Advice for office ceiling and lighting

[CliveG]

Hi All,

 

I'm wondering if there are any better methods for quickly producing a tiled office ceiling with recessed lighting.

 

I've tried a few methods but keep coming back to a laborious modelling solution as the better option.

 

The problem is less the ceiling tile than the recessed lighting which seems to prove too hard for any mapping onto a flat plane. I modelled the various recessed lights and then created normal maps from those models to be able to apply to planes located around a single plane ceiling also created with normal mapping. With careful lighting and material applied with this works surprisingly well for lights further than a few metres from the camera, but closer than that doesn't look convincing.

 

I've modelled individual tiles and lights and just arrayed them around, but find when consolidating these after finalising the lighting layout, that the modelling / vertex welding is too prone to horrible light bleeds and basically freaking the renderer out.

 

So I come back to modelling a box and a grid (digital X models macro) subtracting apertures all around this for the lights and placing these then using one large Vray light over the whole ceiling that is above the ceiling and only shines through where the light apertures are.... surely this isn't the best way?

 

Really appreciate other peoples thinking on this?

 

Cheers

[Scott Dombrowski]

I typically use the Digital X Models script for ceilings as well... it works great. For recessed lights, I've found I can often get away with just modeling the trim ring of the light fixture and adding a self illuminated disc to simulate the glow. A photometric light object just a little below the disc throws light into the scene. It doesn't accurately simulate being able to see the inside of the light fixture, but I don't have to cut into the ceiling tile and can move the lights at any time without having to remodel anything.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]44693[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]44694[/ATTACH]

[CliveG]

Thanks Scott,

 

My problem is I'm thinking of these bad boys... fully recessed diffuse lights and I just can't seem to avoid the modelling option of making a hole to place a proxy in.

 

I'd love to find a convincing way of achieving this look working with effectively planes.

 

Cheers

[Scott Dombrowski]

Yeah, those are a little more complex. The only change I would make to your method would be instead of placing one light above the ceiling, I'd make several fixture sized lights and place them just below the surface of the ceiling. I suppose rendering time goes up if you have a lot of individual lights versus one large one, but it seems like a cleaner solution and avoids any light leakage issues. To light up the inside of the fixture, I'd put another light object where the bulb would normally go and have it illuminate only the fixture geometry, ignoring the rest of the scene. Then I wouldn't have to worry about getting that light object to illuminate the room properly after bouncing it off the fixture. Perhaps someone else has a different method.

[Stephen Thomas]

I've had success doing just this sort of lighting using displacement in the past. I modelled a basic fitting using two curved planes and rendered out a zdepth pass to create the texture. I don't mind sharing the material for anyone who wants to use it.

 

Materials are set up for both plain plasterboard and grid ceiling, scene file is max 2010.

 

Edit: Hmm, need to get the zip file down a bit before I can attach it...

[Stephen Thomas]

Ok, file available here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/ow5olk

 

Click on the link that says 'Start download from sendspace'.

[CliveG]

Thanks Scott and Stephen,

 

That's a really great help Stephen and is a bit too clever for me to understand straight off. Any chance you could just explain the process you used to develop all of this a bit more as I'd really like to try and produce my own rather than just use yours. It feels like cheating otherwise. (besides someone is bound to want an egg crate light rather than a diffuse light sometime!)

 

Thanks again though.... fantastic stuff.

[Stephen Thomas]

No problem. The material itself is a Vray Blend material allowing me to mix the standard ceiling grid texture with a Vray light material for the light fixtures. I already had an image of the fixture, which I tiled to match the grid, then created a mix mask to define which parts showed through. To make the displacement map, I modelled two curves to match the curved reflectors of the light. Then I created an orthogonal camera pointing straight down and rendered a zdepth pass, setting the min/max values accordingly. (You should adjust it so the ceiling level is a mid-grey)

 

This should work fine for the egg-crate type too, though I would inset the faces before extruding to give slightly sloping sides. Will probably give you a better result with displacement.