Radiosity - Interior Shadow Defanition

[MegaPixel]

I'm still having trouble getting shadow definition on my interior scenes. I'm using version 7.5's new adaptive subdivision feature and I have posted my settings and screen shots. I'm not so concerned with the light leaks in this scene because I scalped it from a bigger more complete scene for testing.

 

What concerns me is the fact that I can't see the window grill shadows on the floor. The overall warmth of the light seems close but everything is a blur with no clarity. Could someone look at my settings and see where I'm going wrong.

 

Also, if I wanted to conserve memory by not meshing so densly, would I want to use regather direct Illim instead? When is it appropriate to render direct Illium. and regather direct Illum?

 

And one more thing - I've heard that you want to keep you filter/pixel radius small. Is this relative to how large a resolution you plan to render to? For instance a 2.5 p.rad might work good for 640x480 but a 10p.rad may work better for a 3000+ res. render?

 

Thanks - Mega

[carlangas]

Hi David,

 

can you post your light source settings, shadows??

[MegaPixel]

I apoligize for leaving that part out. Here's another image with those settings and thanks for the reply.

 

Is it possible to target a perfect meshing parameter setup the first time or are good meshing solutions always built up with multiple refinements and such?

 

Mega

[carlangas]

Im by no means an expert but for interior scenes I use a daylight system instead of what you're using, not sure but maybe the high skylight setting is blurring your shadows. i would try to use the daylight system along with the exposure cont. like you have it set up now.

 

about the meshing, i dont use refinements but rather have a meshing of about 8" or .2 meters. that works for me, hope this helps.

[Vince Paske]

Try turning down the amount of Refine Iterations to 2 or 3.

[MegaPixel]

Carlos,

 

Thanks for the reply. I'll try using a Daylight System next time around and see if that changes anything but my approach to meshing setup/quality of solution - Am I going about things the correct way?

 

Calvino,

 

Could you explain to me why turning down the refine iterations might help? I was originally under the impression that the more you refined, the better the result would be - no?

 

Thanks so far for your help - Mega

[Vince Paske]

From my understanding of Refine Iterations...its basically grabbing light from adjacent surfaces in an attempt to get rid of blotches. This can make small areas of shadows dissapear if they are in a area of high contrast (it'll smooth the shadows right out).

You might want to turn Refine..off and try regathering, although it'll add a lot of rendering time.

[vertexART]

Hi MegaPixel,

is there a chance of posting the max.archive?

This kind of guessing can be a walk in the dark, most of the time.

 

Cheers.

[MegaPixel]

vertexART,

 

If you wish for me to post the file from which the screen shots are taken above, I'll do it first thing in the morning.

 

I'll keeping adding to my mass of questions: I'm also wondering how to optimally set the Bitmap Pager values based on my system spec.s. I've run into memory errors with large texture files on a 2 Gig. DDR system

 

Thanks again guys - Mega

[vertexART]

How large were those textures?

Strange, I have 2GB also, but never ran into memory issue, not even while I had 1gig... can't help U with that, sorry.

[MegaPixel]

Vertextart, just to elaborate on the texture related memory crashes...

 

They have been happening on my high-res exterior renders (5000+ pixels)when using Dosch-3D textures out of the box which tend to be between 2000 and 3000pixels in diimension each. I often try to use the higher end textures for large renders so the quality stays high. This is without touching the bitmap pager at all because I have no idea what settings I should use for my system (2Gig RAM and 100Gig HD).

 

Thanks for the continued interest. Any other takers on my Radiosity issues?