Hi all!

I'm about to test radiosity and I'm making a room.
Now, because this is my first try at this so I need some hints for the room (I've done some tutorials).
I've planned to have all light come from a window and a fairly simple room but is there anything specific I should watch out for with lighting, modeling or scene setup?

//Korken

Make sure your window is solid and make sure it is attached to a solid wall. If you just use a patch for the wall, radiosity will render strangly. Make sure none of your objects have ambience values unless you're trying to simulate a light bulb or luminare. For the light, make sure it is a kleig with 100% darkness shadows, 2 rays cast with raytrace, and width of softness set to 25%. There are a bunch of threads on here which get into more specifics like Yves's tutorials up at the top of radiosity. Good luke with your room.

If you would like to see a room already setup for radiosity, the kids bedroom project on the AM Extras CD is one that you can take a peek at. Its not great but it does work.

Bill

I suggest not using that project. That project is better suited for ray tracing because the light shines on a wall that is only 1 patch thick, and it creates a lot of visual artifacts that are really undesiarable. Or maybe I'm just thinking of a different project. Remember that all walls should be solid when having light coming into a window (It's best to have all objects solid in most instances). A way to get around tricky splinning for fully solid rooms would be to build the room out of blocks that form a room. I'm not quite certain if this causes problems, but I know that I've used it before.

The one I was thinking of has a bit of discussion about it here http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10029

Its not great but its a sandbox to play in - and if you REALLY torque off the radiosity settings you can get some pretty cool renders.

Where can I find that project?

Please note that v12 Radiosity does store the first photon hits. So the moonlight rig that is mentioned in the above refered thread would very probably not give the same render as in v11.

Hi Yves;

I am pretty sure that I took the moonlight rig out of the project that is on the CD and used "electric room lights". I do need to return to that project and finish it as it is FAR from complete.

Hey Matt;

I have transferred all of the Extra CD content to my own library arrangement so I can't tell you for sure where on the Extra CD it is but I think that it is in projects/misc-projects/household-projects/kidsroom. You do have the Extra CD? If not, you can download an image of it from the free models link on the Hash site.

I only created some of the models in the project. A good chunk are models that have been placed in the public domain (sadly some of which are no longer publicly findable). I tried to give credit to the original creator(s) when that information was available.

I found the project. The Free Stuff CD comes with the purchase of A:M now.

I didn't see any moonlight setup; however, when I put one down it was as if radiosity did no exist in the room. All of the walls were black except for the direct light hitting the bed and parts of the floor (Yes. I did render radiosity).

The house looks pretty good. Needs a lot of work though. My brother is working on a house like that, but I think he's off building the WTC towers.

Maybe we're not looking at the same thing? I'm doing a test render now (I have not touched this project since well before the CD was finished) to see if there are any problems with the current renderer but I do show two instances of moon_rig existing in Choreography1. Also, how did you get a render done so quick? The settings I left it with took many hours to render (17?) on hopped up Athlon with lots of very fast RAM.

17 hours??? Try like... 3? Or was it 2 and a half? I can't remember. It wasn't 17 hours though.

Well..... The renderer has changed a bit since that was submitted. It is way over exposed and blotchy. My render took 7 hours on my office machine so your render time is very realistic. From the results of that render, it really isn't much of a starting place. Sigh... Thanks (really) for clueing me in on the less than groovy results.

Have a great holiday.

Bill