2008

Show Samples When on, sample locations render as red dots. This shows
where the most sampling has taken place, which can help you choose the
optimal settings for undersampling. Default=off.
Modeling Global Illumination with Radiosity
Radiosity is rendering technology that realistically simulates the way in which
light interacts in an environment.
This topic provides you with a conceptual overview of what radiosity is and
how this global illumination technique relates to other rendering techniques
available in 3ds Max. This information will help you decide which technique
is most suitable for the visualization task you want to perform. By more
accurately simulating the lighting in your scene, radiosity offers you significant
benefits over standard lights:
■ Improved Image Quality: The radiosity technology of 3ds Max produces
more accurate
photometric on page 7892 simulations of the lighting in
your scenes. Effects such as indirect light, soft shadows, and color bleeding
between surfaces produce images of natural realism that are not attainable
with standard scanline rendering. These images give you a better, more
predictable representation of what your designs will look like under specific
lighting conditions.
■ More Intuitive Lighting: In conjunction with radiosity techniques, 3ds
Max also provides a real-world lighting interface. Instead of specifying
lighting intensity with arbitrary values, light intensity is specified using
photometric units (lumens, candelas, and so on). In addition, the
characteristics of real-world lighting fixtures can be defined using
industry-standard Luminous Intensity Distribution files (such as
IES on
page 5017 ,
CIBSE on page 7739 , and LTLI on page 7833 ), which are obtainable
from most lighting manufacturers. By being able to work with a real-world
lighting interface, you can intuitively set up the lighting in your scenes.
You can focus more on your design exploration than on the computer
graphic techniques required to visualize them accurately.
5976 | Chapter 18 Rendering