Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 923

solution, you can render a two-dimensional view of it. In your 3ds Max scene, ray-tracing adds effects in addition to those that radiosity provides: lights can provide ray-traced shadows, and materials can provide ray-traced reflections and refractions. The rendered scene combines both techniques, and appears more realistic than either technique alone could provide. By integrating ray-tracing and radiosity, 3ds Max offers a full range of visualization possibilities, from fast, interactive lighting studies to images of exceptional quality and realism. See also: ■ How Radiosity Works in 3ds Max on page 6178 ■ Radiosity Workflows on page 6181 ■ Animation with Radiosity on page 6186 ■ Radiosity Controls on page 6188 ■ Lighting Analysis on page 6219 ■ Radiosity Preferences on page 7786 ■ Advanced Lighting Override Material on page 5734 How Radiosity Works in 3ds Max This is an overview of how radiosity works in 3ds Max: 1 Object by object, 3ds Max loads a copy of the scene into the radiosity engine. 2 3ds Max subdivides each object according to the Global Subdivision Settings in the Radiosity Meshing Parameters rollout, or according to the object's individual object properties, if those differ from the global settings. 3 3ds Max emits a certain amount of rays, based on the average scene reflectance and number of polygons. The brightest light source will have more rays to emit than the weakest light source. 4 These rays bounce around randomly in the scene and deposit energy on the faces. 5 3ds Max updates the viewports by taking all the energy from the faces and spreading it to the closest vertex. 6178 | Chapter 20 Rendering