Scanline renderer - Skylight multiplier

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to render using the scanline renderer with a skylight. With the skylight multiplier set to it's default value of 1, the scene is completely washed out. If I set the skylight multiplier to 0.1 I get better results on this basic test scene. I watched a quick tutorial on scanline / AO rendering and their skylight multiplier was set to 1.  What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

[madsd]

Just a question, any reason why you arn´t using Arnold?

The scanline render is very old, Arnold out-performs scanlines very easily when dealing with skylight.

[Anonymous]

I was kind of waiting for that. It's one of the renderers the Sketchfab exporter for 3ds max is compatibly with, and it seemed pretty accessible. I've been using Max for years to process and create geometry for export, but I have very little rendering experience. If I can come up with a good workflow for any of the renderers I would rather put my scene together manually. I started there because that's what the exporter uses. Can you recommend a tutorial, there are many, I'm sure some bad. Thank you for your time.

[madsd]

I don´t recommend tutorials, I make them ( much more fun )

If you could list the things you ideally would like to see integrated into your daily work there is a good chance I can customize an instruction set and get you on track.

[Richard.Vivanco]

Check your units and check if you have some exposure control.

Try with radiosity option to increase the indirect illumination quality.

[Anonymous]

I don't know if I follow, I doubt you mean metric / us standard? There is exposure control on some of the lights and cameras, depending on the type. I went into Rendering -> Exposure with mixed results.

Using the radiosity option didn't have any effect. 

[Anonymous]

I looked into the Arnold renderer over the weekend. I started with a similar basic scene as I was using for the scanline tests with similar results, images below. I had to knock the default Arnold skydome light intensity and exposure values down from 1 to 0.1 and 8 to 1 respectively. What results do you get using the values in the images I've posted for each of the renderers? Then I watched a tutorial, downloaded the materials, and got the same results as they did. I tested all of this on 2018 and 2019 installed on my desktop and laptop, with the same results. The only thing I can think of when you start Max for the first time you are prompted to select between Standard and Vis. I always choose Vis because I used to use it when it was a separate install. Maybe there's nothing wrong at all. It wasn't immediately obvious how to switch between them to test that. Thoughts?

[madsd]

The way I work is very simple and works in all cases.

I simply righclick the exposure spinners and that resets the 8 to 0. Then dont touch that any more and use that as a base refference for all lightning.

Do note, you need fewer samples on the skydome to resolve now, so if you have old scenes lying around, they may render slower due to the updated efficiency on the samples, so you can lower samples and get same quality at lower overall render times. Skydome for interiors now is very fast it used to be a killer, this is not true anymore.