Lighting tutorial NOT related to Spotlight

[MGuilfoile]

I've been getting some great rendering results with VW2022 and '23, but I am still befuddled with lighting my scene. It is by far the most time-consuming part of preparing renderings. Lots of trial-and-error, mostly error. I've been searching for ways to do simple things--like setting the fall-off distance, for example--but also for tips and tricks on how to quickly light one's scene. I see there is a thing called "custom light" in the menu, but I can't find any instructions on how to use it. When I do a search with the word "light" or "lighting" in the search phrase it sends me to dozens of Spotlight tutorials. I don't have Spotlight. I use Architect. Any advice? I should add that I have seen some VW tutorials, but they are all trivial explanations about how the lights work, NOT how to light a scene. Big, big difference. Thanks in advance for any help on this. I'm sure I'm not alone with feeling that I'm not quite using the lights as designed.

MHBrown

[Luis M Ruiz]

Over the years we have put a lot of effort on our dedicated webinars related to this topic:
Lights, textures, cameras, renderings styles, all type of settings, resolution, rendering size, use of cloud, and lots of tips and best practices, and sample files.

There is not one click solution for creating an incredible rendering, there are several variables depending on the desired result. Interiors, exteriors, day, night, etc?
Please take a look at our growing gallery of webinars, it'll be worth it.

https://university.vectorworks.net/

[AlanW]

@MGuilfoileHi have you tried Twin Motion for your renderings? Lighting works well there and easy.

[scottmoore]

Truly, the best thing you can do is experiment. Lighting a rendering is not all that different, in most ways, than lighting a theater scene or, perhaps more to the point, a video or movie shoot. In those scenarios you hire professional lighting designers, so plan on having to do some homework.  
 

Play around with light sources to begin with. Setting the light type, beam and field, various fall off options, intensities. Note that <100% is an option and sometimes necessary. Look at angles, and direction.  Then it becomes a relationship between lighting, textures, reflections, backgrounds, etc. 

 

Also note, that utilizing IES files, especially when the light is grazing a surface, can add a ton of realism. 
 

The point above made by Luis is a good one.  If you watch the credits on an animated movie, you will see a lot of people involved with “lighting”. There is a reason for that. 

[Pat Stanford]

The Remarkable Renderworks videos by Dan Jansenson @DanJansenson on YouTube (and I think Vectorworks University) are a good place to start. They are a little out of date (written for VW2012), but they are based on the Cinema 4D engine and even if how you manipulate the controls is different in VW2023, the basics of how many lights to put and where to put them are still about the same.

[Tom W.]

The Rendering For Success videos are also very good. This one has a section on Custom Lights at 6:17:

 

 

[MGuilfoile]

Thank you all for the tips. I've seen most of these and, unless I just missed it (which is certainly possible) here is a partial list of what I'm talking about in regards to what I don't understand about VW's particular approach to lighting:

 

1. The controls in the OIP for the beam and spread imply that there is some control for falloff distance (those little handles that slide along the beam/spread handles), but there is none. Then there is the arrow, which also looks like something that would have a function more than simply as a pointer. Is there a way to control the falloff distance? If not, this is the number 1 thing that needs to be addressed with VW's lighting.

2. What is the difference between "smooth" and "realistic"? I assume the latter follows the inverse square law, which, if you graph it, is pretty darn smooth. So what is smooth? What is realistic? How do you control either? Why would I choose one over the other?

3. There really is no way to set light levels using anything other than the setting you plan to use for your final rendering. My work-around is to use the "final" mode, but at a really low dpi, like 18dpi or 36dpi. Is this what most people do? I've seen nothing about this in any tutorial.

4. The Visualization palette is what I consider "a good start." Is there a way to have it display valuable information: brightness, distance falloff, spread/beam diameter, etc. It would be great to be able to see all the lighting settings in one place rather than a list that you can turn on and off.

5. At least in my set up of VW 2022 and 2023 (Windows and Mac) it is really hard to select a spotlight. I have to click on where I think the pointer arrow is. If I click on the light proper nothing happens. This is also a pain when you have several lights because the arrows are not visible. I often click them inadvertently when trying select something in my model. Very annoying. Is there a way to switch this on or off? Is this normal?

6. This is more of a bug, but often when I move a light in plan view it will also move in the "Z" direction. The same is true if I'm looking at the y,z plane, it moves in the X direction. In short, moving lights is a jerky, imprecise action. This might also be human error on my part somewhere.

7. What is "emitter" and why should I care? Outside of the Copenhagen Interpretation, I'm not sure why I would consider my light as a wave or a particle. Does it matter? When would I use one and not the other?

