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Spot spot spot spot...


zeno

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Hello everyone.. 

 

a few months ago there was a thread about this problem. In 2019 version there is the same situation. Nothing is happened.

 

I'd like to start a constructive discussion about this (I have also posted a BUG in the beta lists but I'd like to talk with you here  in public)

 

There is always the same scene.. I know and I'm sorry for that.. but I use it for testing new features and actually I need to work in PS to fix all this problems because I'm proaching to print this in a large format.

 

Honestly I'm started to hate this problem and I'd like understand how can I fix it. I would like to no longer see those points of light put at random.

 

And: something like "add a fake light there and there" I don't consider it a solution. If I need a dark scene, i aspect to have a dark scene.

 

Thank you for you further suggestions, guys.

 

 

Z

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Edited by Zeno
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Interiors are always difficult.

The way how GI works has problems with small lights.

In such a case in C4D  I would give up some GI quality or resolution

by adding more interpolation for Irradience Caching. This flattens the

the overall GI too but helps to avoid Splotches.

 

In VW you have no access to fine tune all C4D GI options separately

to get the best result with lowest render times.

These are backed into the different VW GI settings.

Relating to Render Settings, you can just increase to maximum

GI Bounces and GI Quality.

 

In C4D you have similar but presets as in VW and you can access

every setting if you want. For me that often lead to easily screw things up

and get impractical long GI render times though.

 

 

The rest is related to having correct Model Scale, physical correct Material

and light settings - and maybe even post processing in PS.

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34 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Relating to Render Settings, you can just increase to maximum

GI Bounces and GI Quality.

 

Actually this result is coming from all VERY HIGH settings. Including GI

 

34 minutes ago, zoomer said:

The rest is related to having correct Model Scale, physical correct Material

and light settings - and maybe even post processing in PS.

 

What do you mean precisely with "correct model scale" "Physical correct material" and "light setting"?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hello Zeno:

 

Are you using exposure to brighten up the scene, or is it this level without exposure?  If it is very dark and then being brightened up I might understand the GI struggling.

 

The usual reason would be a very small very bright surface somewhere in the model.  When the samples are sent out some hit it and some don't and so there is a lot of variation, not smooth.

 

Another contributing factor can be surface not having breaks in them where the trim piece meet the wall surfaces.  Like if the wall surface continues under the trim some samples will be dark under the trim and others are lit because they are exposed.  The big difference in brightness across the face then looks like a splotchy thing like in your renderings.

 

If light is coming in the windows, and the windows use a glass texture, make sure that the Indirect Lighting options for that texture have "Portal" turned on.  This tells the renderer to send more rays in that direction.  It doesn't help speed but it can really help quality.  Maybe that is at play here.

 

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I have also found in my hunting down those spots that if I have highly reflective textures like metal or ceramic, disabling their indirect light emission in the texture options helps this. Usually things like matte painted walls I will leave the Emit Light option on, but im finding more and more that some textures need it disabled to control these effects.

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Correct Model Scale shouldn't be a problem as Architects tend to work in dimensions.

3D artists often don't care and their buildings are kilometers or millimeters tall.

Renderers like VRAY are optimized to work in real world units and dimensions range.

Using wrong scales can lead to exceed the internal resolution of numbers and

less accurate calculations and quality.

 

Same for Materials that need realistic absorption values and brightness so that the 

calculation will not bounce infinite. Or Lights with reasonable strengths.

 

Using real Area Lights easily leads to splotches. They need a lot of samples to

create smooth shadows and often a lot of render time.

 

 

Edited by zoomer
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39 minutes ago, Dave Donley said:

Another contributing factor can be surface not having breaks in them where the trim piece meet the wall surfaces.  Like if the wall surface continues under the trim some samples will be dark under the trim and others are lit because they are exposed.  The big difference in brightness across the face then looks like a splotchy thing like in your renderings.

 

 

@Dave Donley can you develop this notion further, so I may understand it more clearly? In my house and in my design practice, walls run up behind the trim. 

