im putting my level into 3ds max, and ive placed lights all around, about 30. the first 8 lights, light up the environment, then the rest do nothing. i assume this is because the max number of lights on my 9800 is 8. but this means part of my level has light on it so i can see what im doing, and then rest of the level is completly black, and i have to work in wireframe. how can i tell max which lights i want to light up the environment so i can see ?

You'd have to increase the intensity of the light(s). Assuming the "9800" is the ATi Radeon 9800, you shouldn't have any problems. My ATi Radeon 9250 AGP 128MB can run well over 30 lights. (34 is the most I've tried).

well, try to render your scene, 3ds max has whats called active degradation, which will remove or limit certain aspects of the viewport preview in order to maintain a good speed (fps). however if you render it they all should show up unless you have somehow placed the lights wrong (and i can't help you unless you tell me what lights they all are).
as for a limit on the amount of lights... there is none, and most of all it wouldn't be judged by your hardware. 3ds max is purely software (it does/can use hardware accel though), but it is made to make very complicated scenes and render them, and when its renders it uses only your cpu, gpu has nothing to do with it. so haveing a crappy vid card will only make active degradation activate sooner but will not limit anything you can do in max.

hm as far as I was aware adaptive degredation just displays objects as their bounding box when you move the camera, so that it only has to display complex geometry once you've decided on your view angle.
edit:(unless there is a feature called active degredation that I just don't know of)

if you're talking about just viewport display, don't forget that it uses vertex lighting, and if you have falloff on your lights and light isnt reaching any verts (even if the light is right next to a surface) then you won't see any difference (in viewport display, itll render fine)

If you post some pictures of your scene then it might be more obvious what the problem is, but there definately isnt any kind of 'light limit'- if you add more than your pc can handle it just runs slow, it won't start clipping bits of your scene

Quote:

Original post by red_produkt hm as far as I was aware adaptive degredation just displays objects as their bounding box when you move the camera, so that it only has to display complex geometry once you've decided on your view angle. edit:(unless there is a feature called active degredation that I just don't know of) if you're talking about just viewport display, don't forget that it uses vertex lighting, and if you have falloff on your lights and light isnt reaching any verts (even if the light is right next to a surface) then you won't see any difference (in viewport display, itll render fine) If you post some pictures of your scene then it might be more obvious what the problem is, but there definately isnt any kind of 'light limit'- if you add more than your pc can handle it just runs slow, it won't start clipping bits of your scene

in active degradation in the viewport config you can choose, smooth+highlights or just smooth. meaning if things get too slow it and it is set to just smooth then it'll only display the smoothed geometry but no highlighting from lights.

hey cool its more useful than I realised :)

edit: now I recreate a complex scene and stick in a bunch of lights it is actually limiting me to 8. I could swear I've had a scene with more in though, there must be a setting somewhere.. although turning on/off that active degredation isnt having any effect on number of displayed lights

Ok the more I look at this it seems to be a driver limitation in both direct 3d and opengl, D shankar I don't know what it is about your setup that allows 34 lights but I'd like to know it :)

for now my suggestion is to build your scene first with viewport set to direct 3d or opengl and using default lighting, and switch to software rendering for light placement. Clipping looks a bit ugly but all your lights will at least work

[Edited by - red_produkt on July 5, 2006 5:11:29 PM]

thanks for the answers,

i think the best idea is to get one of the active lights, and move it up really high, and crank up the multiplier and have no falloff, this will light the entire scene. And then just disable it before i render a scene

Quote:

Original post by red_produkt hey cool its more useful than I realised :) edit: now I recreate a complex scene and stick in a bunch of lights it is actually limiting me to 8. I could swear I've had a scene with more in though, there must be a setting somewhere.. although turning on/off that active degredation isnt having any effect on number of displayed lights Ok the more I look at this it seems to be a driver limitation in both direct 3d and opengl, D shankar I don't know what it is about your setup that allows 34 lights but I'd like to know it :) for now my suggestion is to build your scene first with viewport set to direct 3d or opengl and using default lighting, and switch to software rendering for light placement. Clipping looks a bit ugly but all your lights will at least work

must just be something with 3ds max 8 then... i just made a test scene with 100 omni lights...
edit: unless you mean just in the viewport, i get this too, its probably just a way to limit for performance reasons (imagine highlighting from 100 lights in realtime....).

[Edited by - Jarrod1937 on July 6, 2006 1:30:08 AM]

think he means he can't see what he's doing in the viewport, try switching to software rendering and you'll see all the lights. If software can do it fine I don't understand why D3D or opengl have a problem.

the other option rfterdarc is to vertex-bake your lighting in viewport to get an idea of the light setup. Youll have to re-bake each time you change the lighting or add a light, but itll at least give a half-decent representation and it won't affect the render