Maxwell Render

Dear Jeremy,

I am continuing to have trouble getting off the ground here. I am using the Rhino plugin with Rhino 4.0 SR-8 1-April-2010 on a Bootcamp partition with Windows 7 on a MacBookPro with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.53 GHz. 8 GB memory. My video card is a NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT.
I am working with a .3dm of a restaurant interior with spotlights created just as you recommended and linked to an IES file for a 50 watt MR16 halogen bulb. . Even though I have 48 of these spotlights, the scene is almost completely dark. There is only one pool of light in one corner and a couple of other spots. The spotlights don’t seem to light up the scene and even when I turned the layer off with the hard ceiling so I could let in the light from the skydome everything was still dark. I tried turning off the environmental lighting and it was still dark. My spotlights don’t seem to do anything. The file is rather large -- 106 mb. I don't know if this has anything to do with it.

If there was a way to upload an attachment I could have you look at it.

Any suggestions you could give me would be appreciated. We are really stuck.

Thank you

Cosmas Demetriou

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Cosmas Demetriou
Architect/ Set Designer

Direct email: cdemetriou@earthlink.net

A few questions:

1. what are your camera settings?
2. is the scene modeled to scale?
3. to what sampling level have you let the image render?
4. are you using multilight? If so, are you using Intensity or Color mode?
5. are you using the current 2.5.0 release, or the release preview 2.5.1 plugin?

I will private message you information for an FTP where you can upload the scene, so that I can take a look. You can probably reduce the file size using File > Save As and checking the Save Small box.

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Next Limit Team

See answers to your questions above. As soon as you send me the FTP I will upload the scene. Please let me know, whether you need the original .3dm or just the .mxs and .mxi.

Thank you.

_________________
Cosmas Demetriou
Architect/ Set Designer

Direct email: cdemetriou@earthlink.net

I need only the .3dm.

1. Camera: EV=13 seems a bit out of range for an indoor scene.
2. Scale: good; a 40W light would be undetectable in a room 100 miles wide.
3. Sampling Level: SL=~11 may be somewhat premature to judge the overall lighting when many emitters are involved.
4. Multilight: you would have enabled it in the plugin if you did; it's in the Output tab. Better that you didn't though.
5. Plugin version: none of what I've told you will work with the 2.5.0 plugin; this IES/spotlight support is brand new in 2.5.1.

The last point is the most important; IES will really not work at all with any previous plugin version.

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Next Limit Team

Hi Jeremy,

I just uploaded you my .3dm (55mb) via WinSCP. Following up on your above points, could you tell me what the eV should be and where can I get the 2.5.1 Rhino plugin download. I looked on the Maxwell Portal and the only version of Rhino plugin they seem to have is 2.5.0.

Thanks.

Cosmas

_________________
Cosmas Demetriou
Architect/ Set Designer

Direct email: cdemetriou@earthlink.net

Thanks, I'm downloading your file now. On the question of EV, I could not give you any specific number until I have seen the scene, but indoor situations more generally call for EV in the 8-11 range. There is a good deal of information about EV in the plugin's manual, including a chart of EV values for various lighting scenarios (last page of the manual).

The 2.5.1 release preview plugin is linked in an announcement at the top of this forum, here: viewtopic.php?f=105&t=35883

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Next Limit Team

Okay, I've taken a look at this, and I can offer some pointers. Changes I made to the scene were:

1. fixed the IES path in material K-Hello to point to an IES file on my machine
2. ran the SelLight command in the Rhino command line
3. used Scale1D to make the spotlights about 8 inches high, rather than being floor-to-ceiling*
4. right-clicked K-Hello in the material list and chose Assign to Selected (assuming the spotlights are still selected)
5. now, when a spotlight is chosen, K-Hello is shown in the Object Properties > Maxwell page
6. in Scene Manager > Output, I then enabled Instances, since you are using blocks

I then adjusted the camera EV to 7 and rendered the scene -- your EV would depend on the actual IES you are using. Additionally, I would not recommend setting render time or SL to values lower than their defaults; you generally only do that if you are rendering something like an animation where you want all frames to render to the same level. Under normal circumstances, just leave them at the very high default values and stop the render manually when you feel it's ready.