Thanks for your time

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Zeno, 

 

Have you ever considered adding Cinema 4D to your workflow? You can do amazing things in it with your Vectorworks models. Better lighting and cameras, easier texturing, lots of options for add on render engines (Gpu rendering) that gives you results in minutes, not hours. Look into it, ask questions. They have a nice, long trial period. I've seen your work and the issues you have with RW and think you could really benefit from it.  You would have a lot more control over your images. Food for thought. 

 

e. 

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14 hours ago, mjm said:

So, if I understand you correctly Zoomer,  you suggest to model incorrectly for correct render results? 

 

No, I don't like such an approach at all :)

 

But in this case, I also thought that cutting the Wall at the ceiling level and

add another Wall on top of it, to get a separate Edge for Rendering, might

eliminate or better the Render problem.

 

It depends on what is more important, just a nice clean Rendering or

a correct IFC Model.

I also use C4D or Modo for Rendereing. So I would model BIM in VW

and add the helper Edge for Rendering in the 3D App after export.

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@zoomer; thanks for your insight, I always find your thoughts useful. For me, tho I do not need IFC yet, modelling incorrectly feels just wrong and goes against the core reasons I model in 3d to begin with: "I drew this, it is buildable as drawn." I am also the proud possessor of C4D R18, and  - who has time? Just to learn proper import skills takes time, think EAlexendar and his thousands of lights which need to output as they were focussed in VW, and here's a daily problem in  my world: VW Spotlight fixtures can deploy shutters or frames to block the light internally, so as to keep light on only the items one wants, but where is this essential-to-me-and-common-everyday-tool in VW in C4D?

Edited by mjm
really poor sentence construction
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Honestly I am happy for any daylight scenes and use simple fake glow materials

with Mesh geometries to fake interior lights in night shots.

 

C4D offers old fake workflows like excluding objects and I think you can still

render from a light position, edit image PS and use it as a "Filter" Texture

like a Gobo.

I assume VW Spotlight has 3D geometry for their lights - with real shutters,

so I would just use these to control light output (?)

(Or custom IES files ?)

 

One problem (ask @EAlexander) for VW to C4D exchange may be that instances

of Symbols export by default as "Render Instances", which prohibits included Lights

from working, and so should be converted to default "Instances" by deactivating

the "Render Instance" option.

 

And, if exchange of "Spotlights" from VW doesn't work lossless or convenient,

you can always replace the parent Source of Instances in C4D.

Like replacing Lights exported from VW by better fully rigged C4D Light assemblies.

(I have seen this often in Modo where users build real Studio Lighting Kits with

Spots and Softboxes with Rigging for options by sliders and real world behavior)

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@zoomer - as usual, thanks for your detailed reply. Hmm, the Spotlight fixtures do act as though they have real shutters tho I haven't dived in forensically to determine how actually the shutter package works. If they are 3d, you'd think they'd show up in C4D, no? With reagrd to @EAlexander's issue, no idea how or if he solved it, but for me I simply choose the 'send to C4D…' menu choice with defaults and all my lights come in aimed properly.

I don't yet have the time to or knowledge base to replace parent sources in C4D. I have seen C4D plugins which promise to replace VW Spotlight for a mere 999€, on top of the C4D price, possibly on top of VW price. 

Screen Shot 2018-10-18 at 10.25.37 AM.png

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Hi,

 

My issue was that the Lighting designer had place the moving lights as symbols, but then converted into Lighting Instruments to then focus them.  So if I imported the lighting instruments to Cinema - they came in correctly, but they are all raw geometry i.e. not one Master symbol and hundreds of instances - So I would have to texture each and every one.  If I convert the lighting instruments back to symbols before I export - they all rotate back to their neutral hanging position (barrel straight down, clamps straight up).  For basic movers, this isn't such a huge problem, but that show had an array of truss and the fixtures were X-bars that lined them following the angle of the chords.  I had to go back and manually rotate them to align with the truss.

