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Internal Fluroescent Lighting


Ky Lane
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Hey guys,

 

Getting to the lighting stage of an internal model for an office building, and figured rather then spend hours/days playing with what I dont know, Id ask you guys best practise for lighting this scene for internal fluroescent lighting?

 

The model doesnt have ceiling and alot of the details yet (all furnishings etc are in a separate file (480 chairs!!)), just so the environment lighting works for now...oh, and excuse the ugly carpet...not my choice unfortuantely - theirs. Its all low settings for the render, and theres still some anomolies etc I need to clean up - but, just so you understand the general layout, itll do...

 

So, what would the best rig be? Im also going to have a sunlight coming thought the huge bay windows at the far end, but for now just need a good fluro rig to light up the rest of the office?

 

Any help appreciated! Cheers. :)

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umm....i didnt get it.r u asking for a lighting layout, or a lighting solution?;)

 

if its lighting layout, a 60X60 ceiling tile is always the best solution for offices.not only that it gives a very good acoustical solution for a busy office, its is also easy to maintain and the lighting fixtures can be easily installed.the lighting fixture is usually a 60X60 aluminum framing with 2-4 rows of fluorescent lamp.if you're gonna use this, try looking for reference(or just try to look up on your office ceiling,you might have the fixture im talking about), or just have a 60X60 box with self illumination so it would look like an acrylic diffuser.

 

for your lighting soulition, an evenly distributed light is the best way to depict an office. on how you set up your lights, i'll leave it to you.good luck on that project!:D

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The solution is what I was looking for....how to light the project to appear like fluroespect light..

 

Im playing with it now, but Im getting alot of color reflection from the carpet, making the scene seem really pink....just have a couple omni's set ambient above and below the model to light everything....not working how I want..

 

Like I said...any suggestions appreciated!

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if your using omni's i assuem your doing a scanline rendering.if so,using an omni with ambient only is correct.about reflection on the carpet...i dont know how you had reflection on the carpet,maybe you're referring to the color bleeding,which i doubt would happen in scanline rendering unless your using radiosity.can you post a screen shot of your scene and your setting?

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I tend to use ies lights (files from lithonia for the flouresent coffers) when ever doing this kind of setup. you'll get more realistic shadows cutting across the whole scene which will hit your render time a bit....but achieve a more realistic result. Your solution is nice and clean but not a realistic scenario.

 

vray should be able to tear through the renderings even with a ton of ies lights, as long as you don't do anything ridiculous with your materials.

 

also dropping the saturation level in your GI will help with the color bleeding off the carpet,

 

side note, I sure hope you instanced those 480 chairs.....;)

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Well, I seem to have it down now....slowly building all the detail in...

 

I think the lighting solution worked well! I mean, it appears to be passing fairly realistic shadows for a flurescently lit room etc, and it has the brightness level I wanted so....Im pretty dang happy to be honest!

 

Ill keep posting updates as I go :)

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Hey Ky, it's looking great. What kind of rendertime savings are you finding by instancing the workstations? I'm going to be doing some large VRay office interior projects in the very near future, and was curious.

 

Also, is this to be an animation or just stills?

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Absolutely no saving....theyre kinda complex (my modelling skills are limited).

 

But, its coming along amazingly, and still doing med IM 30SPh renders in under 5 mins so....its still economical...

 

Hmm. Interesting. I'm reading conflicting info on instances. Some folks swear that they are good for rendertimes, while others say they don't help at all. I've started a new thread on this issue, as I'm also curious as to how instances and VRay proxies relate to each other - and why anyone would use either one.

 

Office interiors are a rare breed around here, so I'm following your progress closely. Great stuff so far!

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Well, instances only help on the modelling and filesize....all the calculations for the materials and caustics etc need to be done per object...so it *wont* save any rendertime whatsoever.

 

Just finished a another test render...finally getting a little detail in, and its starting to come together....just wish they had a better fittings sample...that carpet is butt ugly!

