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Software Discussion
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3D Studio Max
Faking GI with Standard Max Render
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Kirby 9 posts23 Jun 2005Helloooo thar!
Listen, i was wondering if anyone had some advice or experience in faking GI with the standard max render. The reason i want it "fake" is because its for a short 3d film on a tight deadline, and I cant afford 5-10 min renders per frame! I was looking at vertex painting and possibly throwing up the self illumination of objects higher than one normally would to get the fake Gi look.
But i wondered if anyone else might have some advice on achieving the look and what different ideas i can look at pursuing to get the result i need? For instance can I also fake GI with some crafty photoshopping with the textures i use on skins?
Thanks!
- Kirbs -
23 Jun 2005Hi there,
"Faking" GI can be done in any number of ways.
Usually what I do, is throw together a regular 3 point lighting setup, and then add around 8-10 omni lights with a very low intensity (0.1-0.15)...all which cast regular shadows, only their sample radius is set to very high (around 15-30).
That'll help you to fake those soft shadows.
Also...I usually throw a light underneath the whole scene (no shadows for that light...and an intensity of around 0.3). That helps to fake light "bouncing" off the ground/floor.
Finally, give each light a different colour. Normally the default is white and that can lead to very flat lighting. Giving them a variety of colours such as blue, green, red, orange etc can help to variate the colours in your scene a little more (without making it looks totally crazy haha). Keep the colour of the higher intensity lights at the main colour hue of your scene (ie...sunlight would be yellow, nighttime blue, indoors red/yellow etc)...but for the less intense lights you can mix it up however you want.
Hope that helps!
If you post some images we could help suggest ways to light your scene
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24 Jun 2005Try .
Fake GI, which can get very very nice results. The company I worked for used it for production work sometimes, and almost always for draft renders. -
30 Jun 2005if you'd like to make it look almost-real and can afford like a 3 mintue render time, then i'd go with the following(just al ittle something i drew up a minute ago):
let?s say there?s 10 lights in the scene
1) set them all to 0.1 0.1 times 10 = 1, being ideal, for over-
brightness(eg, sunlight, calculate that on yer own)
2) make a main light source, if you?re going for 1.0 overall,
thenmake 1 of them 0.5 and the rest 9 by 0.5 so its more-or-less 0.45 making each
other light 0.05.
3) set all the shadows of the dimmer lights to shadow map instead of something
complex like raytrace. with the sunlight shadow, you can put that on raytrace if you?d like.
4) optional: make each light a slightly different color for a gradient effect.
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30 Jun 2005PS: that gradient would obviously be a sunset
a very very intense sunset -
30 Jun 2005ok here's a small test i did, because i was bored.
31 seconds of rendering, shadow maps at 512, 256 looks more-or-less the same but halfd the render time. 20-light setup, each of the environment lights set at 0.03, main set at 0.6, all at white(no sunset this time). -
30 Jun 2005wireframe overview:
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30 Jun 2005also, texture-baking works great, sorry for the constant replies
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01 Jul 2005
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01 Jul 2005
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Kirby 9 posts01 Jul 2005wow, thanks to everyone for all the input, has really helped me in my experiments with the lighting. Phew, u know ..tragically enuf i have 6 characters including bkg characters in my film but now i need 6 more sheesh. Oh well, this is a cartoon octopus i did up this afternoon. It still needs alot of work, the goggles are just quick cyclinders coz i wanted to see what they would look like but have to finish tweaking it and doing up nice goggles later tonight..yeah and making proper eyelids etc.. dont worry he isnt a main character..lol....oh well. for the lighting i've just played with the opacity settings, and thrown in more than a few omnis in there with different settings. will defintely have a good sit down and get into the lighting soon, just got to frantically model 6 more people and a ship before uni gets back in late july! arrg! hehe.
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01 Jul 2005Looks nice bud - I imagine it's a nightmare to animate!
Keep us posted on this with a thread in the WIPS section
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02 Jul 2005Although im not a Max baby i thought i'd contribute,
Does max have any kind of directonal light...i know it has a spot light but what about a light that casts in a certain diretion...it doesn't matter where it is in relation to an object? Spotlights would do the trick anyhow. Omni lights cast evenly in all directions which for a more complex scene can increase your render time. I'd reccommend using some kind of directional light like a spotlight.
Their are flaws to using spotlights for this type of lighting setup though.
Cheers,
~Todd. -
Kirby 9 posts07 Jul 2005I have another question..sorry
.. But can someone explain to me what HDRI is and how it works? and how that can also be used for a scenes lighting? my lecturer suggested me using it and i would like to try it out but i'm not sure what it is or how it works other than to me it jsut looks like a panoramic image of something stictched together and used as a map on a light?..is that what it is? lol.
cheers in advance! hope everyones doing well. -
07 Jul 2005hdri(hi dynamic range image) is an image in a very highly detailed image commonly wrapped around environments for quick reflections without making a scene. but in actuality, hdri iamges contain light maps that can tell teh scene where to produce light etc. so if you use an hdri map as your lightsource like in a skylight it will use that image and its colors to globally illuminaste the scene(obviously only when you're using a renderer with GI) there's probably more to it but i cant think of anything else right now.
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