Strange cabinet door reflections

[ktrat]

I am a brand new 3ds Max user who is attempting to learn on her own from books and tutorials. I am trying to render a set of custom cabinets. After playing with the lighting and materials for longer than I like to think about, I still am having trouble with the cabinet fronts looking right. I seem to be getting undesirable reflections that are making them look dark, even on the flat parts of the doors. Any ideas?? THANKS!

 

I'm using 3ds Max with the mental ray renderer. Materials are based on the Arch & Design (mi) templates. All of the cabinets are the same material created using the glossy varnished wood template. The floor is the same. I have an area omni light located near the camera, an area spot outside a window, and three free spots at the top of the cabinet.

[mattclinch]

i'd say it looks like either flipped normals or coplanar faces. check your geometry. to cure a flipped normal select the face you know isn;t rendering correcty and choose 'flip' from the edit poly rollout. if its coplanar faces you'll be able to select two faces that are in exactly the same position.

 

i'd say its more likely to be flipped normals, as the dark areas still seem to pick up a vague highlight.

[ktrat]

I flipped the normals and everything except the corners looks great! THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I'm not sure I would have ever figured that one out from the books!

 

If I flip the corners, then the opposite side goes dark. I imported the 3D shape from a program called Autokitchen (an Autocad derivative). Would there be an easy way to split the corners into two halves so I can flip one of the halves? Or should I just create new corners to replace it?

[mattclinch]

welcome. glad to help.

[ktrat]

Nevermind on the corner question - bumbled around with edit poly and flipped half of them using the polygon selection tool. Seems to have worked!

[Tommy Burns]

For the corners you have obviously flipped everything at once so the corners where alright at first but now they are flipped. You need to change the cabinet to an editable mesh and then flip the normals of just the corners using the polygon/face. Then it will all match up.

[Tommy Burns]

to late

[thurifer]

I'm glad to know someone else had this problem. After THREE DAYS of trying to get the lighting on a ceiling right I finally figured out that it was flipped. Thank you.