Raytrace Lighting Problems

[tspringer]

Experiencing Raytrace problems in that all horizontal surfaces (e.g. floor, table surfaces) in the view appear as if their material is emmissive, but they are not. The materials on these surfaces appear as the material they should be, but only faint shadowing appears on these surfaces and realism is lost. All other surfaces appear to be rendering correctly. Any ideas?

[Keith Jeffery]

It'd be easier to ascertain what's happening with a picture. However, my first advice when rendering a well-lit scene is to turn down ambient light, which may be an issue here.

Ambient light is a double-edged sword. It allows you to see detail in shadows, but also washes everything out and "flattens" the scene, making it less dynamic. In ray trace mode, you should prefer radiosity to ambient light.

[tspringer]

Thanks for your thoughts, Keith. I don't think it is the ambient lighting though.

I am experimenting with a previous copy of the same file that seems to be rendering properly, but I have no idea why. I have checked all my settings and 3d prefs for both files and they apear to be the same.

This is my first posting...not sure how to attach an image via url.

[Steve S]

Louis has a good, quick, (and free) tutorial on posting image on his website-www.lfcompany.com

[tspringer]

Steve - thanks for the note on the image attachment tutorial...very helpful. Thanks Louise for making that available.

Keith - see the attached images. They are not exactly the same viewpoint but the difference in the lighting and raytrace may reveal my problem. I'm not sure if it is something I had set wrong on the newer file, but as I mentioned the older copy of the same file seemed to render better.