Need help with radiosity

[dnagi]

I am trying to improve an old model. I want a more realistic feel. I would used omnis in the past for exterior renderings. I have tried light tracer, but still the image looks flat. I want to eventually learn MR, but right now it is all about radiosity and the exterior. I know I need to adjust the textures on the model but I am looking for comments on the radiosity numbers and solution. Any help would be great. Thanks

[diegofer_9]

I know you mentioned you tried, but you should try again with light tracer, it is better for exteriors (as far as i know). The image you posted seems like is lacking a direct light that casts shadows, that is one thing that will remove the flattnes from the image, and then again, well, the textures are too flat (even though you mentioned).

[Brian Smith]

You're close with your radiosity, but that is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is your lights. I personally like radiosity much more than light tracer, though i really just use vray these days. If you're going to use radiosity, try this.

 

Change Refine Iterations (All) to 10. Long story short, it smoothes out imperfections in your radiosity. 0 is way too small, 20 would be way too much. Next I would recommend going slightly smaller with min subdivision size and slightly larger with the max size. The default values are actually quite good. Also, try a solution with a little better quality, such as 35-50% (shouldn't take much longer to calculate).

 

Use a single Direct light with the hotspot totally encompassing the scene. Get this light looking decent before adding any others, which you really shouldn't have to do since it's an exterior scene. For shadows try raytracing and change Max Quad Tree Depth to 9 or 10, which ever renders faster. This setting will greatly change rendering times.

 

Your exposure settings are OK, but I wouldn't venture so far from the different contrast and brightness values as that can really have a dramatic impact.

 

Hope it helps.

[diegofer_9]

well...there you go!

[atp-design]

at first check your units and make sure that your model has real dimensions. for lighting you need only 2 light , one for sun another for sky, you can create both of them with sunlight system from photometric lights. keep in mind that radiosity designed base on natural behavior of light so photometric light is better to use.use meshe subdivision to improve quality of rendering , but for time saving you can set large objects with biger meshe size (such as the ground and far objects) and small objects with small meshe size to show details.