Ok, I've never really tried to light a scene in max before so maybe this is normal, but as far as I understand this, an Omni light is supposed to cast light in all directions.

Maybe its just because I'm used to how lights work in Hammer, but from the results I'm getting, it looks like the lights are working backwards to how they should logically, and that these omni lights I've placed aren't casting light in all directions.



In this image you can see that I've only placed two lights right up against the wall. I was hoping that this would cause the wall that the lights are closest to, to get brighter and the opposite wall to get darker, but in fact the results are completely opposite.

Now I'm not sure if it has something to do with the settings I'm using for the lights, but I was working under the assumption that the default settings would work fine.



To me this just doesn't make any sense.

Am I doing something wrong?

try playing with the attenuation and falloff settings.

What materials are applied to those objects in the scene? If you're using custom DirectX shaders, they may not work with the lighting until you choose the correct lights in the material editor.
If that's just a standard Max material then I don't know what's up, because the light settings look fine but the result is definitely wrong.

Using omni lights might seem like a good idea because its a big ball of light, but you can get yourself in trouble quickly. They also can take a lot longer to render because they shoot rays of light out all over the place, even out into the void which turns out to be a waste of time.

Direct and spot lights shoot the same amount of rays but they are concentrated on what you want lit. It also takes more omni lights to light a scene so it looks good. I'm not saying Omni lights shouldn't be used, they have their place its not the first light you should grab when laying down your lighting.

More than likely the light is too close to the wall and Max thinks its behind the wall? If the scale of your scene is really small the light gizmo's will be scaled really small (since its a constant size on the screen) which can make them look like they are in the correct spot but when max goes to calculate lighting part of the light might actually be clipping into the wall and killing that lighting. If you can scale up your scene and place the lights again and see what happens.

In the example you gave above an omni light might work best but you should turn on Far Attenuation.
- The inner "start" circle (tan) is where the light starts at 100%. So anything from the center of the light gizmo to that circle will be lit at 100%.
- The outer "end" circle (brown) is where it reaches 0%. It's like a circular gradient.
Make sure the inner circle clips into the wall you want the light bright, and make sure the outer circle clips the far wall.

I normally start out by placing a sky light with very low settings. Yes even for indoor scenes, and getting a good ambient light level and build from there.

Awesome Vig, thanks for the help. They are just simple diffuse maps, so I don't think the problem is there. It might in fact be that the scene is too small, but I don't think so because I can zoom in at least one more level before the units are maxed. I can't re-scale the scene as I built it to fit the characters that will be used in it, and they're already rigged and in the process of being animated.

I'll see how playing with the settings works and maybe changing the type of lights.

Thanks again!

Might be the viewport is set to use default lights? Try right-clicking the viewport name, go to Viewport Config, then unchecking the Default Light checkbox.