Radiosity question

[tdarcy]

Hi guys,

How many of you out there change the ambient colour slot in the material editor to black when using radiosity or should you not do that ?

[abicalho]

You should not do that since Radiosity adds the color to the ambient color at render time, so you'd see no radiosity effect at all.

 

In fact, starting with MAX 6, there's a new utility called "Fix Ambient" that will lock the Ambient and Diffuse color, to avoid problems when rendering radiosity and Light Tracer.

 

Alexander

[tdarcy]

Thanks for the reply Alexander,

Your answer was not quite what I was expecting.

I have gone through the radiosity tutorial by Jan.brookes.com and he very definitely tells you to change the ambient slot to black and unlock it from the diffuse slot.

With a bit of luck we will get some more input from the sleeping Viz guru's.

 

TD

[Fran]

Hi TD,

 

What Alex says is true for Viz 2005 and Max 6 - ambient and diffuse should be locked. Sometimes I will have ambient darker for a troublesome material, but generally I keep them locked. For Viz 4, ambient should be set to black.

[tdarcy]

Hi Fran,

Thanks for the reply, I probably should have mentioned I was using viz 4.

I'm glad you confirmed ambient should be black because unless i missed it the viz manual doesn't.

On another note have you ever thought of writing a book on how to use radiosity because from the quality of your work I'd certainly buy it.

 

Cheers,

TD