 

The Stage plug in looks cool, but I don't use the native Cinema render engine any more, so that is a no go for me (I use Corona).  There are no shutter cuts on spotlights, but as Zoomer indicated - you can exclude objects from lights or even set them to only include whatever objects you select and this seems to cover most of the problems.

 

BUT - this is Zeno's thread and we have hijacked it - apologies Zeno!  If you want to talk about this more - let's start another thread.

 

In regards to Zeno's scene - touching on Zoomer's earlier comments - I never deal with bringing lights from VW into Cinema, because I never place any lighting or materials in my VW work - I find it really hard to control.  I do all of my lighting and textures in Cinema and only use VW for modeling.

 

e.

Edited by EAlexander
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Recently I went from this (see attachment with spots) to this (see the latest rendering). Solution? My materials were too reflective and competed with each other. By reducing the unnecessary 40% reflection to just 5% at most and I achieved the look I wanted. 

spots all over.png

nicer look.png

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3 minutes ago, Luis M Ruiz said:

Recently I went from this (see attachment with spots) to this (see the latest rendering). Solution? My materials were too reflective and competed with each other. By reducing the unnecessary 40% reflection to just 5% at most and I achieved the look I wanted. 

spots all over.png

nicer look.png

 

Very nice work. An thanks for the suggest! I will post my example after the reflection settings! Thanks a lot!

 

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1 hour ago, Luis M Ruiz said:

Recently I went from this (see attachment with spots) to this (see the latest rendering). Solution? My materials were too reflective and competed with each other. By reducing the unnecessary 40% reflection to just 5% at most and I achieved the look I wanted. 

 

Although reducing the reflection (on the ceiling, I assume) made the splotchiness go away, what if you really wanted your ceiling to be as reflective as it was in the first image?

 

Is the splotchiness caused by rays of Indirect Lighting bouncing off the reflective surface and hitting other surfaces? If so, is it possible to leave the texture at 40% reflection, but under the texture's Indirect Lighting Options, uncheck "Emit Light"? I'm curious if that would solve the issue while retaining the high reflectivity.

 

Just a thought...

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On 10/16/2018 at 6:09 PM, Dave Donley said:

Are you using exposure to brighten up the scene, or is it this level without exposure? 

 

Hello @Dave Donley. Thank you so much for your response. I confirm that I use camera with exposition only for time and ISO settings, to set the brightness.

 

On 10/16/2018 at 6:09 PM, Dave Donley said:

make sure that the Indirect Lighting options for that texture have "Portal" turned on.

 

Done, see the results here.

 

On 10/16/2018 at 6:09 PM, Dave Donley said:

not having breaks in them where the trim piece meet the wall surfaces

 

No breaks in the model, I'm sure

 

On 10/16/2018 at 6:09 PM, Dave Donley said:

very small very bright surface somewhere in the model

 

Yes, in fact after your and mr @Luis M Ruiz's suggests I checked all the textures in my file, specifically the old metal texture

 

Here is the first and second step. All windows glasses are portal texture. I reduced drastically all reflection in metal texture. It is very better but not perfect. Maybe can I do another texture check? After that, I think that render works has a big problem with reflection and low light scene.

 

Thank you all for your help. It is very useful.

 

Before.thumb.jpg.8095a311eb2eb1be1e8833e80bac5518.jpgAfter.thumb.jpg.12dc036324e1c1f294eb95764f1f29a9.jpg

 

Edited by Zeno
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  • 3 weeks later...
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

@Zeno Here is a little trick I found from several files users sent. For interior renderings and interior elevations models, instead of just leaving the 3d model seating empty on a surface, how about placing it inside a box?  this will contain all bounces of lights.

Finally, once you get the viewports ready, crop them as needed and adjust the contrast and brightness using image effects. 

Here is an interior rendering for a virtual model, I used to have plenty of those spots and after testing this new technique, seems like light can be controlled better.

 

Tell us later if this suggestion makes any difference for you.

 

interior 1.jpg

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