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instancing and proxies are meary about memory, if you fill your memory then you'll shoot yourself in the foot, but as long as you have the excess memory then the only time factor will be how fast your computer can load all the geometry. I've seen too many people think that huge instancing cause render slow downs, when most of the time it's actually the materials on the instances that are killing the render times. If you have a sick brushed stainless steel but it has a detailed brushed bump map with crazy reflections on your chair legs then you repeat it 500 times it's not the geometry that will hurt you.

 

 

some image critiques...

 

is the gamma level on your carpet correct? I can't imagine a carpet looking that washed out. It's looks great underneath the chair, but it's almost if you're not compensating the reflection on the carpet for the darkness that the bump of the carpet would get breaking up the light

 

I would expect to see some contact shadowing at the base of your walls and desk. Are you by chance using 100% white? I would gray it down just a hair, keep it looking white but don't wash out the shadows.

 

Are those interface carpet tiles? Those are normally installed on a quarter turn which would help break up the vertical banding that their pattern is creating. if you can darken down the carpet you may get some nice added contrast in the scene too.

 

Last thing...the camera angle feels high, like you are about to hit the ceiling you may want to drop it a bit and use a camera correction to straighten up the verticals.

 

It's looking pretty good KY.. the glass on the conference room is right on.

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is the gamma level on your carpet correct? I can't imagine a carpet looking that washed out. It's looks great underneath the chair, but it's almost if you're not compensating the reflection on the carpet for the darkness that the bump of the carpet would get breaking up the light.

 

I have no idea. Its a digi photo of a tile. I washed it out in photoshop, because the more vibrant it was, the more pink the room got!

 

I would expect to see some contact shadowing at the base of your walls and desk. Are you by chance using 100% white? I would gray it down just a hair, keep it looking white but don't wash out the shadows..

 

No, using about 5% grey. I could drop the fluroscent effect back a bit, it *is* a little bright, which will prob bring them back.

 

Are those interface carpet tiles? Those are normally installed on a quarter turn which would help break up the vertical banding that their pattern is creating. if you can darken down the carpet you may get some nice added contrast in the scene too..

 

Might try that.

 

Last thing...the camera angle feels high, like you are about to hit the ceiling you may want to drop it a bit and use a camera correction to straighten up the verticals. .

 

Thats just thrown in at the moment. The modelling etc isnt finished yet :)

 

It's looking pretty good KY.. the glass on the conference room is right on.

 

Cheers mate, getting there! :)

 

 

PS - Heres an update for ya Brian.

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Ok, another update.

 

Really getting close now, although the carpet looks like an Escher eye puzzle! However, I think its anatomically correct now, so....hopefull at worst itll make them reconsider their carpet...god I hope so for the people who will have to work there.

 

The lighting solution works well, but as Brian noted, the edge shadows and contact shadows are lacking, especially on that coffee cup for instance...Ive tried upping the huge vraylights shadow bias to 20...but obviously didnt do much. Any suggestions appreciated.

 

Dont worry too much about composition, camera or the render. Theyre all prelim, and just quickies for now.

 

Modellingwise, its about 65% done....

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nice, yeah the carpets getting better...... we used interface on a project once and as you are experiencing it took forever to get it to look right. Finally when the interior designer on the project got a stack of the tiles to scan I was able to scan about 6 of them to make a better texture that wouldn't tile.

 

you may want to play with the blur on your texture, it should die off a bit more as it fades into the distance... (see attached)

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Ky, how's your project coming along? Haven't heard from you in awhile on this. Also, how did you handle the illumination of the ceiling? I'm struggling with that now in my own office interior shot.

 

Thanks for the interest..

 

Im at home, so I dont have images to post, but the last set of images put the project on hold. Interior designer didnt quite realise how woody it was going to look, and has gone back to the drawing table.

 

But, the lighting solution worked perfectly. 2 vray lights. One on the bottom pointing up (not PERFECTLY up tho) and set to only illuminate the ceiling, and another on top pointing down (again, not perfectly down) to illuminate everything BUT the ceiling.

 

Seemed to work really really well!

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