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Anything I should know about backlit signs?


Tommy L
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An image Ive done is going on a 28 foot lightbox in the middle of downtown Chicago. We are doing a test in the studio, but I just wondered if anyone here has experience of this?

I assume that the color gamut will change with the backlighting. The bulbs themselves change intensity through the day/night, so testing is not going to be easy anyhow.

Any advice much appreciated.

Tom.

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Would any lighting analysis tools within 3ds be of assistance?

 

Sounds like you need some sort of IES file and a simulator.

 

On a personal note, that HAS to make you feel AWESOME - to see one of your renders on something that big.

 

I'd be terrified that I'd see it up there and see something an object 'floating'.. :o

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honestly i doubt you've any chance of 'calculating' the final result.

 

it will always be a mixture of external lighting (-> reflection) and the backlit lighting.

 

as all light sources change when getting warmer and older, its a continously change.

 

few things you can do:

- ask about the light source used for the backlit. you should be able to get some spectral graphs showing weather some color tones are left out (if you get to any reasonable result, you could try to adjust your image accordingly, but make sure it looks good on your screen in any case).

- you'll have to think about colorspaces here.

ask how the 'printing' process is done, more important in what color space. cmyk or rgb. best would be to have all in rgb, worst to have a rgb -> cmyk -> rgb conversion in the process.

in any case, make sure you know before!

 

oh yes, and make a picture! i'd love the see it :)

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On a personal note, that HAS to make you feel AWESOME - to see one of your renders on something that big.

 

Kind of, yes. Ive seen lots of billboards / magazines etc of my work, but this is different. For one its huge, illuminated and on Michigan Ave in downtown Chicago. But the bigger concern is that I dont really like the image. Its a very client led project, so I lost artistic control a long time ago.

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Hello Cassie! Its for the Ritz Carlton. They are building the RC Residences at Michigan and Erie. It will be on top of the crash barriers (the base is at 3 feet, I had to render it at 22k pixels!) outside the site. Im not sure when it goes up, probably in the next couple of weeks or so. It depends how long it takes the sign makers to make a building shape light box I guess!

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Did you split the render up using that wonderful script, or were you able to render it some other way?

 

Just sent it to BB as 25 strips. Did the GI as a precalc at a lower res (about 8k I think @ 80/50 - low preset) on one machine. For the GI I disregarded Blurred reflections and displacement. Over 8 nodes (q6600) it took around 2 hours to render total. I rendered the internal stuff, which was minimal, on a seperate pass. I didnt use a massive amount of render passes or anything, but there was a fair amount of post work. These clients were demanding, which necessitated a quick render process. No way I could sit on a render for 36 hours or anything like that, though I really would have liked to.

The vegetation was a combo of 3d and 2d. The 3d was mainly to generate beleivable shadows and a base bitmap layer.

Anyway, Ill post the image once its public.

Oh, and I also spent about 4 hours doing PS people. For them to say "I think the building speaks volumes without people"...

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...

Anyway, Ill post the image once its public.

Oh, and I also spent about 4 hours doing PS people. For them to say "I think the building speaks volumes without people"...

 

he, love that one :) though, people placing is sort of fun!

 

same as endless variations, just to come back to the first version..

 

 

can't wait to see the result!

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