Area Lights

[willofmaine]

Why do area lights cast such a splotchy light?? See attached. Any thoughts greatly appreciated!!

Also, as far as I can tell, an area light with "Cast Shadows" selected can't be within the geometric volume described by the sashes of a PIO window; otherwise, it won't emit any light... Not a big deal, except that it took quite a while to figure out, and it doesn't seem to make any real sense (if "Cast Shadows" isn't selected, it will emit light from within the sash no problem, and with "Cast Shadows" selected it will emit light through from the outside of a window, no problem...).

Thanks, Will

[Jonathan Pickup]

is your area light directly on the face of the wall?

[willofmaine]

It's about 3" from the wall. I've moved it to about 21" away, which seems to help (see attached).

But in the case of the window (which is where the area lights want to be...), it's just in front of the sash. If it's moved too far from the sash, then the wall either side of the window picks up light, and shadows of the casings, which of course isn't desirable.

Previously, area lights were directional, which I think would resolve this by making it possible to only emitting light into the room, and not back onto the window. But I think I read somewhere that they're no longer directional? And I can't find the "show direction" setting...

Thanks, Will

[Dave Donley]

Hello willofmaine:

Area lights are no longer directional. The dots come from the light being so close to the wall as to not have room to diffuse out. You might try increasing the area light's quality setting to Very High to get more light samples over the rectangle.

To get visible glowing polygons you can use the Glow Reflectivity shader with Indirect Lighting enabled.

To get light coming through windows you can also use the White HDRI in the default libraries, and Indirect Lighting enabled to have light coming through building openings.

HTH

[willofmaine]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for confirming that area lights are no longer directional, and for confirming/explaining their "splotchiness." It seems they're no longer really suited for windows?...

I did stumble upon the Glow Reflectivity shader a little while ago, but it also doesn't seem ideal for windows because, as far as I can tell, the geometry of its polygons will block the views through the windows that they're located at.

The HDRI approach seems ideal, especially if it means not having to create a "lit" polygon in front of each window.

But I'm having trouble getting the HDRI to work well; it seems there's maybe too little light? See attached image. Not only is the light limited, there are no shadows, such as ideally would be cast by the chair and table. If I increase the ambient lighting, the subtle lighting on the ceiling is lost. I've used the default White HDRI, which is at 100% brightness and saturation. I've tried 4 bounces for the indirect lighting, which seemed to make no difference at all (according to Help, HDRI backgrounds only bounce once, anyway?...).

I'm kind of at a loss...

Thanks! Will

[billtheia]

You need to crank the intensity up past 100%. Try 150, 200, 300, 400%.

You can also crank the exposure setting in custom renderworks up above 100% too.

Between the two, you should be able to get the look that you're after.

The diffuse nature of the HDRI lighting generally doesn't create well defined shadows in an interior space. A single directional light can give you what you're looking for.

I have found that, with one HDRI background, one directional light, and indirect lighting turned up to 4 bounces, I actually get better interior renders with RW2011 (and I assume now 2012) than I did with area lights in the windows of RW2010, with much less effort. It just took a little bit of experimenting with settings.

[Jonathan Pickup]

I have found that with Vectorworks 2011 you do not need to use area lights. You can get very good results with environmental lighting and indirect light.

[Bruce Kieffer]

Jonathan,

Can you give a bit more detail about how you lit the 12005 image? It looks fantastic!

[Jonathan Pickup]

I have given more details of the settings on my blog

Edited October 16, 2011 by Jonathan Pickup

[propstuff]

Bruce,

Jonathan would be using an HDRI as environment lighting with some bounces turned on and one directional light (or the heliodon) as the sunlight casting the bright patches on the floor.

Area lights in the openings still produce better lighting of the insides of for rooms with regular sized openings IMHO than just the above 2.

If the Render Geometry tab of the area lights is unticked you will not see the glowing area, it will just emit light.

Playing with Realistic or Smooth falloff with the area lights will change the amount of light that's pushed into the room and can be adjusted for the light from each opening.

Set the environment lighting to 4 bounces and make all the light objects have Soft Shadows in the OIP

HTH

[Bruce Kieffer]

Thanks for the info Nicholas. I'll give it a shot. I was confused when Johnathan said he used a "Heliodon" light. I've never heard of a Heliodon light in VW 2011. I assumed he meant a directional light.

[Bryan G.]

Bruce the Heliodon is new in 2012, its a great addition.

[Tamsin Slatter]

It certainly is a great addition. At its heart is a directional light, but it can do so much more for you.

[Jonathan Pickup]

Set the environment lighting to 4 bounces and make all the light objects have Soft Shadows in the OIP

HTH

the original image 12005, had one bounce. 4 made the room too bright

[Dave Donley]

In 2012 there is a RW Style called "Realistic Interior Fast/Final" that uses the HDRI white environment at 400% brightness. The Fast version of the style uses 2 bounces of indirect lighting and the Final one uses 4 bounces.

You can try using those settings in 2011 for interiors.

Also, the Heliodon in 2012 uses a white directional light at 100% brightness with soft shadows checked, to get strong shadows from the sun.

