[Trance-R]

I've beent trying to do radiosity renderings with Lightwave 6, using only one light source and using the radiosity option. My attempts were futile. The renders don't good at all. If anyone here knows what I am talking about please help me out. I know a few peeps like Failsafe and uh.. cough.. do 3D stuff. Thanks for any help guys.
Btw, if you wonna know what radiosity renders look like...


I am sure people would take these images as photos not 3D rendered.

[Anthony]

What, specifically, are you experiencing? The L[6] radiosity isn't the greatest, but in most cases it'll do allright, if set up correctly. Care to get more specific? BTW, Arnold is pretty good-it's the renderer for the new Messiah.

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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Haarg2]

Yeah, did you check out that video of the little soldier character from the site? Pretty damn amazing if you ask me. Not that i'm suggesting you would.

Ho hum.
Post some pics of your experiments maybe?

--H2

[Alex]

what is that he using to render that? On most of the pictures there is "Arnold" and "global illumination renderer" text... is this LW6 only or some plugin?

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Alex D. G.
http://www.alexdg.com

[Trance-R]

Thanks for the replies guys. ARNOLD, as I just found out from you guys... is a plug-in. Funny how the movie credit also says 3DsMAX 3.1 in it... And I found the site from a Lightwave link page! Heh heh.
Here is the render I did. This scene is setup with the simplest obects. The ground is a four point polygon and I had a tesselated globe masking the scene to provide illumination. This is the only method I tried that came even close to a nice realistic look... I don't know.. What do you guys think?

[Trance-R]

Oh, I forgot to add that the light served no function in this scene, the object and the ground are illuminated by the globe which I set to 100% luminosity and diffuse. Heh. So much for radiosity. And if I change that luminosity setting to 0%, but retain diffusion, I get a very dark picture. And you won't be able to make out much in there except that top cap of the cylinder.

[CyberArtist]

I first saw the Arnold render while working on a student project at alias|wavefront (I assume you guys have heard of them :P). It's supposed to be really fast (as far as radiosity renderers go... since none of them are really "fast"), but I noticed one small flaw...

Look at all the shots and you'll notice most all have one thing in common, they have very low color saturation on all the surfaces. They're all "almost" grey, or grey. There's one or two images on the site that I remember were in color and looked REALLY fake. As far as I can tell, the Arnold render either can't do color rendering or doesn't take into account the color of a surface it hits when doing radiosity calculations.

If you know anything about the basics of how radiosity works, light hitting a surface reflects off it, that light is what your eye sees. Obviously, that light is colored light, so it'd make sense that that light would also be cast onto other objects and not always straight into your eye. That's why if you're wearing a bright red t-shirt or something like that, everything close to you turns slightly red when you're in the sunlight.

Hopefully they'll add that to the renderer, if they haven't already.



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-CyberA(rtist) aka Ben Golus

Cyber...

[Trance-R]

But CyberArtist, do you have any comments or tips on how I could improve my radiosity rendering? I mean... that is the topic of this thread.

[waylon]

As far as technical aspects of using the program, I can't say too much... But a big part of making a convincing image is setting up the scene.

Go for some dramatic lighting, first off. Instead of placing the light source directly above the cylinder, set it off to the side so that it casts an interesting shadow. Also, adding some nice subtle texture maps would make it look more convincing.

A more interesting object, or better yet, a well-composed scene might help too. Not too much interesting stuff is going to happen with a single cylinder on a plane... Try setting up a scene that would realistically have lighter and dark areas. Like... a lighted room, with a doorway into a dark hallway.

Incidentally, I've learned a lot about using radiosity by making quake/halflife levels. It's a lot of fun to play with, because it's DESIGNED for radiosity. You might want to give that a shot.

[Anthony]

All the released images using Arnold are done by the same artist. The renderer itself doesn't have any problem with color. Also, it's more advanced than these two images show. It's going to be the renderer for the new Messiah, formerly a Lightwave plugin, but no a standalone animation and rendering platform. The renderer will be standalone, and you will be able to use it from Lightwave, Max, Maya, or Soft.

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-Anthony
Carpe Carpem

[Jeezus]

he's using arnold, a new radiosity renderer in development for a few different programs, i think.. including max!

[psi burn]

second image looks realistic

[Alex]

any clue when this Arnold is gonna be released?

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Alex D. G.
http://www.alexdg.com

[spooge demon]

I like the simplicity of the renders, trace. It does point out flaws in the programs handling of light if you don't give it any help. The snapshot quality is good.

If you are after absolute realism, I think you have it.

I would love to get more into radiosity. is there a cheap way?

[Trance-R]

Waylon: Yeah I'd agree with you, but I am really just trying out a few things before I go for complex stuf, ya know~ kids and their experiments.
Anthony: Oh! I didn't know you could use Messiah as a renderer, thanks for that extra info.
Craig: Thanks! =) I just worked some more and I think I have improvements here. I think the cheapest package would be Lightwave 6 and Messiah. Very cheap compared to other 3D programs and really easy to start using. Lightwave doesn't have all the graphical buttons, but text on textured buttons so you know what you are clicking on. And Lightwave 6 comes with some nice if not essential plug-ins. I think it's the best investment for someone who isn't gonna use it for industrial purposes. You could do interface designs with Lightwave too.

=) I like this picture. IMO, it's photo realistic enough.

[This message has been edited by Trance-R (edited July 24, 2000).]

[waylon]

Yeah, that looks pretty good. Very convincing... err.. cylinder. On a plane. ;)

Looks a lot better than most of my Max renderings, in any case. You'd think radiosity would be an integral part of any rendering package... since you can't really get a realistic image without it.

I'd like to see what you can do with this in the future.

[Trance-R]

Thanks Waylon, I will post any renderings I do.
I am working on a mouse right now.