8. The Line Light: does it work yet? I'm hoping it does. I haven't tried it lately.
9. Redshift. I find that it is slower and less realistic than the Renderworks Interior/Exterior Final Style. So why is it here? Am I not using it correctly? How does one use it correctly?

 

In conclusion, I'm getting amazing renderings from VW's Renderworks. It rivals what I'm seeing with 3DS Max and Vray...in fact I think my output is often better. I can also keep an entire project in one app rather than using the digital zoo and third-party plug-ins required by Autodesk offerings. It seems that it is the lighting that is dragging things a bit and I'd love to get better at it. Like I said, I may be missing something and I'll certainly take a look at what was suggested above and see if I can find what I'm looking for. I'm thinking I just have to look harder.

MHBrown

[Andy Broomell]

All very good points and questions. Controlling and interacting with lighting is indeed full of idiosyncrasies and inadequacies. Hopefully it will be reexamined in the near future.

[Elite Exhibits]

MGuilfoile

 

7. What is "emitter"  ...

 

In the attached (VW_RW 2020) - Open and render with RenderWorks (Custom with all set to low - Anti Alias turned off is faster tan Final RenderWorks)

Select the Saved View 111 if the scene opens in Top / Plan) In the View / Set Lighting Options change the Emitter setting lower number and re render - change again higher number and re render - The three lights all change as they are set to use Emitter Brightness

 

Peter

408346396_LightsEmitter.vwx

[MGuilfoile]

To Elite Exhibits, I'm not sure why you sent this file. It doesn't really answer any of my questions: what is "emitter" and why would I use it instead of the ordinary light?

Thanks,

MHBrown

[Tom W.]

I believe you would choose 'Use Emitter' if you wanted to more closely approximate real world lighting i.e. by specifying brightness in terms of lumens/candelas + colour temperature in kelvins. You can enter the specs for an actual lamp

[line-weight]

1 hour ago, MGuilfoile said:

To Elite Exhibits, I'm not sure why you sent this file. It doesn't really answer any of my questions: what is "emitter" and why would I use it instead of the ordinary light?

Thanks,

MHBrown

As I understand it, "emitter brightness" is a kind of brightness factor that you can apply to all (or some) light objects in your file. So if you have a bunch of light sources and you want to dim them all a bit, if they are each selected to "use emitter" then you can do this in one operation by decreasing the "emitter brightness" percentage. Instead of having to go around each light object and adjusting all individually. It is (sort of) explained here

 

https://app-help.vectorworks.net/2023/eng/VW2023_Guide/Rendering2/Setting Spotlight_rendering_options.htm

 

On your other points, nearly all are familiar to me as points of frustration/confusion. Lighting in Renderworks is one of the bits of VW that it feels has had little attention paid to it in years. It often feels that Renderworks is being quietly run down in the hope that everyone just uses (at extra cost) third party rendering software, a shame because as you say there are a lot of benefits to keeping everything in one file. And with sufficient time & effort you can get pretty good results from RW.

[Elite Exhibits]

On 1/26/2023 at 8:45 AM, MGuilfoile said:

not sure why you sent this file.

 

MGuilfoile

 

I find it easier to visualize in the VW_RW app, than to create a similar description.

 

Peter

[BartHays]

@MGuilfoile You have a lot of good questions and reasonable frustrations. Here are some of my thoughts on these issues. Admittedly, they may be misguided.

 

1)True, the OIP and the arrow indicating the direction of a Spotlight could indicate falloff distance, but they don't. Other 3D package let you control falloff but it is a false model of how light works. More below.

 

2) Smooth Falloff (physically incorrect) means the light falls off linearly from the source, and you stated, Realistic, means if follows the inverse square function. Generally I try to stick with Realistic falloff to better mimic real world conditions. however, I sometimes will use a Point light with Linear falloff, to add better ambient light in areas that need more light. the bottom line is, you have some creative options.

 

3) I'm not 100% sure what you are asking here. Are you looking for a global dimmer, or a global quality setting? Obviously, there is quality settings if you use Custom Render Styles. And Like others have said, if you use "Emitters" you have some global control of brightness for those lights, More on that soon.

 

4)You are right the Visualization Palette is a bare minimum, I leave it docked below my resources on my second Monitor. It sure seems ripe for a custom dialog or Script to add the bi-directional controls you mention. We should put that in as an enhancement request: Add beam spread, brightness, falloff, emitter info to Visualization Palette.

 

5)Selecting lights does suck. I can select a spotlight by clicking on the main icon, so there might be a glitch there. buth the arrows appearing and disappearing is frustrating ( maybe a switch for "show targeting arrow" off and on individually and globally would help.

