Distance Falloff - Smooth versus Realistic

[J.E.]

Hi

I've been getting drastically different lighting affects with the distance falloff settings (images attached). Why is Vectorworks giving me splotchy rendering when the realistic distance falloff is selected for point lights? I've done a lot of troubleshooting but to no avail.

I've made sure I have the correct number of Indirect Lighting bounces, I've tried adding more light to the scene via the 'Portal' option for the window material, I've turned up the Heliodon Tool Brightness to 200. Made sure my light fixture symbol has the lights distributed evenly.

I've attached jpegs documenting most of my issues and have attached my render style as well.

Thank you,

J.E.

[zoomer]

If I read that right, your Indirect Lighting is set to Medium.

You will have to increase this for difficult interior renderings like yours.

Maybe even to "very high" to avoid any splotches.

Also the white walls and ceiling material should not have 100% white in color.

You can set a white color but should decrease the amount to only max. 80%

And you should not increase light values to unrealistic values but use the

cameras exposure settings to adjust overall image brightness to your needs.

[barkest]

Thats a lot of lights

I guess they are all point lights?

If so then the problem is your dimmer value. Change the brightness value to around 850 (650 for table lamps and around 1000 for main lights but go for 850 for now).

Then change the dimmer value to 1250%

Also change the falloff to smooth even though with a strip light realistic would be correct as yo do get a flare on the ceiling as you have it now.

You may well find, if I am correct of course, that you have a massive white out. At that point start turning off a lot of you 44 lights.

[PVA - Admin]

Glow textures may indeed help as well:

[J.E.]

I found some time to do a few renders with high quality settings.

Zoomer, I took your advice and added some color to the walls to see what happens. I also set the indirect lighting to very high, but I still see splotches. The rendering time was also increased dramatically.

The smooth falloff seems to look the most 'realistic' in this particular situation. I've attached a comparison photo of a classroom interior.

The point of the rendering setup is to use the luminance and color temperature values listed on a lighting manufacturer's website. I was under the impression that the 'realistic' distance falloff would be a better setting, but in the situation it looks like the 'smooth' distance falloff works better.

Thank you for your help!

J.E.

P.s. As far as the glow textures go, I've heard that they render faster, so I'll try to experiment with them on the next batch of renderings!

[zoomer]

Strange.

I had much more difficult interior scenes that had this amount of splotchiness

in lowest indirect light quality settings only.

[Phil hunt]

Joshua

Nice render of the classroom

[Phil hunt]

Meant to ask a question

Where did you get the models of all the books or did you make these yourself

[PVA - Admin]

The last of his images is a photo, not a render. Though it would be a seriously good one.