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Rendering interiors with natural daylight/heliodon


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With a couple of roof lights and a large set of folding sliding doors I was expecting to be able to render the interior of a room using the HDRI background and heliodon, with rays of sunlight coming in etc. But all I'm just getting is a dull nothing of a render. Are there some hoops I'm meant to jump through first to make this work?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Are you using bouncing of light? Have you tried the Renderworks Interior Final style? That gives pretty good results to get you started and you can always tweak the style to suit your needs. It does bounce light four times so will take a little time to complete. If you want to be able to see rays of light, you may want to turn on Lit Fog on the light that the Heliodon creates.

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Tasmin, yes the viewport was up to date for the relevant changes. But I'm a bit confused about the how to turn the lit fog on for my lighting source as opposed to background. See attached screenshots, they're both referred to as Background even though one is via the Lighting tab and one is via the Background tab.

I'll try a gobo out, thanks Carl, but it would be good not to have to introduce more lights.

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=6739&filename=Lighting.png

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=6740&filename=Background.png

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Window > Palettes > Visualization

Click Lights, right-click your sunlight and choose edit. check Lit Fog.

Bear in mind also that a directional light (a Heliodon is a directional light) is like a giant plane in the sky emitting light. It may not create the effect you want. You might want to use a Spot instead to create the beams you are looking for.

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Thanks for your perseverance. I had gone looking for a Lit Fog setting under the Heliodon settings but couldn't find one.

When I follow your instructions it's flashing up with a message (which stays viewable for about 0.5 seconds) saying "Heliodons cannot be edited to have settings specific to Viewports"

If I click through the Viewport to the Design Layer and then follow your instructions it brings up the Solar Animation dialogue window (with no Lit Fog option).

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

You are quite right Christiaan - sorry - I was away from my laptop when I answered you and I gave you a wrong lead.

You cannot add Lit Fog as an option for a Heliodon - or for a directional light either. You will need to create Spot or Point Lights to create that effect. You can do this using the Light tool in Visualization tool set.

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Okay, thanks anyway Tamsin.

The more I think about it the more I think I probably don't want to see the rays anyway, because wouldn't it just make it look smoky/dusty?

Rather I probably just need to play with the view, sunlight angles and light bounces to get the sunlight hitting more surfaces to giving the scene more depth. That and sort the textures out to up the realism.

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Hallo Christiaan,

This image is done with "Realistic Interior Final" Renderstyle, and one dir. Lightsource (with soft shadows on Dave's request :-) outside lighting through the Window, to cause the Sunshine.

ubbthreads.php?ubb=download&Number=6598&filename=Cabintet-Flat-softshadows.jpg

Its fake, but very easy to make and to control.

Edited by Horst M.
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Nice Horst! A tip: make sure to reduce the ambient on all textures except the whites. I find this makes for more realistic renders. In this case the wood floor will look more realistic if it doesn't 'give off too much light'......see how the walls seem to 'float' over it instead of resting on it.

Edited by Vincent C
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

VW 2011 shaders don't have an ambient component like the Lightworks shaders did, this might be what Vincent is talking about. Or, that you should turn off Ambient light in the Lighting Options, which I totally agree with. The built-in render styles have Ambient turned off for this reason - ambient just makes things look flat and gray.

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VW 2011 shaders don't have an ambient component like the Lightworks shaders did, this might be what Vincent is talking about. Or, that you should turn off Ambient light in the Lighting Options, which I totally agree with. The built-in render styles have Ambient turned off for this reason - ambient just makes things look flat and gray.

Exactly :grin:

Attached shows the dialog, switch off Ambient and use Indirect lighting (takes longer to render mind) in combination with the Emitter Options and a HDRI background (I prefer the white one for neutral renders). For best results.

Edited by Vincent C
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