Expert: Andre Hickman - 4/1/2007

Question
Hi
I work with 3DSMAX (8-6-3.1).
The feature "Final Gather" has been considered to calculate indirect illuminations that makes the scene much more real. But the problem I'm facing is that the operation related to computing final gather points - that takes a long time - is done before each frame is being rendered even if objects in the scene don't move. I want to do the operation for once while rendering multiple frames (considering the calculations for every frame is the same). How can I do so or use another feature doing so?
Thank you!  

Answer
Hey Mojtaba,

The only way you are going to be able to make programs like that work, for animation is if you have the NASA mainframe to use as a render farm!  There are so many calculations and stuff, that it is very impractical for animation, and is sparsely used for still renders by the average user.  Most of the animated feature films are faking it too, and only use real global illumination and radiosity sparingly in a movie.

Instead you need to understand what is actually making a "realistic" scene look realistic, and FAKE IT!  One of the main things is radiosity, where light is reflected from multiple directions onto objects and "fills" the environment. The best resource I have found to fake this is a free maxscript called E-Light.  what it basically does is creates a geosphere, then creates a spotlight on every node of the sphere.  The illumination level that you choose is divided among all of the spotlights, and gives a very even distribution of light and more realistic shadowing.  from there you can add key lighting, etc.  but it will give you the foundational lighting that you need, at a fraction of your resource cost...

...oh did I mention it was FREE?! yeah FREE is always good.
Here are some links, so that you can see the results of this FREE maxscript for yourself...

http://home.wanadoo.nl/r.j.o/skyraider/e-light.htm
http://home.wanadoo.nl/r.j.o/skyraider/e-light_settings.htm

Try it out on a few motion renders.  learn how to tweak your shadow map size and illuminosity level, and then add some keylighting to get the desired effect.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Andre

If this is not what you are trying to do, I wanted to ask in addition, have you tried to check the box to reuse the radiosity solution?  It should be in the render area.