To get a visualization of the library model, you will generate a radiosity solution for it, and then create a rendering.
Set up:
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Open the provided file, library_with_furniture.max.
If you see the File Units: Mismatch dialog, choose the option Adopt The File's Unit Scale. This will change your system unit, so be sure to reset your system unit after completing this tutorial.
To reset your system unit, go to the Customize menu and choose Units Setup > System Unit Setup > System Unit Scale > Inches.
Also, if you encounter the Missing External Files dialog, just click the Continue button.
This is the same file as before, with some more furniture added.
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If the geometry is not visible in the viewport, click the Zoom Extents All button twice to correct the display.
Generate the radiosity solution:
A radiosity solution provides the most realistic rendering of a scene. It calculates all the indirect lighting in the scene (light reflecting between surfaces), providing a more accurate representation of the ambient lighting levels. Radiosity solutions go hand-in-hand with photometric lights, which provide realistic, physically based lighting levels and distributions. Though a radiosity solution takes some time to generate, it is typically more intuitive, and faster in the long run, to set up photometric lights with radiosity, than to try and get natural-looking lighting results using standard lights without radiosity.
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From the menu bar, choose Rendering > Advanced Lighting > Radiosity. The Render Scene dialog opens, with the Advanced Lighting panel displayed.
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On the Select Advanced Lighting rollout, verify that Radiosity is chosen and Active is turned on.
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In the Radiosity Processing Parameters rollout > Process group, set Initial Quality to 80.0 percent. Verify that Refine Iterations (All Objects) is set to 4, and then click Start.
The progress bar shows various stages: Processing Radiosity at increasing levels of solution quality, and then after those passes are complete, a Refining solution pass.
When the radiosity solution is complete, you should see that:
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The Stop button is no longer enabled, and Start is enabled again.
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The geometry of the scene is much more complicated, as surfaces have been subdivided into meshes.
To more accurately calculate the distribution of light between surfaces, the radiosity process subdivides the surfaces and stores the calculated lighting values at each element of the resulting mesh. You can control the amount of subdivision: the finer the mesh, the greater the lighting detail, though a finer mesh costs more in terms of memory and calculation time.
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Lighting levels in shaded viewports have changed to show the results of the radiosity solution. These results give a good approximation of the final lighting levels of your scene.
