Best way to light world?

[arshbot]

Hello all,

What is the best way to light up an entire world? Currently I have a spotlight that's linked to the user so it moves with the user, however that doesn't light the whole model (or even 360 degrees) and the user can easily see the darkness if they turn in a certain direction. What's the best way to combat this?

[Veleno]

Hi arshbot, the short version is either to use baked lighting for all the statically lit objects in the scene, or bake just indirect light (sometimes just ambient occlusion) and use realtime lights for the direct light.

The first works pretty okay, but loses lighting detail from any bump maps because the lightmaps don't include directional information.

The second works best for medium-sized outdoor scenes that can use a shadow casting directional light. These can be created in Inspector.

If you're doing a flashlight scenario, fully baking lighting is probably going to be the best option. Until you have it baked, you can also set a scene's ambient light level to something like (.3,.3,.35) - fairly dark with a slight blue tint. This can be set in inspector at the top node level if you check the "save settings" box.

If you aren't already, you can also automatically generate a skydome by placing a sky map with a spherical projection in Max into the environment map slot of Environment and Effects and checking the "Background Map" option in the exporter.

[arshbot]

The second works best for medium-sized outdoor scenes that can use a shadow casting directional light. These can be created in Inspector.

How can I do this?

[Veleno]

Hi arshbot, here's a short tutorial on that:
---------------
Vizard R5: Adding realtime light to a scene and enabling shadows.
Sample Files: Realtime Lighting.zip (7.5Mb)

Starting with an unlit scene in Inspector:
- First, Go to Create -> Light -> Directional Light
- Then, in the properties window check the box for "Shadows"
http://statickb.worldviz.com/files/RealtimeLight_01.gif

- Next, name the light node so it can be accessed through code
- You can set the angle of the sun node using the rotation controls
- The position of a directional light does not affect its output, but can be used to move the node's icon to a more convenient location.
http://statickb.worldviz.com/files/RealtimeLight_02.gif

- The ambient light level can also be set. This is accessed through the "Scene" root node.
- After setting the ambient light level, this can be stored within the file by checking "Save Scene Settings" within the properties panel.
http://statickb.worldviz.com/files/RealtimeLight_03.gif

- Finally, save the file from inspector by going to File -> Save As...
- Pick a location and a filename, then hit Save. If you are editing an existing file, you may want to overwrite it.
http://statickb.worldviz.com/files/RealtimeLight_04.gif

Notes:
If you are constantly iterating on exports, it can be convenient to delete the geometry before saving the lighting so the lighting can be saved in a separate file. This allows you to easily merge the lighting into any new exported file or add it through Vizard code.

[Veleno]

Here's the link to the sample file:
http://statickb.worldviz.com/files/Realtime-Lighting.zip