[*] it appears that when this tall, the auto-generated spotlight cones are causing a problem with the IES distribution, producing distinct circular regions on the floor where the floor & cones meet. I'll have to check this out and change something.

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Next Limit Team

Dear Jeremy,

This is all very helpful. I really appreciate your help with this. The only problem is, however, that I downloaded the update for the Rhino plugin (2.5.1.) and the readme.txt says that the plugin requires a minimum of Maxwell Render 2.5.1. Well my version of Maxwell Render is 2.5.0 and I cannot find any reference to 2.5.1. anywhere on the portal or on the users forum. I even tried to look for any updates out there through the Maxwell Render Help menu and it indicated that my version is the latest one.

Any help with this would be appreciated.

Thank you for your guidance through this. I can't wait to try it.
Cosmas

_________________
Cosmas Demetriou
Architect/ Set Designer

Direct email: cdemetriou@earthlink.net

Sorry, that's a typo in the readme -- the 2.5.1 plugin is compatible with Maxwell 2.5.0.

_________________
Next Limit Team

Hi Jeremy I just came accross this post and sounds like this could be the one I was looking for regarding my previous topic:

viewtopic.php?f=105&t=35972

can I confirm that this methodology is correct, (sorry still getting to grips with things but determined.)

I added rhino spotlights to my street lamps and turned off the original emitters I had been using on multilight setting. the grainyness/noise disappeared somewhat immediately only my lamps looked like they had no bulbs but just radiated light noticable on the ground. this looked fine to me for the right effect but to achieve a better street lighting affect I made the original emitters visable again at a lowish wattage to illuminate the surface like a bulb keeping the rhino spotlights for the downlighting so they were overlapped sort off. so far so good getting to what i require.... I have 12 spotlight native lights in the scene in total for now all with the rhino light properties set to a colour shadow number and hardness and therefore 12 independant sliders for their values once rendering in maxwell render + 1 multilight slider for the original emitters which i should say were just nurbs surfaces for the bulbs with an emitter material applied.

OK however in the render view mode within rhino perspective view only 6 or 7 spotlights give off light and these automaticaly change when i delete the ones that appear lit (even though when rendering shows the right number of sliders,) at this point i cannot see from the camera position whether all have rendered light properly when going out to maxwell render. "is this behaviour normal?"

And also should rhino native lights always be used for lighting of architectural/larger scale scenes as apposed to using surfaces with emmiter materials. can you help differentiate between the two methods of lighting and their usage please?

also when checking the instances option for export of blocks, i get the message exprting of instances with native lights is not supported- ERROR ps. my native lights are not within the blocks by creation.

No, you have misunderstood: I recommend that one NEVER use native Rhino lights, except in the case where you need to use an IES, and you need it to point some direction other than down. And that is only the case with plugin 2.5.1, which is the first build with this new native-spotlight-based IES capability. The reason why this IES capability is a caveat is singular: spotlights have a location and direction which I can use to direct the IES lobe for Maxwell; normal Rhino geometry does not have those features -- you cannot 'point' a sphere in a particular direction.

So to clarify, I do not consider there to be 'two methods' of lighting; the only method used by anyone looking for optimal output, both in terms of speed and quality, will be to forego the use of emitters automatically-generated from Rhino lights. There was a time when it was not even an option, because the plugin lacked the capability of translating native lights, and for reasons like the confusion present in this thread, I tend to think that was actually a better situation. The translation is provided as a convenience only, just basically so rookie users don't have a bunch of Rhino lights in their scene and then end up having questions about why they "don't work." So as it stands, they "do work" but would not likely be used in any serious Maxwell rendering.

Now, if it is the case that you switched your emitters to spotlights and saw a performance increase, then that indicates that you really need to look at the geometry you're using for your emitters. And that seems likely, as you indicate above that you were using some NURBS geometry for your emitters; use the Object Properties > Custom Mesh feature to check how many triangles these emitters are ending up with in their render meshes; probably they are far too detailed.

Which brings us to a new strategy for you to try. Remove the Rhino spotlights, and remove your original emitter NURBS geometry. In its place, use a simple mesh plane (use the 3DMesh command and draw a simple triangle or square), using the Dir command to make sure that its normals point in the proper direction. Assign your emitter to this plane and place it where your old NURBS emitter geometry used to reside. For scenarios where a triangle or square emitter would be obviously visible in the image, use other standard modeling methods to create an emitter mesh which uses the minimum number of triangles possible, while still looking okay to the camera.

