radiosity settings?

[sbrown]

can anyone share their radiosity settings and a brief explanation of residual??? what changes when you set the numbers higher/lower etc. Is there a good tutorial(probably on mcneels website, I'll look there) I keep getting strange little shadows on the edges of ceiling mounted items.

[dm_wills1739]

Firstly, let me state that Accurender is NOT Lightscape or Radiance.

Secondly, I have found some tricks that help me greatly:

1. Always try and include some form of daylighting in the solution. Lights only tend to create jagged shadows and some serious artifacting problems. I have found daylights, even if the sky is turned down or the time of day is set in the evening, really helps.
2. Use the “best” radiosity setting as this will mesh the model with a finer grid, reducing some artifacting problems.
3. Do NOT use backface and view culling (if you can help it) as this interferes with shadow and reflection accuracy in the final render.
4. When doing a final render, also use “best” and wait for the render to complete for a much better result. I generally use 3 transparency and reflection bounces, but YMMV.

The residual is the amount of light energy left to distribute (“shoot”) in the scene. You can go again (hit “Continue”) to keep distributing the residual, but it eventually becomes an exercise in diminishing returns. Just shoot till the scene looks illuminated correctly.

On the strange shadows, there is not much you can do to correct them if they persist. Experiment with settings, use daylighting to illuminate your scene. Do a best raytrace and let it complete. If problems persist, fudge it in Photoshop...

:)

LG