Studio Lights Tweet

[JNDesign]

Hi Paul

I am having issues with "Studio Lights" from Revit 2014.

Basically I cant render using them in Octane plugin.

Any chance you could look at it for us?

[face_off]

Can you give me more info on this pls? Not sure exactly what you mean by "studio lights".

Paul

[JNDesign]

hi Paul

its a revit family light

[face_off]

I don't have that particular light (family) on my install, but using another light I could see that those family lights do not have materials, so the plugin cannot detect the emitter materials. There is an easy solution though.

1) Select the light family instance with the plugin open on the Material tab - you will see there will be 2 or 3 Octane materials for that element
2) Select the "globe" material, change the node type to "diffuse" and set the node type of the "Emission" pin to blackbody or texture emission (check the manual for the difference), and set the power somewhere around 100
3) Open the Viewport and you should see your emitter producing light (see below). Adjust the "power" pin to get the right result
4) Rightclick the emitter tree and select "Save as Favourite" and name it something like "Emitter"

Now whenever you have any of these family lights without materials, just select the globe and then select the "Emitter" favourite to set it us as an emitter.

Hope the helps.

Paul

[JNDesign]

Hi Paul

not much luck with your solution above

attaching the studio light for your investigation

we use this a lot with interior scenes


any help will be most appreciated

many thanks

[face_off]

Hi again....

I have had a look at that family light. I was unaware of it's existence (and non of the beta testers were using it). It has no geometry (and no materials), so there is no way to set it up as an Octane emitter. Octane is designed to provide physically accurate renders, to achieve the highest level of realism. So it does not cater for light appearing from nowhere - it has to emanate from something (ie. geometry). Interestingly, I found some screenshots of the old Revit 2012 Studio Light - and it looks like it contains geometry - but certainly the version you sent me does not.

Ideally all scene lighting should come from the sun, the environment (IBL) or light fittings (ie. light globe geometry). However I understand that to get noiseless renders you might want fill lights (which is effectively what the Studio Light is). Octane emitters work best when they are 1 single flat polygon - as large as possible.

There are 2 options:

1) Enhance the plugin so that if you select a Studio Light, it gives you to options to construct scene geometry in place of the Studio Light which the Octane plugin can use as an emitter. This would result in a high-poly sphere - which is not the ideal emitter construction.

2) You add a flat plane to the scene (this is explained in the on-line manual somewhere, but I suspect you'll know far better than I the best way to do this), and set an Octane emitter up for it's material. If you have the plane as a reuseable family, you can set the material up as "Octane Emitter", and then in the octane plugin setup the material as per the above screen shot, and then "Save as Default" - so whenever you load that emitter into the scene - it will automatically pick up the Octane emitter material. Potentially the plugin could come with this family object.

I hope all the above make sense.

Paul

[scottbroad]

Sorry Paul, I took for granted that Revit studio lights were not relevant as there was no geometry to use as an emitter surface.

Also I have been adding geometry to some light fittings to simulate light bulbs that emit rather than glass diffusers, etc.

We don't have planes in Revit as such, so a quick and dirty way is to define special 'screen' wall types to add emitter materials, or to create parametric generic or entourage families of thin panels. Of course all of these will show up on your Revit model. This is where the Proxy objects come in to their own. A family component consisting of a spot, cross, etc can be substituted in the viewport with a Proxy object. The use of Proxy objects works well because you can have a graphically pleasing 3D model in your Revit project and replace it with a high-poly OBJ as a Proxy in your rendering. This also gives you the benefit of keeping the Revit Project file size down.

In the crude Revit project for beta testing below the crosses are replaced by Proxy objects of the boardroom furniture, plant and overhead projector in the Plugin. A curved wall was added with the cityscape image set in the material. You have to be a bit creative with the texture mapping in Revit. The material in the Plugin is set as an Emitter. Using a Texture Environment with an HDRI image in the Plugin is usually a better option.

[face_off]

Thanks Clive. I never thought about using proxies for emitters - that's a fantastic idea. Thanks for the input - very useful.

Paul

[Sauger]

I use just an extruded solid, and ies.
Very happy with the results, only problem is I get lost in selfdisputes over what camera profile to use

Linear gives me to much contrast, and the default Agfa works best so far, a luxury problem I guess

Have a labsetting that has loads of lights, and Octane is a great tool to figure out annoying/costly reflections, so relaxing to be able to test without exporting to Max.

[JNDesign]

thanks Sauger

Do you see the extrude entity in your render?

Any chance of an example?

Pretty new at this so any help example would be very much appreciated.

(I had given up and went back to max iray but dont like the work flow)

cheers


Paul

Would you be able to shed some light on this ...pardon the pun