Dark Scene

[Mimigu]

I already set up three high-intensity, omni lights, and prepared some preliminary materials for a quick render for a school project.

However, my white material, which had diffuse as pure white, as well as white self illumination, turned out to be black in the mental ray render!

All the other materials, including ones with mental ray metal as diffuse, turned out relatively OK, though very dark.

3DS Max 2008 file attached. (in case you are curious, that is a model of lab apparatus)

I tried adding many more lights or to increase the intensity of the lights but seemed to have no effect.

Help!

Thanks in advance!

[nzjimmy2001]

i can't open the scene coz don't have 2008 version of max... but maybe the black object has its normals flipped? select the mesh. go into element selection mode. and click flip. then try to render again. that or maybe its a scene scale problem. thats all i can think of. hope that helps.

[Mimigu]

the black object is a plane.

In the viewport it looks perfectly fine but in the renderer it looks black.




I tried to do what you told me, but it doesn't work

[Poltavskiy]

wow 2008 already wonder how you got that

[Mimigu]

it's the 3DS Max 2008 trial

[multimediaman]

your scene might be using automatic exposure control or something... might want to check the settings out... Not sure where they'd be though.

Also not sure why the plane that's self-illuminating would be black

[Mimigu]

The renderer's settings were the default 3DS Max Mental Ray No GI - High preset settings...

In previous versions of 3DS Max, ie 3DS Max 8, such settings would allow for a relatively bright scene...