vertex colors. You'll have to play with intensity, far attenuation, and advanced raytraced shadows. Note, when using more than 8 lights, max will not show the further added lights in the viewports. Only in the renders. For interiors, use a white-blue neon color, and an intensity of 1.0 for light sources that generate shadows.

 

Hint : If you placed all your lights correctly, but the scene is way too dark, please don't increase the intensity of them. Just add another small fill light with grey color, and 0.1-0.2 intensity.

 

- The other parameter needed for a good quality vertex color is the amount of polygons on the surfaces receiving projected shadows. Let me explain, since the colors are applied on vertex ticks, the more the vertex number is high, the more shadows and lighting changes will be noticeable. A good way to increase the resolution of a mesh without crushing it is Tesselate. Use it with tension to 0. It will divide your polies into 4, increasing this way the vertex used on your mesh. VERY Important.

 

The tutorial :

 

- Start 3Dsmax 8 or 9, whatever SP you have.

- Create your scene, if you already have one, merge it into the scene we're gonna set.

- Look at the picture :

 

- Go in the Render panel, Advanced Lighting window :

- Set all the parameters like on the pic !!! Very Important.

user posted image

 

 

 

 

user posted image

 

- You see the scene in viewport is still the same, normal. Place your lights, as explained before, at right place. Not on the neons, but a bit under. We're not in real life, omnis needs to be placed differently.

 

 

user posted image

 

- Now that everything is tweaked as we want,

1. Press "Reset", to reset an old solution, in case you're rendering for a second time.

2. Press "Start", and then wait till the process is finished. It's gonna take alot of time on low end computers, and it'll also depend on the solution quality. For our example, 88% is a good ratio time/quality.

 

- Also the refine iterations are very important to get the best result. Wait till the refine iteration are done. Go get a cup of coffee, hot coffee.

 

=> When it's finished, follow this pic instructions :

 

user posted image

1. Click "Setup" to set the Exposure Control Setting. For the moment, nothing is set yet.

2. Set the same automatic parameters as me.

Hint : You can tweak the ambient color, Color background and Tint of the lighting to get the right athmosphere settings you want. Each time you change one, press "Render Preview".

 

Hint : You can tweak Brightness and contrast aswell, but be careful with these value, because it's not really seen in the viewport, but after you applied vertex colors to the mesh. !!!

 

3. Press "Render Preview", Now you see the Radiosity Solution in the viewports. That's what we're gonna export with Kams Scripts, but before, follow these steps :

 

user posted image

 

- Select the model that will receive the vertex paint, go in the tool panel, pop up the the "Assign Vertex Colors" panel (seen in basic tutorials).

 

- Set the SAME parameters as me, again. Make SURE you have checked "Radiosity, Reuse Illum From Solution" in the Options.

 

- Click "Assign to Selected" Wait till the computer has finished to take all the radiosity solution to vertex paint.

 

 

- You can now see exactly what's the result by toggleling the "VertexPaint" panel to the same state as in the pic below :

 

user posted image

 

=> Last Step :

 

Use the same exporting values :

 

user posted image

 

Here we are, now you handle the best lighting process. If you fail with this tutorial, you canstill use paint magic method, but that's far far from a radiosity quality.

 

 

user posted image

ParoXum. catspider.gif

http://www.gostownparadise.com/

Edited by ParoXum
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This is what I been waiting for, thanks for sharing you expertise. I have a few questions tho...

 

For prelightning exterior maps you just have to configure a skylight map and follow the radiosity options on this tutorial or do i have to input different settings for it.

  • 2 weeks later...

= First your mesh is too LP.

 

= Second, you need to define refine iteration higher than 1 (30 set in the tut)

 

= Third, set the exposure control to auto, and if it's to bright, delete omnis. Only one omni is needed to cast shadows. Both others are useless except if it's fill light.

 

  • 2 months later...

 

great tanks.... biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif

I dont know what rong that I had done... dozingoff.gifdozingoff.gifdozingoff.gif

 

but Im so sorry for bad post that I made .... which I don't know it ... dozingoff.gif

 

but may be this is the esp ling problem

 

because I'm not English one .... whatsthat.gifwhatsthat.gif

 

great tanks ===>> i want to say ===>>great thanks

 

any way....I'm so so so sorry blush.gifblush.gif

 

really I want to thanks inlove.gif

 

dertyjerzian
great tanks.... biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif  biggrin.gif

I dont know what rong that I had done... dozingoff.gifdozingoff.gifdozingoff.gif

 

but Im so sorry for bad post that I made .... which I don't know it ... dozingoff.gif

 

but may be this is the esp ling problem

 

because I'm not English one .... whatsthat.gifwhatsthat.gif

 

great tanks ===>> i want to say ===>>great thanks

 

any way....I'm so so so sorry blush.gifblush.gif

 

really I want to thanks inlove.gif

I just HAVE to comment on this.

 

This is the prime definition of posts that use many smilies, but have every

right reason for doing it. abaab has used the emoticons to convey his

feelings, as he is unsure of how well he is communicating his thoughts,

though he knows he must be close. The emoticon brings clarity.

 

Keep at it dude. Are you using firefox? CTRL+T a new tab and use

Google Translate to help to get your words together, you will

learn quite fast smile.gif

 

Even if it does not give you word for word what you will post, it will certainly

help you out in many aspects.

 

Just so you know, Great Tanks is easily discernible and you can be lax.

I feel bad for some of the post you are forced to read in English because

of the many worse and more confusing typographical errors tounge.gif

 

Keep it up dude, see ya out there.

  • 1 year later...
Surigangsta

Nice tutorial, Only problem is I dont know excatly how i must put my omni light settings to get good results, It Works but it looks very ugly confused.gifdozingoff.gif . Soo could U Rather Make A video tutorial so ill be able to see the way u set ure omni light settings

 

Greetz Me:) colgate.gif

There are no magic settings for lights... it depends of the environment and the scene, you may use different color and falloff for different stuff (a garage isn't lighted the same way as a nightclub, no?)

 

All you can do is test and test, smile.gif I won't play with any other value than the intensity, color and shadow color at start

  • 10 months later...
kal-el5676

ok, so after playing with this for about 15 hours i get the same result every time. Be it omni's, sky light. whichever, it always, always, always does this:

 

user posted image

The shadows are completely uncontrollable.

 

Tessellate causes my poly's to go from 20,000 to 100,000 and makes the model invisible in game, so i canned that. moving the lights, playing with settings, nothing makes any difference. very frustrating and time consuming.

  • 4 months later...
  • 2 years later...
ParoXum, how did you made the reflections on the floor? Did you copy whole model and paste it up-side-down? wow.gif Please, reply smile.gif

Cull zones.

 

 

 

So over the years I have gotten pretty good at this and it's kinda fun. One question though. Around door and window frames for example it's VERY dark. The shadowed parts are SUPER dark while the lit parts are SUPER white. Is there any way to balance it a bit better or make the lighting not so "hard"?

  • 1 year later...
  • 2 months later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...
Thanks a lot, great tutorial, eveything is simple and clear.
But I wonder, is it possible to make an obstacle-dependent omni light (ie. light with shadows)? I mean that in my example the light isn't supposed to spread through the roof of the porch.

ea79d5fa9d53.jpg

 

Edited by MMK_033
  • Like 2
  • 6 years later...

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