Lighting setup for real-time characters?

[The Devo]

I need a simple light setup to render my characters for my portfolio. Now, before anyone berates me for not using an in-engine shot, know that I can't. I'm not allowed.

I've been playing with a simple 3 point light setup in Max, and I turn off Anti Aliasing in the render. The results are decent, but I'm losing some of my normal map detail for some reason. I've tried jacking the backlight intensity way up, but it doesn't seem to help. I think I just stink at lighting.

Any help would be appreciated.

Chris

[Lamont]

Do you have a copy of UnrealED or Hammer?

[The Devo]

I don't, but again, I can't show my models in another company's engine.

Chris

[Lamont]

I don't, but again, I can't show my models in another company's engine.

Chris

Then I guess a simple 3-point setup in Max will have to do. I think someone posted a scene with lights ready to go.

[zeke3d]

play with your specular settings, and color your lights differently.

[devoid]

This is a pretty super obvious thing and don't take offense but I've seen people miss it. For some reason max defaults the amount of the bump/normal map channel to 30, make sure you've turned it up to 100 to see your normals at full strength. Also there are tons of tutorials about 3 point light setups for both 3d and photography.

[Yozora]

hmm how do you use a normal map with that bump slot? If you just put a normal map in there it does nothing in the viewport, and the render looks crap. I usually turn on metalbump9 and use it's normal slot for the normal map.

But even then metalbump9 still sucks compared to maya's default high quality viewport, so I actually export my models into maya just to take viewport screenshots -.-

I dont like UE3 because the normals look all blurry, maybe theres some setting to make it look sharper that im missing :/

[The Devo]

To use a normal map in the bump slot in Max, you have to choose the "normal bump" shader, then drop the texture into that.

I did know about the 30 setting devoid (is that a Devin Townsend reference?), but a good call on mentioning it.

Thanks for the replies guys. I was sort of hoping that there was some magical solution that I was missing, but apparently I just stink at lighting. I've been messing with the 3 point setup, different attenuations, different intensities, different colors, and it still just looks OK. I guess I have to just keep playing with it.

Chris

[ploon]

A few more things I can think of that havent been mentioned, they might help:

In your bitmap slot turn down the blur (it defaults to 1.0) it can make a difference.

Filtering in "bitmap parameters" change this to "Summed Area", it used to slow
things down but these days theres no noticeable difference and again it does improve quality a little.