Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 913

Show Samples When on, sample locations render as red dots. This shows where the most sampling has taken place, which can help you choose the optimal settings for undersampling. Default=off. Modeling Global Illumination with Radiosity Radiosity is rendering technology that realistically simulates the way in which light interacts in an environment. This topic provides you with a conceptual overview of what radiosity is and how this global illumination technique relates to other rendering techniques available in 3ds Max. This information will help you decide which technique is most suitable for the visualization task you want to perform. By more accurately simulating the lighting in your scene, radiosity offers you significant benefits over standard lights: ■ Improved Image Quality: The radiosity technology of 3ds Max produces more accurate photometric on page 8088 simulations of the lighting in your scenes. Effects such as indirect light, soft shadows, and color bleeding between surfaces produce images of natural realism that are not attainable with standard scanline rendering. These images give you a better, more predictable representation of what your designs will look like under specific lighting conditions. ■ More Intuitive Lighting: In conjunction with radiosity techniques, 3ds Max also provides a real-world lighting interface. Instead of specifying lighting intensity with arbitrary values, light intensity is specified using photometric units (lumens, candelas, and so on). In addition, the characteristics of real-world lighting fixtures can be defined using industry-standard Luminous Intensity Distribution files (such as IES on page 5034, CIBSE on page 7935, and LTLI on page 8029), which are obtainable from most lighting manufacturers. By being able to work with a real-world lighting interface, you can intuitively set up the lighting in your scenes. You can focus more on your design exploration than on the computer graphic techniques required to visualize them accurately. 6168 | Chapter 20 Rendering