there are so many settings to play with when it comes to lighting. i was actually talking about the dmap filter which you had set to 4, but if the dmap res works, then stick with that :) but u wud lose softness if u turn the res up

Ahh, I'll toy around with that now.

Okay, I wanna jump in here now. ;)

I'm still working on my renders of my first short film and tho they don't totally suck yet, I'm having trouble getting that GI look I'm really going for. With the picture I added below, I'm using RealFakeGI shaders, GI Joe and various lights in the scene suggested from a book I bought called the Maya 4.5 Handbook. I love the room layout and the way Adam Watkins mentions using Area lights above my sconces to reflect the creation of "bounced" lights. For the sconces themselves, I'm using Point lights.

I have three spotlights above three poster frames and I'm not sure using Nem's techniques on all of my lights in the scene would work for good GI lighting. I'm kinda frustrated here because I know I'm on the right track... I just ain't connecting here. ;P Do I need to get rid of all of my RFGI shaders and just use GI Joe or get rid of GI Joe and use the shaders with Nem's technique? Can I do this and get a bit of an eerie feel to my scene.. unfortuneately, it's an indoor scene. :( If you guys and gals have any good suggestion, please holler! :)

Thanks a mill!
Russell

i wudnt use realfake with GIJoe because they both do the same thing, just use GIJoe
and i only tend to use mytechnique when i need to case long shadows, for everything else i just use GI Joe

Hmmm... okay, I got rid of RFGI and made a few changes to the dmap settings and this is what I came up with. I still think the lamp is too bright but over all, I think i like the darkness in the scene. Should I up the Intensity of the GI Joe setup?

Russell

BTW, a good setting for dmap resolution and filter are 64 and 3 respectively. :) Just FYI...