[Horst M.]

Hi,

The Renderstylz, as Dave mentions, are wunderbar.

I've been testing with RW2012 (for a new Sofa:-) and specially the Render Realisitc Fast and Final Styles worked extremely well.

My first impression, that RW 2012 with the Renderstyles and the Lighting Setup is very good to use. All the Settings are in one Area, and the default Values are already usable without Modifikations.

IMHO a real promssing Progress.

The images attached were created with Render Realistic Final and a few Lights inside the Rooms.

Edited October 17, 2011 by Horst M.

[bcd]

sehr schoen

[Dave Donley]

Very pleasing renders Horst! Good to see it's working.

[Horst M.]

Some experimental work was spent to realise my Private StreetView outside of the Window.

Therefore I took 5 Fotos of the Street Standing at the Window.

Droped them into Photoshop Elements 10 to do a "Photomerge" for the

Panorama, which worked amazingly well.

This Foto was textured on a Cylinder with roughly the Dimension of the Panoramaview. and kind of arranged with the H an V offset, and SIze.

To try and error the settings for these Values was not so much fun, but may be the Adjustment of textures gets more comfortable once.

For me this Method seems to work.

The shots inside the Rooms, gave a pretty good View outside the Window from all Cam. Postions that I tried.

Very pleasing renders ...

That causes another Problem: too Good arguments to buy the Sofa..... :-)

Edited October 17, 2011 by Horst M.

[willofmaine]

Thanks everyone for all the responses! I experimented with point lights and even spot lights, with very wide spreads, in front of the windows but, finally, some of the repeated suggestions here finally got through to me! I knew I wanted more from the HDRI, but I guess I was suffering from a bit of a mental block in that I was thinking it was at its maximum brightness at 100%. It also didn't help that I was testing the indirect lighting and its number of bounces with a weak sun and carpet; who would've guessed dark carpet doesn't bounce much light??...

Anyway, here it is with the HDRI White environment at 888%, and a single directional light (the sun...) at 333%, and four bounces. No other lights. Very nice not having to create and manage light geometry in front of all the windows!

Thanks again, Will

[willofmaine]

Some experimental work was spent to realise my Private StreetView outside of the Window.

I'm not the only one that's textured the inside of a cylinder to create a background! Doing this reminds me of what I've read in VW Help about HDRI backgrounds, though with those it's the inside of a sphere rather than of a cylinder. How does one make, or acquire, HDRI environments/files?...

[bcd]

It's always struck me as peculiar that the light setting should be a % and counterintuitive that it can be increased way beyond that.

The idea that 100% is the maximum is reinforced by the slider limit in the dialogue box:

[willofmaine]

Yes, exactly, thank you! Now I don't feel so bad about my 'mental block'.

[rDesign]

Quote

How does one make, or acquire, HDRi environments/files?

Dave Donley posted a link to some free HDRi's in this thread: VwCB :: Free HDRI Images

He also posted some instructions on how to make your own with Vw over on this thread: VwCB :: Make your own simple sky HDRI backgrounds!

HDRi's for use in Vw as RW backgrounds should be equirectangular projection, which is a rectangular image format with a ratio of 2:1 (eg., 2048px x 1024px).

Here are some Vw + HDRi hints that Dave Donley posted over in the 'Make your own simple sky HDRI backgrounds!' thread:

Dave Donley said:

Hello Tim:

1. You might want higher resolution if you are using it as a visible background and the pixels in the gradient are noticeable.

2. For lighting there should not be much difference, if it is visible then maybe a higher resolution would help.

2a. HDRIs can result in a lot of memory use, for ones above say 2000 pixels wide. I would recommend ones that are as small as possible that don't show pixellation. This would depend on the scene and the field of view. It is common to split HDRIs into a low-res one for lighting and a higher-res one for the background. You could also use a low res one for lighting and a plain old image background.

To set the HDRI for just lighting, use the View->Lighting->Layer Lighting Options dialog or the Viewport's Obj Info->Shape pane Lighting Options button. You can set the lighting to use the current background, no background, or a selected (other) background than the one that is currently set for the layer or viewport.

3. Low or medium while tweaking lighting, and other rendering parameters, then High for final rendering. Very High would remove more graininess if that is very evident in the image. Turning off antialiasing, and reducing the number of pixels in the rendering by zooming out in design layers or lowering sheet layer DPI should help speeds a lot while tweaking the settings.

More cores helps as FQRW with HDRIs takes full advantage of any extra cores. Render at the lowest pixel resolution that will show you the details you need. Don't render at a higher sheet layer DPI than necessary for the output; sometimes 150 DPI is OK rather than cranking things way up to like 600 DPI or something.

HTH.

Edited May 31, 2018 by rDesign
updated broken forum links

[willofmaine]

Tim! Thanks for all that info; definitely very helpful. A lot to digest; hopefully I'll have a bit more time soon for experimenting with HDRIs. Thanks for the link to the HDRI images; looks like there's some pretty fun stuff there!

Thanks, Will