Interior Radiosity - Scene Setup Questions

[MegaPixel]

Please reference my attached image for this topic

 

I'm setting up a rather large Interior Animation of a typical home from the Dining room, through the Kitchen and to the Family room. I've still got tweaking to do, but I had a question.

 

What can I do to limit the visibilty of the exterior environment (outside the windows) without covering every window with curtains, so that I don't really have to model the outdoors. I'm wanting to go with a bright - glowing wash out appearance if the camera is looking out through the windows which happens just about everywhere in this home. Ideas?

 

I'd also like some suggestions too on how I can improve my work so far.

 

Thanks alot - mega

 

 

MAX 7.1 - Radiosity

[oluv]

you will need an enviroment-bitmap to put in the background. i would adjust the bitmap, so that it looks quite overexposed, this would also be the case if you did interior photographs looking out through a window. you won't see much detail, everything outside window will be burned out.

you can also try to add a bit of camera-glow afterwards, this will enhance the window brightness even more.

 

the best way for an enviroment would be to put some kind of spherical panorama if you have one. or you can use single background-images and adjust them manually for each view, but you have to be careful not to get wrong looking perspectives etc. i often see wrong aligned background-images that destroy the whole image appearance.

 

for final renderings you can try to subdivide your mesh even a bit more, to get better shadow-detail, and play a bit with the exposure settings. it is also reccomendable to save your final image as hdri or high-bit image and postprocess levels and saturation in photoshop.

[Ricardo Eloy]

You can also create a hemisphere and apply a 180 degrees map to it, excluding the hemisphere from any radiosity calcs and casting/receiving shadows. Check http://www.1000skies.com for some free maps.

[DennisHolland]

Here's a sample of how to achieve nice environments with the hemisphere technique. Instead of a hemisphere, I draw a spline in a nice curve and applied a lathe modifier. It will create distance and your grounded objects are looking like they are standing on the floor without strange effects.

 

Good luck,

Dennis

[MegaPixel]

Dennis,

 

Thank you very much for that "Squashed" hemisphere tip. I just recently purchased a 360/180 Skies package from Dosch 3D and havn't really figured out how to make them look good yet (Using full radial hemisphere w/flipped normals). That should help - Cheers!

 

I may use that in combination with a "Tree Line" cylinder low to the horizon. Now - Do I let the Radiosity wash out the Sky/Treeline or do I fake it and "blow-out" the image maps before hand in photoshop?

 

A side note - What part of the Radiosity settings controls color bleeding? Is it baked into the mesh after the solution is calculated or can it be controlled by Exp. ctrl or Final Gathering?

 

-Thx Mega

[DennisHolland]

Hi Mega,

 

Thanks for the compliment. I've been experimenting with squashing a 'real' hemisphere too with the non-uniform scale tool but it squashes equally and didn't look perfect. with the spline>lathe trick you can have the curve you want and that is to have it beginning straight up and slowly let it curve exactely nice to a bowltype of shape. I used to start doing this only for my vr-productions (environmetal mapping an outside scenery) but now a days I do it without thinking with all my scenes. The 360 Dgr. skies from 1000skies.com are fantastic to work with and not very expensive so maybe you could consider purchaser a few (you can pick 'm out and buy one at the time). They seam perfect at start/end and that is very helpfull with anims.

 

Colorbleeding inside the radiosity-calculation is not very 'tweakable' because it all depends on contrast and the brightness of your materials but sure, you can adjust a thing or two with post processing.

 

Your question about 'should I blow it out in post' I'd suggest to think of the following: my phylosophy in CG is 'if it looks good, all is good' so just decide what you think is best for a cool atmosphere. I usually stop thinking in '3D' when things are not realistic anymore and then I shift to the usage of 2D bitmaps or postprocessing in PS because I prefer a great end-product before try to achieve all in 3D itself. It's just up to you to decide when you stop thinking Max and start thinking Adobe to have a cool final render.

 

Hope it helped you in some way,

 

Dennis

[quizzy]

Colorbleeding is tweaked by using the Lighting Override material....