Light won't turn off!!

[R.Stewart]

I'm animating this building and I wanted to start with no light and then have them all pop on in the animation. I'm really happy with the image with the light on but when I turn them all off for some reason the interior lights stay on!! I don't get it.

 

I've gone into the light lister and turned off all of the lights, I've tried deleting all of the lights, I've tried selecting all of the lights through the select from scene dialogue box, I've tried switching off the self illumination on my light geometry, I've switched off the MR sun and environment map. I've hit a dead end here and don't know what else I could do.

 

I'm using mental ray, 3ds max 2012 I tried to attach the archive file but it's too big at 84mb. The file alone is 54mb. Is there a way of purging all unused materials so the archive file is not so big?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Richard

[ATTACH=CONFIG]45248[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]45249[/ATTACH]

[datacrasher]

Richard

are you making the lights copies or are they all instance? If you make them instance and turn one light off then the others will go out once you turn them off. are you using a daylight system? If so i would set the daylight system to 1200 at night.

 

don't forget once you delete all the lights max will turn the background lights back on. the only way to unhide this lights are if your in the two light setup

[R.Stewart]

Some are instances and some are not. They're all turned off see the image attached with all lights isolated and black.

 

I've turned the day light off. Even if it was on it would light up the outside of the building and not the inside. Same goes with the default lights. They would light up the outside of the building. The light is definitely coming from the inside.

 

I just tried to select everything, save selected and merge with a new scene and I got even stranger results. None of the lights would shine even with them all turned on and with the exposure of the MR photographic exposure setting at -3 plus the lights are at 300,000%

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]45250[/ATTACH]

 

Very odd,

 

Thanks for the input

 

Richard

[datacrasher]

If you just merge the lights into a new scene then you wont get any brightness because they have nothing to shine on too. whny are you using the copies and instance together from what i can tell from the manual and reference file autodesk tell you not to do that because it will cause a conflicts with the file.

 

 

mmmm. It could be a bug have you added a service pack and hot-fix from the autodesk website? As a very last resort i would delete the max.ini file and restart your computer autodesk will replace it sometimes the .ini file is corrupted

Edited October 11, 2011 by datacrasher

[R.Stewart]

No No haha I merged all of the geometry and lights together into a new scene after doing a save selected with everything selected.

 

I've never heard that you shouldn't use copies and instances together. Can you send me a link to where it says it in the help file? That would be great. That's pretty weird. I started with one light, made instances for all of the lights that I wanted to be the same. Then made copies so I could change the ies. files to get different lumen on the walls plus change there intensity etc. So if I plan to use a different .ies file then i should create a totally new light? Thank's I'll keep that in mind.

 

It does seem very buggy, I just tried to download the service pack and hot fix but they both wouldn't work. When i try to open them it says.

 

"the upgrade patch cannot be installed by the windows installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing...."

 

I guess maybe because I'm on a student version.

 

Not sure what the ini file is. From what I read it's some kind of file that keeps info on my settings etc. Where would I find it for max and what would deleting it do?

 

Cheers mate

 

R

[datacrasher]

Okay if your using a student version of max then from what i hear you will lose your license if you delete the .ini file I don't know it this is true but what i seen on the autodesk community a few years ago.

 

3ds Max provides two types of lights: standard and photometric. All types are displayed in viewports as light objects. They share many of the same parameters, including shadow generators.

Standard Lights (taken from the max 9 reference)

Standard lights are computer-based objects that simulate lights such as household or office lamps, the light instruments used in stage and film work, and the sun itself. Different kinds of light objects cast light in different ways, simulating different kinds of light sources. Unlike photometric lights, Standard lights do not have physically-based intensity values.

 

Photometric Lights

Photometric lights use photometric (light energy) values that enable you to more accurately define lights as they would be in the real world. You can set their distribution, intensity, color temperature, and other characteristics of real-world lights. You can also import specific photometric files available from lighting manufacturers to design lighting based on commercially available lights.

 

Tip You should not use instance and copies together this may cause a conflict with your scene file. If so you delete all your lights either make them instances or copies

[BrianKitts]

Do you by chance have any self illuminated materials in your scene? In your second image it looks like the underside of your soffit is glowing. Perhaps it's not a light that's creating your illumination but instead it's a material with self illumination in which case you just need to turn the illumination amount down to start.

[LukeC]

Apologies if this has already been covered, but I'm just skimming while waiting for a render.

 

Do you have any xref'ed files at all? If so, check there are no lights in that file, or disable them through the xref dialogue.

[Justin Hunt]

To animate lights turning on you have to animate their intensity because on/off cant be animated.

 

There are some other issues with your lighting, as there is not need to crank you the lights 10000's% to see them .

 

If you are able to upload the file via "yousendit" or "Drop box" I would be interested in trouble shooting it. PM me if your interested.

 

jhv

[R.Stewart]

 

Tip You should not use instance and copies together this may cause a conflict with your scene file. If so you delete all your lights either make them instances or copies

 

That's annoying! I'm glad I know now though thanks for that. I don't really have time to do all of the lighting again so I may have to just animate with the internal lights already on : /

 

Good guess Brian but I've made sure self illumination is turned off.

 

No xrefs involved.

 

Justin, you are a legend.

[Scott Dombrowski]

Tip You should not use instance and copies together this may cause a conflict with your scene file. If so you delete all your lights either make them instances or copies

 

That's annoying! I'm glad I know now though thanks for that. I don't really have time to do all of the lighting again so I may have to just animate with the internal lights already on : /

 

Just for anyone else following along, I want to mention that I use a mixture of instanced and copied lights all the time without any problems. In fact, it's an essential part of my workflow. I've never heard of this being a problem before, and that tip does not show up in my copy of the Max 9 help file. It certainly isn't in the 2012 help file, so don't modify your workflow to avoid mixing instanced and copied lights in a scene.

