Tutorial 03: Improving scene, adding shadows

1. How to create textured shadows for Dage in 3DSMax.

This tutorial assumes you have a copy of 3D Studio Max installed in your system, and you have downloaded Starting Tutorial File and extracted it to folder, which we refer with (Dage)\

Also these tutorials assumes you have basic knowledge how to find things in 3D Studio Max, like property editor, material editor, etc.

I've build a simple scene with one light, that has shadow options on. It doesn't matter what are you rendering setting, if you use final gathering or advanced methods for scene lighting, the principle is the same.

This is what the scene looks rendered.

Note that all meshes you want to lightmap must be UVW mapped correctly!

It is good idea to render just white lights, as later you can adjust light colors realtime in Dage.

Select menu Rendering - Render to texture…

Specify your path where you want to create the files (they must be in the same directory as room 3ds file.

Select all mesh objects you want to render the lightmaps.

From Output rollout, click Add..

Choose Lighting map, and click Add elements.

Adjust the map size to your preference. 256×256 is usually fine. Bigger texture size, more shadow details can be seen, but slower to render.

Make sure Target map slot is Self-Illumination.

You should rename the element as LM instead of Lightmapping, cause 3DS file uses 8.3 fileformat.

Check Output Into Source from Baked material rollout.

Hit render. Soon every material should have self-illumination slot occupied.

Now in 3DSMax, render the scene with lights disabled, and everything should work out right.

Note that if you want to render the scene again, clear all self-illumination maps (so they won't affect your lighting setup) and rerender the maps.

Export the room to 3DS.

Load in Dage as usual.

Using lightmaps with Red tinted light.