Bad Radiosity? here's the fix!

SteelixB · Post by **SteelixB** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 11:08 am

If you're having problems with radiosity looking really bad, then heres how (I think - see below) you can fix it.

You'll usually get bad radiosity on metal surfaces that you know should be flat. I've discovered that the radiosity problems are due to smoothing. To fix this problem, follow these steps:

1. Select all the metal surfaces in 3DS max (or gmax which is what I use). Select by Material ID is the easiest way.

2. Under Surface Properties, under smoothing groups, change the autosmooth value to '1.0'

3. Click Auto Smooth.

The last step applies a smoothing group to every face that's selected, but uses a different smoothing group for each plane.

I haven't run a full radiosity on my map yet, but as far as I can tell there should be no problems at all with the radiosity now, however as I said, I only 'think' this is the fix because I haven't run full radiosity. When I say full I mean wait until the numbers reach 0 0 0 in sapien. I stopped radiosity at about 0.1 0.1 0.1.

Anyway, hope this helps!

peabnuts123 · Post by **peabnuts123** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 12:18 pm

i had a diff problem with radiosity, i ran radiosity 1 in sapien and then started, the numbers started at 0 and thgere was no lighting, why is this happeneing?

DHalo · Post by **DHalo** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 1:33 pm

Have a sky in it?

Griff · Post by **Griff** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 1:33 pm

if you where to type radiosity_save then your map would appear but with out textures..

so it's not finding your textures and so there is nothing to perform the radiosity on

peabnuts123 · Post by **peabnuts123** » Sat Jun 26, 2004 1:36 pm

wel ill put it this way, it took me all of 10 seconds to build, lol just a room with two hills, i did have a +sky texture yes, but i didnt apply it to anything as it was an indoor room.