ZA

Hello everyone. I'm currently a student working on a realtime project, and will be using LS to bake textures. My relationship with the program has certainly been a love/hate one over the past few months, and I really need help figuring out its subtleties.

The problem I have is with indoor scenes, specifically ones with materials applied. After doing the tutorials, I can do decent outdoor scenes lit only by sunlight, but interiors come out awful. The worst is after I apply materials- all the nuances of radiosity are clobbered by the texture, even when I turn on 'blend.'

The thing is, I see renderings all the time on boards such as this one which portray the exact same scenes I'm trying to nail down (carpeted office with a window, for example,) but the photorealism in those scenes is on a different plane then the crap I seem to be producing. LS is obviously a program of patience and detail. But I think there are some fundamentals I'm missing. Anyway, here is the scene:

www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~aalang/office.zip

I'd really appreciate all the criticism you can throw at me of my technique, settings, etc. My goal here is to redefine the methods I'm using so I can finally start enjoying this program!

Two final notes- the one thing you can skip is commenting on the shadow leaks- those I know how to solve. Secondly, what I would appreciate most, if you kind readers wouldn't mind, would be someone to email me back the same scene after they've tweaked it, with a description in the email of what they've done, so I can learn.

Thanks a lot everyone,
ZA
aalang@fas.harvard.edu

SEIF

hii ZA..i downloaded ur file..as u said Lightscape is an xcellent program but needs some patience..i'll try 2 work with ur model for some time and tell u the results as soon as i can..k?