Lighting

[JNDesign]

Hi Paul

A while ago you mentioned in revit forum that you were having issues lighting up scene in inventor plugin (studio lights filling in scene)

Did you come up with a solution? Interested as the solution might help us in revit.

cheers

[face_off]

Hi

Yes, I created a very (very) basic Inventor "part" which can be added to an assembly as an emitter (it's about 1m x 1m). It's a reference object, so doesn't get included in mass calcs. The materials are already setup so whilst you can see the part in the Inventor view, it has it's Octane opacity set to 0, so it is just an emitter.

You could do a similar thing in Revit - create a family object with a new material name called "Octane Emitter". Then load into a Revit scene, start the plugin, select the "Octane Emitter" material, set is as a diffuse emitter with opacity 0 (the material setup I posted in the Revit thread on this), then "Save as Default". Then whenever you load that family object into a scene, it will be an emitter object that's invisible. There are some complication with Revit that don't exist in Inventor with this approach....1) You want to exclude the family object from the bill of materials in Revit, and 2, you'll need to make the family object rotatable in all directions (I'm not a Revit expert - not sure how easy this is to do).

A sample screenshot of the Inventor emitter part is attached.

[JNDesign]

great

Can it be part that the plugin does this for every studio light?

Just a question, that way we can do our scenes with studio lights (for us who are familiar with revit workflow)

cheers

[face_off]

This is getting into an area of Revit expertise that is beyond my knowledge. However, the simply solution could be to edit the Studio Light family - add some geometry (and single polygon plane) to it and set the geometry material to Octane Emitter. Then when the Studio Light family is used, it will have geometry and can therefore emit light. The issue is at the moment it doesn't have any geometry. So the simple solution may be to edit the family. Not sure if that will add that geometry to existing saved Revit scene which already have the Studio Light loaded.

I think the vast majority of Revit users are not using the Studio Light - so are not experiencing this issue. But I understand that you are using it - and it's an issue that needs a solution.

Paul

[JNDesign]

Thanks Paul

Love to hear from other users who are using the plug in for interior scene without sun

[face_off]

I don't think any other users of the plugin are using the Studio Light family object - since it has no geometry. They all use family objects for lighting which have geometry.

I am the wrong person to give this advice, but I just did the following:
1) Open family editor, load Studio Light, added a square box around the light (using Extrusion), created a new material called Octane Emitter, tick the Self Illumination box, assigned the material to the box, save over the Studio Light or as a new name
2) Load the new Studio Light into a scene, open the plugin, select the Studio Light - the Octane Emitter material will be selected in the plugin, set the opacity to 0 and increase the power (to maybe 30000), rightclick "Save as Default"

A cube is not a great emitter shape (a single sided or double sided plane would be better) - but it's what I could create in 1 min. You would need to tweak the above process, but hopefully it gives you an idea of what can be done. It is recommended you attach an IES distribution to these types of emitters (see the manual for details).

Paul

[JNDesign]

thanks