wasbunny Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 I've been diving into architecural cove or recessed lighting, specifically using neon instead of photometric lights. My approach has been to use the Vray Light Material on my neon tube object and adjusting the intensity and have been getting very unsatisfactory results. Using neon as soffit lighting is very common in architectural lighting but I am still trying to find an actual photometricly accurate technique to recreate this in 3Dmax using Vray as my renderer. Any hints to at least callibrate the rather generic Light Material intensity to actual neon lumens or such would be greatly appreciated. Also ideally looking for an IES web file for the properties of neon (don't know if that's even possible......) Thanks for any help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nivvu Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 hi.. u can put vray light in the soffit and give a size to the light as the soffit width....and give light intensity.....u can c the light intensity on the above ceiling....hope this works out for u..... or jst post the jpeg image of the soffit so it wil b clear to view the problem..... cheers nivas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagor Posted October 18, 2007 Share Posted October 18, 2007 use vrayLight with "Lumenous power" intensity units. Color and intensity of the lamp you can find in lamp catalogue or distributors website like http://www.philips.com Phisical intensity units work proper in RC4 and older Vray version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wasbunny Posted October 19, 2007 Author Share Posted October 19, 2007 Thanks so much you guys for the replys... I am able to use the vray lights as photometric with the only problem of a strange light bleeding or kind of melting on the underneath side. I think I can probebly work around that though. The main problem (and I'm still suprised that I havn't seen more posts adressing this since 'shaped' neon is very common in cove lighting) is I can't get the vray light material to cast smooth and acurate light patterns. In answer to my own question though is seems 'Vlado' is workin on this very problem and mayby we will see a vray light that will take it's shape by the object it's applied to next year or so. Still wondering how all the rest of you CG architects are working around this. I am a designer for a neon / sign / and architectural lighting company and can't believe I'm the only one out there unable to use just a string of photometric lights to fake a neon cove lighting situation. Thanks again for the feedback....... Peace. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagor Posted October 19, 2007 Share Posted October 19, 2007 you can apply vrayLightMaterial to renderable spline or another geometry you need. only troubles you`ll need very very high GI settings because lightmaterial isn`t direct light. There are some tricks with LightMaterial. You can use QMC qi method (brute force in final version of vray) instead Irradience map. It gives you more accurate GI. Also you can set VrayLight in skylight portal mode in front of your geometry+lightmaterial. Portal gives you direct light from lightmaterial. But tricks with portal is limited because portal also rectangular. You need set higher subdivs for portal. As for me i use vraylight for neon in interior and object rendering work. For long non-curved neon i use long vraylight. for curved neon i use several (more than one) vraylight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wasbunny Posted October 20, 2007 Author Share Posted October 20, 2007 Thanks Dagor, you confirmed my suspisions (use vray light for straight lengths of neon and possibly multiple light portals for curved sections). I'll have to mess around with the light portal a bit more, still havn't got it to work out yet. Any idea as to why when I put a single sided vray light plane against a wall (parrallel) poiting up I get a strange "melting" light blob on the underneath side? Please let me know if this is something you've run across (I might just need to change some of my render settings....) Thanks again for all your help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dagor Posted October 20, 2007 Share Posted October 20, 2007 can you attach image with problem "melting" light blob on the underneath side" ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wasbunny Posted October 20, 2007 Author Share Posted October 20, 2007 Here's a render using the vray light material on my neon shape inside the cove. Using Irradiance Map as primary and QMC as secondary bounces. Obviously horrible splotchyness and strange melted light bleeding downwards. I'll attach an example of vray light plane in a minute. Thanks for helping me out on this one..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wasbunny Posted October 20, 2007 Author Share Posted October 20, 2007 Here is a render using a Light Plane instead of the Light Material in the cove. Fairly similer results it seems, I know I'm doing something wrong here but can't seem to isolate the problems. Pretty sure it's in the render settings though..... any help would be greatly appreciated. Anyone have an example of neon cove lighting (that works) in a Max file they can upload so I (and others in my same situation) can check out the solution? Thanks and cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted October 21, 2007 Share Posted October 21, 2007 read this thread. http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=19753&highlight Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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