Let's get to know the Omni light parameters in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ) a bit and edit them to make the scene more realistic. Shall we? First make Omni01 the current selection by choosing it from the Select by Name tool. Now go to the Modify Panel .

Did you notice anything missing in our rendering results so far? Yeah you guessed it right. Shadows. Most types of lights in 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ) has the ability to cast shadows. But we need to turn them on manually. Since shadows are computationally intensive, 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ) turns them off initially. Here's what we need to do to turn them on. Select the Omni01 light and go to the Modify Panel. Inside the 'General Parameters' section you will see the 'Shadows' sub section. Check the 'On' checkbox to turn shadows on for the selected light. Repeat the steps for Omni02 to enable shadows for it too.

There are different types of shadows in 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ). By default, Shadow Map is the type of shadow selected. It produces comparitively simple shadows but is computationally inexpensive. It has the disadvantage that it cannot simulate lighter shadows that occurs when light passes through transparent objects. But for most applications Shadow Map gives satisfactory solutions in 3D Studio MAX ( 3ds max ). When transparency is there, we might have to go for computationally expensive 'Ray Tracing' shadows. Keep all these stuff in your memory. We will get to know all these in detail in advanced lessons. Let's now render the scene to see how cool it looks. The rendering result is shown below. Your's should look something similar to this.

Congratulations once again for having conquered this much of 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ) lessons yourself. You have just one more Chapter to take to get promoted to the Intermediate Lessons. As I always remind you, please make sure that you understand everything before you proceed furthur. Don't skip pages out of curiosity. These simple lessons are very essential for mastering 3D Studio MAX ( 3DS MAX ). Spend atleast thrice as much time to repeat exercises and experiment on your own , compared to the time you spend for learning a lesson. Then only these foundations gets really clear in your mind. So what's left in this Chapter? Yeah still scenes are reaching a climax. Lets get things moving. Let's do some animation. Move on to the Animation Fundamentals in the next Chapter