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I am finding that the sunlight options in VW Standard are pretty useless and I need to get Architect and RW to make any impact.

But then you can not turn off the sunlight and it sill affects the viewports which appear dark. I tried turning off the light in the light command, tried adjusting the light level, tried turning off the class / layer light is in, tried tried delateing the light symbol, etc.

Any suggestions would be apprciated?

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This might not help, Michael, but if you have VW 11.5, it is automatically lighted for you if VW does not detect any light objects.

So you might be deleting the lighting object, and VW auto-lighting kicks in.

Check out:

http://www.nemetschek.net/vectorworks/new.html

Automatic Lighting

Automatic lighting in VectorWorks 11.5 means that your scenes are always perfectly lit. You no longer have to spend time inserting and tweaking your lights to render a scene.

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MJW - I always use two light sources diametrically opposed to overcome the lightness / darkness issue.

This is how I do it:

- I set the 'sun' light source to cast shadows with an intensity of between 60% and 70%

- I then mirror this light source so that it is shining from exactly the opposite plan direction. I then turn its shadow casting off and set its intensity to between 30% and 35%.

- I then adjust the Layer Ambient Lighting Level to between 35% and 60%.

With this setup you will find there are no dark spots and the shadows are still cast correctly. With a bit of tweaking you can then get it looking as you require.

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I've spent a bunch of hours on this and finally decided I like 4 light sources. One just off each corner of the drawing set at about 45 degs. I also like them bright, two opposite at 90% and the other two at 60% with just a little ambient at 10%. You can also get really nice results by adding a little color to get a sunset light. I like the result for Final Renderworks. Exporting to image and puting on putting on a photo looks amazingly real.

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Part of the problem for mjw is that he doesn't have Renderworks, so shadows aren't nearly as controllable.

Another part of the problem seems to be that mjw doesn't quite grasp how to get his "sun" positioned correctly using the Set Sun Position tool. Michael, do you understand that you have to tell the tool where Page North is? You do this by entering the degrees--from the top of the page--to Polar North for your plan. You'll see the entry "box" right below the compass in the top righthand corner of the dialog box. If, for example, your plan is rotated 37? east, you'd enter (360-37) 323 and watch the "N" re-orient itself to the proper alignment for the plan you're working on. After that, just make sure you've got the correct lat/long for the location, set a time and the computer calculates azimuth and elevation for you. We use this for wonderfully accurate shadow studies for nearly every client we work with.

The Sun Position tool is not linked to the North arrow object (or anything else, for that matter).

Mike & Larry, I'll have to try your methods. We've often used 4 lights to properly shadow each elevation, but haven't set them to different intensities for simultaneous use. Good idea.

Good luck,

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MJW

Two light sources. One acting as the sun and the other acting as backlight so that the model has shade definition no matter what angle it is viewed from.

I have found that if you use just one light source with the Ambient Light Level set high enough to see the 'back' model faces results in lousy definition with the front faces usually washed out. The renderings are not good. Adding the second light source overcomes this problem.

One light source generally does not result in good renderings because it does not provide enough shade definition. the exception to this is the new 'automatic lighting' in VW 11.5 when there are no light sources present. as Eddie has said above this works very well. These rendered views are a great improvement over the previous scenario with one light source.

[ 04-28-2005, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: mike m oz ]

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Thanks for all your help.

I will try your advice again. The problem before was north keep reverting to the top of the page and the sun always came from the north rather than the south.......but I must of got it wrong and will try your hints.

I hope to upgrage to Architect and Renderworks soon.....just waiting from some invoices to come in and the dust to settle on the 11.5 issues.

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  • 1 month later...

I have tried for hours on this and found that auto light is no good - flat and dark - and LarryAZ's method of 4 light sources the best, but I can not get my pitched roofs to show in elevation in the viewports. Roofs are on seperate layers / classes and are fills and are turned on the the VP commands but stll do not show in elevation under a number of rendering modes incuding RW best.

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