GETTING LIGHT OR GLOWING OBJECTS THRU GLASS

[DLDINYC]

Looking for recommendations as to how to set up certain textures or setting to best get light to pass thru 1 or two layers of glass.  If I wanted to create an LED mini bulb that has diodes in clear glass and then want to put that bulb inside a glass box, so that the light passes thru the bulb and the box and glows and lights up the surrounding area.  I have diodes in the bulbs that are area lights. I also have tried those as glow objects.  I have also added points of light on the outside of the bulb but inside the glass box and nothing seems to work.  Any suggestions?

[Kevin Allen]

Do the glass textures have 'portal' selected in the shader? 

[DLDINYC]

no... should they?  what should be my glass settings? 

[Kevin Allen]

Glass setting are somewhat a matter of taste, but some guidelines below. The Portal option in Indirect Lighting allows light through the glass. I might also experiment with a backlit shader and not glass.

 

In order for light rays to bend correctly, Glass requires two surfaces; glass objects should be a 3D Object, not a simple 3D Polygon. Without a second surface, the light will bend as if it is going into glass, but not bend back.

When creating glass for a window, Press the Indirect Lighting Options button in the Texture Definition Dialog. There, choose Portal and Emit Light.

[Tanner Shelton]

The light looks like it is showing up in your render, it just isn't very bright. I would brighten it up quite a bit. And in your glass settings you can make it less opaque. I just did this recently with a frosted glass panel and I had to mess around with the settings a bit to get what I wanted.

[DLDINYC]

I have changed the brightness numerous times... and taken each of those diodes as hight as 2000 lumens with no change... 

[Tanner Shelton]

And I'm not sure how the bulb on the LED's looks, but I would make it slightly frosted to help spread the light more. And you'll probably have to make the area lights quite bright.

[Tanner Shelton]

Do you have a picture of what you are shooting for?

[DLDINYC]

I am trying the portal thing... this sound like the answer... will keep you posted although this rendering takes over 12 hours to do even in the cloud but if I change the settings it may help this situation...

 

THANKS!

[grant_PD]

12 hours is too long to wait for anything these days.  Can you post the file?

[DLDINYC]

quite frustrating... I thought the portal thing might help but... not sure it is...Thanks Kevin... I must be doing something wrong....and thanks any and everybody!

SLIT BOX VANITY.vwx

[DLDINYC]

changing the subject slightly... when I publish in the VW cloud , many times it does not update the drawing even tho I have... I am working in the cloud and if I save the drawing it should render the latest version but many times it does not.. it renders one or two versions back. Is there a work around? Especially after waiting 12+ hours... 

[Tanner Shelton]

What renderworks style are you using? Here is what I get when I open it and render it. It also is really slow as I move around in perspective view. I rendered with fast renderworks and it took about a minute on my machine which is a really long time with my computer specs for such a small amount of geo and what should be very simple.

 

[DLDINYC]

in Fast Renderworks the lights work.. I use final quality because of how grainy things become and curved lines are not smooth...

I am very sure that I am most likely going about this all wrong... so any suggestions would be helpful..  Since I design light fixtures I have these corners of rooms set up as templates and I go from there adding product.. so in this drawing the 3 walls , ceiling, and floating light points are part of the template.  

[Tanner Shelton]

I don't know exactly what is going on in the file, but something is making it go extremely slow. I would go into a brand new file, and make your template walls from scratch. Then pull back in the lamp from the other file, only the lamp. And you should have better results that way. And you don't need nearly as many lights to light the scene. Instead, I would just use Realistic Exterior Final. That has indirect lighting bounces turned on to 4 which will allow the lighting from the glow to actually illuminate the surrounding area (Which is probably most of the light now glowing problem). And also change your area lights on the small LED lamps to a glow I would think. The area lights are going to cause it to go much slower and a glow texture will work much faster and look much better with indirect lighting.

[grant_PD]

You had a lot of lights in that file.  I removed them and just made an area light in the shape of a cylinder with your LED's set as a glow texture, not emitting.  VW's render settings are a bit crude, but I would try maybe without the GI for a bit until you got everything else the way you want it.  This shot here has no GI in it at all.  I was able to render it out in C4D in about 12 minutes w/ two machines, so maybe a 1/2 hr render for one machine?  

[Kevin Allen]

I just poked around a bit too. I was going to comment on the number of point lights, each of which adds considerable computing time. Multiple points lights add time exponentially.

 

I was going to experiment with a vectorworks spotlight object or two. Also wondering if there is a solution with IES files and custom lights.

 

GI means...?

 

 

 

 

[grant_PD]

GI means global illumination, or Indirect Lighting as VW calls it.  

[Tanner Shelton]

GI means Global Illumination, or as it is called in Vectorworks, Indirect Lighting. Basically that the light that hits a wall can then bounce off and light up other parts of a scene. It is necessary for more realistic renders as it mimics what happens in real life.

 

Edit: Ah Grant beat me to it

Edited January 30, 2020 by Tanner Shelton

[Kevin Allen]

got it. I don't speak c4d 😎

[DLDINYC]

wow... Grant! so now I know what it means but where is it? I did try the night time fast render but it didn't work... then I tried just the glows and that didn't work either although it rendered faster... now where is the area light that you are discussing and it that cylinder invisible? Thanks for all of this...I am really trying to spend time figuring this all out..I also began completely new template as you all have suggested but I still want to bring in my bulbs and other items but waiting...

 

[DLDINYC]

yes...what is C4D?

can I start putting my common symbols and textures back into the new template or is there a better way that will help rendering times?

 

[Tanner Shelton]

If you want to use the glows without an area light, you'll have to raise the glows above 100 on brightness, and turn on indirect lighting. Indirect lighting is under View > Set Lighting Options >  and then Indirect lighting up top.

[DLDINYC]

did you change any of my textures? or use the same ones?

I gotta figure this out...

 

[DLDINYC]

this is using GI with settings as shown.. Also a screen shot of the fast quality rendered viewport... does this setting work in the viewport as well.  does not seem to be working as well for me.. this one has the LED's as area lights...now will try the glow again and turn it up but the GI seems to be not set right either...