9

Radiosity Meshing Parameters Rollout 69
Left: A simple box with no subdivision
Middle Left: The box faces are subdivided
Middle Right: The box faces are subdivided with a smaller
Meshing Size
Right: The box faces are subdivided with Adaptive Subdivision
Mesh Setting s group
Adaptive Subdivision using the default mesh and light settings
Ma x Mes h Si ze—The size of the largest fa ces after
adaptive sub division. Default=36” for imperial
units and 100cm for met ric units.
WhenUseAdaptiveSubdivisionisturnedoff,Max
Mesh Size sets the size of the radiosity mesh in
world units.
Mi n Mesh S ize—Faces are not divided smaller than
the minimum mesh size. Default=3” for imperial
units and 10cm for metric units.
Contrast Threshold—Faces that have vertex
illuminations that differ by more than the Contrast
Threshold settings are subdiv ided. Default=75.0.
Radiosity solutions with different Contrast Threshold values.
The best solution is at the center, with Contrast Threshold=60.
Initial Meshing S ize—When improving the face
shape, faces that are smaller than the Init ial
Meshing Size are not subdivided. The threshold
fordecidingwhetherafaceispoorlyshapedalso
getslargerasthefacesizeisclosertotheInitial
Mesh Size. Default=12 inches (1 foot) for US
Standard units and 30.5cm for met ric units.
Light Settings group
Shoot Dir ect Lights —When adaptive subdivision or
shoot direct lights is on, the direct lighting on al l of
the objects in the scene is calculated analytically,
based on the following sw itches. Lighting is
analy tically computed without m odify ing the
object’s mesh which produces lighting that is
less noisy and more pleasing to t he eye. This
switch is implicitly enabled when using adaptive
subdivision since it is a requirement. Default=on.
This switch is available when the Use Adaptive
Subdivision switch is turned off.
Adaptive Subdivision with light settings turned off
Note: Lighting from lights that are not included
while shoot ing direct lig ht are c alculated using