First Post. Lighting Help Needed for 3DS Max Noob!

[RauscH]

First of all, I am a long time viewer and I have been messing around with 3DS Max for a while now. My developing forte would be modelling cars and architecturla interiors.

I am working on a basement layout for a friend and mostly for practice. I am at the stage where I have all the walls up and doors/trim are in place. I am having an issue with the lighting aspect.

Now, I'm just messing around with some of the lighting options, I find that I am seeing some minimal action from the Photometric lights, although I am getting nothing when using Standard lights. Omni lights to be exact. I mean none of the Standard lights work, but I am using the Omni light as a start. My version of 3DS Max uses Mental Ray as a renderer.

I am paying the monthly fee to work along with Digital Tutors, although I have hit a wall when it comes to the lighting tutorials. The vid starts with using the Omni light and it works great in the vid, although I am not getting anything but pitch black renders when attempting to insert them into my scene.

To you pro's out there, do I have something set up wrong? What's my issue?

I am looking forward to some of your responses, as well I look forward to posting my work once I am able to push forward with my lighting issues.

Thank you in Advance!

[SDA]

Hi. I didn't work a lot with lightning but my scenes always get good renders. So, that issue that you have must be in the light it self. So, either your light (omni) has low light. My suggestion would be to try and increase the intensity of the light (standard is 1.0, set it something like 3 or 4). If you don't see shadows you need to turn them on. Also, photometric and some standard lights are basically strictly directional lights, so if you want to illuminate whole basement use omni. Btw, omni is my favorite light of all. ^^

Also, make sure that omni is in side of basement, and don't put omni too close to wall cause you won't see the illumination effect that you need.

EDIT: Also, press 8 in max while editing. That is environment and effects adjustment panel. This might also help without adjusting the omni. ;)

P.S. I am also messing around with max, but for very long time, so through that time I learned many things. So, I am still messing around with it from elementary school, and this is my 13th year. :P

Cheers ;)

[RauscH]

Thank you for the reply. I am going to have to research further. I had the omni light Multiplier value up to 19 and my renders were still jet black. Shadows were on as well. I found a quick and easy tutorial on line that I printed off at work. I will do that step by step and if I still have an issue, I will have to dig further into the software itself. (well my IT guy will ;) haha)

I am completely lost at this situation. Hopefully I will get it resolved sooner than later.

Cheers SDA

[RauscH]

why did my post get deleted but the seller of fake dresses post remained?

[SDA]

I have no idea :/ someone must have reported wrong post. I did report this seller post now. I didn't saw what did your post here, and nothing came in my mail so you must have pressed the "Post reply" but it didn't got posted. We have some problems with posting, so you better write your posts in code rather than normal mode.

So, do you have problems with anything? I can surely help.

cheers