Using Local and Global Advanced Lighting Settings

Just like with the Light Tracer, you can set advanced lighting settings locally for specific objects using the Object Properties dialog box, opened with the Edit Object Properties menu command. This dialog box includes an Advanced Lighting panel, and several of the settings are specific to Radiosity.

For the selected objects, you can specify whether they Cast Shadows and Receive Illumination. For a radiosity solution, you can also select to enable or disable Diffuse, Specular, Regathering, and Subdividing. The Radiosity Refine Iterations value lets you set the number of iterations for the current selection.

If any light objects are selected, you can select to exclude them from radiosity processing or to store the illumination values with the mesh.

The Preference Settings dialog box also includes a panel for Radiosity. Using this panel, shown in Figure 28.14, you can set the advanced lighting settings that apply to all objects globally.

Figure 28.14: Use the Radiosity panel of the Preference Settings dialog box to set global parameters.

In the Radiosity panel of the Preference Settings dialog box is an option to Display Reflectance & Transmittance Information. If this option is enabled, this information (average and maximum percent values) appears directly below the sample slots. You can also select to have the radiosity solution displayed in the viewports and to automatically process any refine iterations noted in the Object Properties dialog box for a given object. Radiosity processing includes a couple of warning dialog boxes that appear-one when the current solution is reset, and another to update the solution when the Start button is clicked. You can disable both of these warnings. The final option is to save the radiosity solution with the Max file. This slightly increases the file size, but it doesn't require that you recalculate the radiosity solution when the file is opened again.