On the question of why you can only see 6 or 7 Rhino lights in your viewport, I couldn't say -- that's Rhino's territory. If you are getting the message which says that emitters cannot be used on instances, then it is likely that you are not using the 2.5.1 plugin linked in the announcement at the top of this forum.

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Next Limit Team

Jeremy, thanks for your reply this is what message i get when clicking render with instances box checked:
ERROR: - Instances of emitters are not supported.
ERROR: - Data preprocess failed. Render cannot continue

ERROR: - Render Failed

I redrew the mesh square using mesh>polygonmeshprimitives>3-D Face for emmitters as I could find no commmand as you stated under (use the 3DMesh command and draw a simple triangle or square) I hope this is the same. I then used the object properties table to check its stats, with custom mesh enabled for the emitter mesh, clicking adjust does nothing where you can usually set your setting (ie max/min edge length aspect ratio.etc.) as you explained the other day.

so clicking details this is what the pop up window displayed:

mesh
ID: 01245500-3146-4e0a-aed5-9597ff427657 (10611)
Layer name: lamp emitters
Render Material:
source = from obj
index = 9854
Attribute UserData:
UserData ID: 69F27695-3011-4fba-82C1-E529F25B5FD9
Plug-in: Rhino 4
description: CustomMeshUserData
saved in file: yes
copy count: 10
UserData ID: B0EE2168-8EC6-42ed-A962-26DEB8CC8F9A
Plug-in: Rhino Render
description: Rhino Renderable Object UserData
saved in file: no
copy count: 2
Geometry:
Valid mesh.
Open polygon mesh: 4 vertices, 1 polygons
bounding box: (2510.15,3382.43,9.21885) to (2510.83,3383.24,9.21916)

The plugin version from the drop down menu within rhino 4 : Maxwell>About- shows version 2.5.1.0
after clicking render, the maxwell render window that pops up: Help>About Maxwell- 2.5.0.0 x64

Please see the results i'm getting below:

1st GOOD by be810fa053dd80dec18ac2d8c9207acd, on Flickr
native lights spots to project + multilight mesh squares to bring out bulbs


1st BAD by be810fa053dd80dec18ac2d8c9207acd, on Flickr
just multilight mesh squares

Hi JD,

A quick question on IES mapping....

I understand that attaching the IES material to a spot light give you position and direction. That makes sense. A few questions for you:

- Does the scale of the Rhino spotlight affect how the IES file is treated? I am getting the feeling from the thread above that it might, which scares me...

- Would it be possible to map an IES to a single mesh quad or triang? You could use the center of the mesh as the position, and the normal direction as the IES direction. Seems like a more pure solution to implement IES than either the ball or RhinoSpotLight...

Thoughts?

Tom

Tom -- this stuff is very preliminary, not even being documented or mentioned in any release notes as of yet, so I'll keep your suggestion in mind. On your first question, I guess the answer would be no, but I also did not quite grasp what it might be that I would be changing. Are you asking if I alter your IES file?

Brendan -- sorry, that was a slip, I was referring to the 3DFace command, which is indeed the same as what you used. I'm not sure how you're able to export an illegal emitter instance; if you'd care to email me a simplified file (.3dm) where this occurs, I'd be interested in debugging it, because it is not supposed to be possible. Also, when I said to check Object Properties > Custom Mesh, I was referring to checking your original NURBS emitter geometry; already being a mesh, the mesh objects you created have no render mesh to adjust.

As to the images, one really cannot judge your results without knowing to what sampling level each one has been rendered.

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Next Limit Team

Hi JD,

No, I am hoping that the geometry of the spotlight does not affect the IES file at all - if it did it would create all kinds of confusion. I am hoping it is used only for position and direction.

Understood about the preliminary nature. IES has the potential to be so useful to us but so far it has been a little too quirky. Being able to point is a HUGE plus.

One quirky example: how come I can't get any reflections from my light sources using IES? I have all this chrome hardware and I get no hightlights on any of them. I realize this is a maxwell thing, but it is very odd...

Anyhow, the new version rocks.

T.