[Justin Hunt]

agreed, It may have been an issue in earlier releases, but I have never had a problem

 

jhv

[Justin Hunt]

Thanks for sending the file, Not too sure what was wrong as the file you sent rendered properly without any light leaks.

 

Having said that there were some issues. First off exposure control, 16 is fine for mid-day shots although can still be too dark, I used an EV of 6.

 

I also changed all the lights so that the exterior uplights were instanced, same with the interior lights. Of cause if you want to animate the lights turning on at different times, just convert them to "Copy". I didn't use the dimming setting, rather used acutual illumination values.

 

For the enviroment lighting I used a standard skylight. The mrSun and sky isn't so great for night time shots as you can't get rid of the orange horizon. For the backround I just dropped a sky image into the environment slot and copied this map into the skylights texture slot. To push the colour a bit further I used a colour correct shader to adjust the hue, saturation and contrast of each of these maps.

 

I changed a few of the materials, mainly because the maps weren't included, also to get some more texture detail.

 

Some of the geometry needs fixing, like the angled wall along the driveway, and the driveway itself.

 

I have sent you the adjusted file.

 

hope this helps

 

jhv

[R.Stewart]

Hey Justin I didn't realise you worked for the Buchen Group. You must work with Bruce Hart. My teacher Mike Gibson talks about Bruce and the Buchen Group all the time. Did you also study at Southbank? The Building Design course there is amazing, though a little overwhelming with 8 subjects a semester.

 

Anyhow, I didn't receive the file from you. Not sure what happened there. Good news is that I I've figured out the root of all my woes. You didn't have any strange light problems with the file I sent you because you weren't using my old FG map. As soon as I changed to "Off (do not cache Map to Disk)" the unwanted light was gone. I thought back to your message where you said that archive files contain FG maps and I didn't send you an archive file.

 

Obviously you should only use FG maps once the scene is complete. I don't know how long I was using that map for.

 

Ok while typing this message I thought I should try and get the exposure at a realistic setting so I changed it to 6 like you did and oh what a lovely surprise, the interior light came back brighter than ever. I solved the problem but I don't understand it at all. I selected the interior lights (that were black because they were off), isolated them to make sure I only had the lights and no other geometry, deleted them, did a test render and the light was gone. Even though I already tried deleting all of the lights in the whole scene a couple of days ago with no luck.

 

I can understand the old FG map thing but nights that are off emitting large amounts of light I think is inexplicable.

 

I really like what you did with the texture of the house. Did you use displacement to get it so rough looking or is it just the bump map? The house in real life has a rough exposed aggregate finish. A-Cero is the Architect, really stylish Architecture in my opinion.

 

haha oh no you sore the mangled geometry. This was my first attempt at using max for modelling. I chose to model this house firstly because I think it's good architecture and secondly because I wanted a challenge and I found out about the joys of complex booleans along the way. So I got pretty good at welding vertices too. I only fixed up what I needed to get by.

 

Oh and the large bank of lights across the plane was for my sky. For a separate clip I have a time lapse sky so I got one from here http://www.openfootage.net/?s=HDRI+Timelapse put the .ifl file into the diffuse slot of a material, put it on a plane and had to light it up so I could see it in the camera. Is that a little strange? The time lapse ends with the sun going behind the mountains, then my lights will pop on and the credits will roll. Simple yet affective. I usually put a 360° sky on a cylinder because you get 0 distortion.

 

Well once again thank you for your time Justin. Maybe try to send the adjusted file again tomorrow I'd love to see it. I checked on my yousendit account and it said I have received 0 messages and the email you sent only had the one that I sent to you.

 

Sorry to keep going but in the future if I want to send files over 50MB for free how can I do so? yousendit only allows 50MB for free. I'm just a poor student.

 

Thanks again,

 

Richard

[Justin Hunt]

Yea I work with Bruce, but no I didn't study in Australia, I studies in South Africa.

 

I also thought it was the saved FGM, but didn't test it.

 

The texture is jsut a mix map of two concrete maps for the diffuse and a diferent one for the bump and reflection.

 

If you are going to use the plane in the backround, try setting the self illumination. Better still just assign the .ilf to the backround in the environment slot.

 

I had fun playing around with the lighting. I want to tweak it a little more to get it to render faster.

 

I might try Dropbox as I think you can send more with them.

 

Justin

[R.Stewart]

I'm glad you had fun with it. It's a fun house to work on. I'm not too fussed about render time, I just built myself a beast of a computer with the i7, GTX 580, SSD, Dual 27" monitors and all that good stuff. Such a pleasure to work on.

 

I find you have more control over a background if its on geometry because it's easy to scale, rotate etc. I like using the environment for getting the sky in the reflections.

 

I got the file so Dropbox works, I can't wait to check it out. I'll post some more renderings when I've got some time to mess with it. I'll put the full animation up when it's done too. I wish animation was my only subject!!

[Justin Hunt]

Keep us updated with your progress, and if you need any more help just shout

 

jhv

[creasia]

The only thing I can think of is that you may need to recalculate your GI. Do you have reuse final gather checked off?

[R.Stewart]

Hey Shaun good guess but I'm not using GI. I was trying to use an old FG map when I should've been calculating new FG. Pretty silly of me really but I figured it out in the end and I've learned a little lesson. That wasn't the only issue though. I also had lights that were emitting light when they where turned off. Strange but I deleted them and the scene is now functioning as it should.

 

Thanks for the input,

 

 

 

Richard