 

6) When re-aiming, I try to get in the habit of temporarily suspending snapping (~ Key) that helps in Ortho views, In 3D views I'd love to see a 3-axis widget that lets me isolate the axis or plane to lock in. 

 

7) I might be ever farther afield here, proceed with caution. I believe emitters came along when the background rendering engine went from strictly "ray tracing" to include "Indirect" and "Global" Illumination. Ray tracing, if I remember correctly, followed a "ray" from the screen pixel back to the light, adjusting the color/value of the pixel based on what in bounced off of as it traced that path. Physics based rendering engines pre-calculate light levels in the scene by creating light "emitters" that cast "photons" into the scene and update the shader model with these calculations (when you up the "quality" setting for indirect or global illumination you are increasing the photons (among other subtler settings) to getter a better lighting model.  Emitters, since they are "physically based" also allow for setting that closer mimic real world lighting(Lumens, Color temp, etc) These emitters always follow the inverse square law. In the end, I believe REnderworks is a hybrid Ray-Tracing/Physics-Based render giving us creative the flexibility to work how we like. 

 

😎 no comment

 

9) Redshift (as I understand it) is a completely different (physics based) rendering engine. When fully optimised in VW, it will leverage NVIDIA based graphics card to do much of the heavy lifting and free your CPU from this burden. In many cases the GPU based rendering will be MUCH faster than the CPU based rendering. But it has its own quirks still. I think it is very promising but it may require that we loose some of the things we grew up thinking were the right way(like lights that don't follow the laws of physics??) I haven't integrated REdshift into my workflow yet. But I expect we are all moving in that direction.

 

Smarter people, please feel free to correct or add on to any of my comments. 

 

Cheers,

 

Bart

 

 

[scottmoore]

My opinion is that VWX developers have decided it is easier to move users to external render programs than to rebuild VWX to the point that it provides GPU rendering. I would imagine that would be a massive undertaking. 
 

Your points are all valid. My suggestion is to spend some time in a blank file just adding lights and adjusting them. Personally I’ve never had issues selecting and moving the sources.
 

The biggest frustration for me is the confusion in calculations in a light beam where lit fog is in use. The beam of light, regardless of settings, appears brighter, the wider the beam gets. Somewhat backwards of how light really works. 

[ashot]

@Elite Exhibits Thank you for your attached file 408346396_LightsEmitter.vwx

When looked at Saved View 111

Can you please explain what is the screen rectangle with handles to resize?
It is not a Viewport or Camera Viewfinder, it is a 2D window (picture in picture)? How can I replicate the same on any other file?

 

 

 

@Pat Stanford and others, maybe someone else can explain ...

 

Edited January 20 by ashot

[Pat Stanford]

It is an old (ancient) features called Cropped Perspective.  In order to activate it you have to go to Document Preferences and activate Legacy 2D and exit Document Preferences.  You can then re-enter Document Preferences and turn on Cropped Perspective from the bottom of the Display pane.

 

Once it is turned on, you can go back and turn off the Legacy 2D if you want.

 

If has been removed from the basic workflow because on a Sheet Layer you can accomplish this with just a cropped viewport. 

 

Maybe someone else can speak more on the limitations that caused it to be removed. @Matt Panzer?

[ashot]

Thank you Pat, I got it worked with Cropped Perspective ! Excellent ...

[Andy Broomell]

I severely dislike that Cropped Perspective was deprecated and no alternative was provided. This topic is tied into a big pet peeve of mine which is the dumb blue corners which Renderworks Cameras use to (poorly) indicate their viewfinder.

 

See this topic:

 

 

[Luis M Ruiz]

Talking about lights. Recently I made this project where lighting was a key aspect of the renderings. Here are a few samples produced. All Redshift by the way:
For some tips on how to control light and renderings, please check put my latest webinar:
ITERATIVE DESIGN FOR INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE

https://university.vectorworks.net/mod/scorm/player.php?a=619&currentorg=articulate_rise&scoid=1238

[Elite Exhibits]

FYI - On a Design Layer  - Zoom with the keyboard (Mac = Command 1 or 2)

     With a Cropped Perspective and without

 

Very distinct difference.

 

Our workflow always has Cropped Perspective on for 3D Design Layers. 

While there are many reasons to use Viewports on Sheet Layers, the opposite is also true with the simplicity of Saved Views / Class Settings and a single Design Layer. For many projects - faster - easier ... and yes it utilizes the Cropped View.

 

Peter

[Luis M Ruiz]

Thank you MGuilfoile for posting such a detail list of questions.
I'd like to go over each one of those in detail.