[CJElven]

I'm having three main problems with a scene. I'm fairly new to actually USING Maxwell, as I haven't had a lot of time to actually mess with it. I've got a few things here and there figured out, but I'm still a rank novice. I have outlined the problems that I'm having on the image itself. I only let it render for 10 minutes once I saw the problems that I was having. SL 5.81 in that time.



Any help would be greatly appreciated. Using Lightwave 9 with latest versions of everything, but final MXS was tweaked in MRS...render from Lightwave was "Done" without doing anything.

[faraz]

If you're in Lightwave, I would advise using UV maps for everything - don't use planar / cubic mapping - it's not reliable in my experience. Also make sure you've got a bump map in the LW bump channel and its set to UV mapping. For some reason I find that bump doesn't work, or worse I get a black material (something to do with projectors I think) unless there's a map in there, even if your using the maxell mat editor.

When you're setting up your maxwell scene you've got to think a bit more in a real-life lighting way - so place lights, refelectors as you might do for photography, which can be unlike CG setup in other renderers.

In this case the candle's not going to illuminate the area below the candle holder, it wouldn't in real life, unless theres a surface for the light to bounce off (even then you might not get much indirect light). You can't use lightwave's self-shadow options (since thats cheating!). Instead you probably need a fill light above the scene, like a box light to fill in the shadow area.

Just my humble ops - hope its useful.

[CJElven]

Thanks for the suggestions. I assume that you mean that planar isn't very reliable in MR? Because I've never had problems with standard mapping in LW.
I will try UV mapping in the LW bump channel. I didn't put anything in any of the channels in LW, I thought everything was taken care of in MR... That might also explain why I didn't really get any bump on the table, which used the Arroway wood plank texture.
As to the light, I know that the candle wouldn't completely illuminate that section, but there would still be more light than there is...I think. Oh, well. Thanks for the suggestions.