Default Lighting

[Mattheng]

I just spent ages trying to get a file to run quickly without environment lighting but still show some texture. Environment Lighting is great but too slow.

Had no luck at all, ambient just makes things brighter without adding definition and adding extra light sources starts slowing you down again. Catch 22.

By mistake I turned all the lights off and the program seemed to default to some preset lighting that was perfect. Bright and with plenty of definition.

Only problem is that it's nothing to do with me.

What is this default lighting that you get and how can I duplicate it?

Matt

[bcd]

Once a single light is visible in your drawing VW will defer to these rather than the default. There's no way to duplicate the default that I know of.

[Mattheng]

That's a shame. works very well for a quick render.

[Tamsin Slatter]

You have to delete lights to get back to the default light.

Are you using light bouncing in the Lighting Options? This will create better definition of light and shade too.

Also, try creating objects with a texture applied that has a reflectivity setting of Glow. This will create a light source that renders relatively quickly, but you do need light bouncing on for it to have any effect.

[Mattheng]

Tamsin,

this is all about rendering speed. I am trying to create a quick animation and each of my environment lit renders was taking the best part of half an hour to finish. Looked great when they were done but would be practically useless for an animation so I was trying to get the best effect from a render that I could do in no more than 20 seconds.

Turning off the HDRI lighting gave me this default lighting that took about 15 seconds to render. I have some very complex shapes in the render that mean that environment and indirect lighting take a very long time to render so I can't really use either.

I will try that Glow texture idea though, it sounds pretty good.

Against that I wasn't a massive fan of constant reflectivity in 2010, the shadows seemed to disappear but perhaps that's a small price to pay for speed.

Thanks again,

Matt

[Tamsin Slatter]

OK glad to help, but Glow won't do a great job without indirect lighting turned to at least one bounce. But you might not need HDRI.

[Jeffrey W Ouellette]

Matt,

What version are you using?

[Mattheng]

2012 SP1

[Jeffrey W Ouellette]

I think it would help to step back, simplify the file, and then move forward.

remove ALL current lighting objects;

remove all layer backgrounds;

turn off all ambient lighting;

then, insert a heliodon and set the correct location;

Try the Fast Renderworks option;

then Final Quality Renderworks;

Then try the Renderworks styles;

Realistic Exterior Fast'

Realistic Exterior Final

See which options are (a) acceptable, (b) optimal, and © freaking fantastic. For best speed, you'll use acceptable, maybe optimal, but NOT freaking fantastic.

Then, what kind of animation are you trying to do?

Move Along Path?

Orbit Point?

Solar?

[Mattheng]

Jeffrey,

Thanks but I have done all those.

Problems are:

1) The canned Renderworks presets are a good start but they need a lot of tweaking. In this particular case indirect lighting and anti aliasing grind to a halt on the complicated 3D objects I'm rendering so I use no bounces, minimal anti aliasing and crank up the environment lighting.

2) Can't use fast renderworks as I also have curved surfaces that require at least High on the Curved Geometry setting to look normal

3) I had no problem with the old lighting tool in 2010, 2011 etc with the solar animation to show the shadows. I have actually hit a bug with the Heliodon where I added seven or eight point lights and in Top/Plan view the screen just flashed and wouldn't let me select anything for a couple of minutes. Deleting the point lights removed this problem.

Anyway. I digress.

I'm doing a Move along path animation.

Have done a few before, OpenGl is always quick but I have mirrors and OpenGl can't do them.

This default lighting really ticks all the boxes, I'd love to know what it is....

Matt

[Dave Donley]

The default lighting is just two directional lights, one a yellow-ish one from over your left shoulder, and another blue-ish one straight ahead. Neither cast shadows. This might be why they are rendering faster.

You say you have mirrors, if you turn off Indirect Lighting for the mirror texture does it render faster? Glass and mirrors can have their indirect lighting processing turned off, since they don't bounce diffuse light (like say a white piece of paper) on other objects. This might help the indirect lighting speed.

Environment lighting should be faster with indirect lighting enabled (on Low) rather than without indirect lighting, because the smooth splotches of indirect light can be calculated faster than per-pixel grainy environment lighting.