CompuServe Messages

No, I didn't say the renderer couldn't be improved <g>. But having always felt that 3DS looked kinda' pasty myself, I just recently discovered the proper combinations to overcome that look pretty nicely with this particular program. It did not come to me as intuitively as with some other programs. With the combination of the right Medit surface parameters, the right map at the right contrast, the right combo. of lighting, and especially the "right" gamma correction…..I was able to achieve very nice polished metallic looks….it kinda' surprised me when I hit on all the right elements. Personally, for rich/warm looks like many lusterous metallic treatments are, I run gamma correction lower that 1.8….that alone can make a big difference. And viewing a NTSC framebuffer output as opposed to SVGA makes a slight difference in those types of looks also. The mesh and it's mapping assignments are important too, to bring out the look. The ambient material setting is very critical, moreso than some other programs – and there's a narrow window of useable looks wrt the highlight size/intensity (for lusterous metallic looks). As far as transparency goes, most every scanline renderer I've seen looks pasty wrt ray tracers. Some RT's look pasty. Regards, BILL