Even lighting

[XariusCain]

Is there a way to evenly light a 3D model with bitmap textures from every
angle? If I include no lights, the exporter calculates lighting from where the
camera position is. If I try putting lights in the scene in strategic
locations, some surfaces always get more light than others.

[parsns]

Maybe your strategic light positions aren't so strategic after all.

[knew-bee]

you could use an ambient light (turned up really high) with no other lights. But it's not a good idea... uneven lighting is what makes 3D 3D

[Karl Sigiscar]

Two tricks:

- To even light a model, set the emissive color of its shader(s) to RGB 255,
255, 255, i.e white
- Attach a light to the camera so whereever it goes, the scene is lit

Best regards,
Karl Sigiscar.
[url]http://www.chromelib.com[/url]

[Karl Sigiscar]

Both techniques can be used either in your 3D package or in Director using
Lingo.

[Karl Sigiscar]

Don't use more than 4 lightsources in your scene for best performance.

[XariusCain]

I suppose a better explanation of what I am trying to do would help. I'm
trying to get more realistic lighting in Director on non-moving objects. I'm
setting up photometric lights in Max and baking the shadows right onto the
textures. The models are lit the way I want and have high quality, properly
shadowed materials.

When I bring them into Director, it applies it's own lights to things and
throws off the illusion of proper lighting. What I'd like to have happen is
something in Director similar to the "self-illumination" feature in Max.

[Newt99]

Not quite. Self illum in 3DS Max translates to emissive color in Shockwave 3D.
What you want is light mapping. There are two steps for this: 1. Create the
proper textures 2. Write the code to handle texture coordinates for light
mapping. This is not as simple as baking textures. Try and use the Light Map
Xtra for this.

[Ziggi]

Hi !

Can you explain what in fact is advantage of using lightmaps against baked
textures?

I mean - I can export from Max textures with "baked" light and apply such
textures to objects.
What is the advantage of using "regular" textures and then applying
grayscale lightmaps as second layer textures unless animating these
lightmapes?

Ziggi


"Newt99" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote in message
news:d3df0b$o3j$1@forums.macromedia.com...

> Not quite. Self illum in 3DS Max translates to emissive color in Shockwave
> 3D.
> What you want is light mapping. There are two steps for this: 1. Create
> the
> proper textures 2. Write the code to handle texture coordinates for light
> mapping. This is not as simple as baking textures. Try and use the Light
> Map
> Xtra for this.
>

[Newt99]

Hi Ziggy,

Follow this thread and you get your answer:
[url]http://www.directorforum.de/printthread.php?t=40208[/url]

Cheers,
Karl.