3DSM 6 and standard radiocity

[ILoveBre]

http://home.earthlink.net/~juanpg/im..._radiosity.jpg
I'm trying to improve my lighting skills seeing as I'm still a beginner.

I used the standard max radiocity solution at 85 percent and one free point
photometric light in the center.

Any ideas on how to improve this basic scene.

thanks

[DeadlyFreeze]

Using radiosity is your first problem. You have mentalray, it has a much more advanced light solution.

[ILoveBre]

Originally Posted by DeadlyFreeze

Using radiosity is your first problem. You have mentalray, it has a much more advanced light solution.

Well, you see since radiosity is a little simpler I figured I may be able to get
decent lighting faster then playing with all kinds of settings and renders
in MR to get it to look just right. I've used it before and it can achieve
great results but gives me a headache to try and use.
I have a celeron 700 and I don't always have months to test lighting.

or am I wrong and mental ray not only looks better but is also faster then
max's standard radiocity?

Thanks again for the reply

[Mr. Bluesummers-3DT]

Quick Reply
I think...There are a lot of virtues for either end. Scanline is fast. It's fast like there's no tomorrow. It's fast like you're scrapping quality for your computer to throw pixels into your face. I'd suggest for more advanced things like GI and soft shadows you use Mental Ray until you're sure of what does what. Turn on Mental Ray, create a few lights, and turn on Final Gather. That will give you a solution similar to radiosity in a much smaller amount of time. Check out some tutorials and search the internet for information on Mental Ray's soft-shadowed goodness. You can start at http://jeffpatton.net where there are some well lit scenes for download that you can dissect.

Watch it though- mr can be a real pain too when it comes to highly complex objects and scenes. It can chew up your memory like you've got a hundred gigs of ram...when you don't!

Good luck!