Problems with Skylights in rooms...

Hello. I am kind of new to 3ds max and I am having a bit of a problem. I have this room with walls, floors, and a ceiling. The problem is that a skylight with shadows checked will render the room pitch black. Then when I take the walls away it's not pitch black anymore. How can I fix this?

Tell me if you need more information.

p.s. Can someone point me to some good lighting materials that show how to use advanced lighting and such?

where is the skylight positioned?

no offence but of course its gonna make it black if its outside the room

I'm talking about inside the room. And I thought it didn't matter where the skylight was positioned.

well if youve got a ceiling and shadows are turned on then of course it matters...

For your rendering problem, skylight shoudn't be used by just placing and rendering. Your need to activate the light tracer or the radiosity plugin to see the full effect of the skylight. When you activate the light tracer plugin you won't be getting the shadows parameter for the skylight.

Just activate the light tracer plugin and render your scene by keeping the default values.

Try changing the bounce values to 1 or 2.

Be warned- it will take a hell lot of time to render on a slow pc.

As you are making a closed environment, skylight should not be used as a primary light source, unless you are making a cloudy day scene.

Try using an omni instead, turning on the shadows and activating the light tracer pluging for a more photorealistic look. Don't use higher bounce values.

activate the light tracer. also if you have brazil plug-in it will help alllot and allot to light up your scene,



Good Luck

Thanks for the advice guys, but im still having a problem. I activated the light-tracer in advanced lighting and I changed the bounces to 2 and everything but it was still pitch black in the room. Then I tried using radiosity and the same thing happened... Then I take all the walls away and I render it and it's not pitch black anymore. I tried brightening up the skylight but it was still pitch black with the walls their. Maybe I should upload the model for you guys to take a look at because I am stumped.

p.s. I could always just use an omni light but I feel that the skylight looks much more realistic in this specific scene.

or if your problem is still running then you have to enable mental ray render check mark in caustic, GI, and final gather, i hope it will help you remove your problem, ohhhh sorry one to mention dont forget to add spot light in the scene just use one spot light.




Good Luck!

Sorry to be a bother but I am unsure of how to edit the GI and stuff. I watched a tutorial where a person was editing the GI in the render menu under the "indirect Illumination" tab but when I went into render and looked for that tab, it wasn't there.

its just availbale in 3ds max 8 version.






what version of max do you use?





Regards!

crap... I have version 7.

ohhh crap man find out 3ds max version 8.0





Good Luck!

use mentel ray... and yes.... try making some windows (if not) in wall also... either use builtin SEC Windows or try boolean button in Create pannel...

radiosity should workkk.... :\