3D Scene Lighting Overview

The lighting is the most important means of simulating the effect of natural illumination in 3DS Max, which is called the soul of the max scene. However, the complex lighting settings, changing the use of the effect, but it is so many novice extremely troubled by a major problem, how to get a satisfactory lighting effect so many friends feel headache and helpless. The main purpose of this tutorial is to take a closer look at the lighting settings in 3DS max and completely remove all your friends from the confusion and create a more authentic and more realistic MAX scenario.

Overview of Max Scene lighting

To get an insight into Max's lighting technology, you must first understand how the lights work in Max. In Max, the lighting is not radioactive in order to increase the rendering speed. This is because the light transmission with the speed of the calculation is very slow, not experienced friends think about the speed of light tracking material will understand. In other words, the lighting works in Max are different from the lighting in nature. If you want to simulate the nature of light reflection (such as water reflective effect), diffuse reflection, radiation, energy transmission, light effect, and other special properties, you must use a variety of means (not only the use of light means, but also may be materials such as light tracing materials, etc.) for simulation. Some complain that the Kinitex company does not use similar lightscape software to simulate a natural lighting system, not because Kinitex has not mastered the technology, but that Max's main task is animation-oriented. As we all know, the lightscape in the light operation speed is very slow, often rendering a picture will take a long time (so this software positioning in the photo-level static graph rendering production). In animation, a second animation needs to render more than 20 images (NTSC for 30 frames/sec, PAL for 25 frames/sec, the movie is 24 frames/sec, if you want to maintain a smooth movement of at least 15 frames/sec, a minute to render more than 1000 pictures, then Your waiting will be endless. Fortunately, Max has a lot of third-party development of Plug-ins, in the light of the more excellent plug-ins have radiosity, MENTAL RAY (large "lighting effect + special light" + High quality Rendering "plug-ins), etc. available for users to choose. But the speed of the operation is a bit passable. Of course, if you're rendering a static picture instead of animating (such as architectural renderings), it's OK to wait one hours for better results and more convenient lighting settings. The biggest advantage of Max's lighting is the speed of the operation, and the quality of the lighting is actually good. As long as it is properly set, the same can produce authentic, convincing lighting effects.

In Max, not all luminous effects are done by lighting. For light sources, it may also be simulated by material, video-processing effects, or even atmospheric conditions. The luminous effect of the tail of the Firefly is probably the most appropriate to simulate with the self luminescent material, the flame effect of the rear end of the rocket launch is also good with the combustion device in the atmosphere, and it is a good idea to simulate the night's neon effects and use the glowing (GLOW) stunts in the video reprocessing. But the lighting as the messenger in the max three-dimensional scene, is the most important way for Max to display the illumination effect. Lighting, as a special object in Max, often simulates not the natural light source or the artificial light itself, but the illumination effect. In rendering, the lights in Max as a special object are not visible in themselves, and the illumination effect is seen. If there is no light in the scene (including hidden lights), then all objects are invisible. However, there are two default lights in the Max scene, which are usually invisible in the scene, but still play a role in illuminating the scene. Once a new light source is established in the scene, the default light is automatically turned off. If this is the scene in the lighting position, brightness, etc. is not ideal, still can't catch the effect of the default lighting. If all the lights in the scene are removed, the default lighting is automatically turned on again. One of the default lights is at the top left of the scene, and the other is at the bottom right of the scene.