Glare, Affect-only lights and Area-lights converter

[Sven]

Hello,
it might be a message in a bottle but here is my late Christmas wish-list of the features I really miss in KeyShot. I was expecting them to happen in KS8, then in KS9, but they are not there yet and it is pushing me to consider other render engines.

1) A separate Glare control panel.
Right under the Bloom control panel, having this star-shaped light spots would be awesome, with simple controls like intensity, rotation, and number of streaks. I have to manually add them in photoshop every time.

2) Lights that can affect/exclude objects.
Would be very useful, especially for the ground scene that end up having too many disturbing reflections from the hdri. Or when one single object in the scene does not reflect light as we want, then it takes hours to get it right, or even need to assemble 2 separate renders.

3) Converting the hdri-pins lights into area lights.
Maybe it's just an on/off button that changes the way the hdri light is interpreted. Or maybe it creates a physical rectangle/disc geometry in the scene where the hdri-pin-light is currently placed. Would be way easier to play with it than moving a light with the position buttons/gumball.

I am pretty sure 1 and 2 can be done relatively easily, and I am wondering why it has not been implemented yet. Don't get me wrong, I think KeyShot is a great software, but with those features, it would be next level.
Thanks for reading me

[DMerz III]

#2 and #3 have definitely been on my wish list

[INNEO_MWo]

#3 can be easily done with a smart scene and placed into the model library - no big deal!

[designgestalt]

#3 can be easily done with a smart scene and placed into the model library - no big deal!

can you be more precise ?
how is the detailed workflow ...

and by the way #2 is on my wishlist for a long time already ...

cheers
designgestalt

[Eugen Fetsch]

There might be a misunderstanding about #3.

Sven is asking for is something like this "Youtube Link (start from 00:31)". That cannot be done with the model library.

[INNEO_MWo]

Hello @ all.

Eugen is right, that this isn't as easy as in Light Studio.
But I faked it - like I was thinking about that request, when I wrote my first reply to this post.

Here're some notes as breakdown to my scene.
- The environment has a size of 100 (= radius of 100 mm).
- The rectangle pin has a size of 10 --> the plane has a scale of 35 (= factor 3.5 from pin to plane)
- The pin has a brightness of 5 --> the area light has 25 Lumen defined (= factor 5 between pin brightness and Lumen)
- The plane is vertical to the scene, because if the pin location is transformed 0° (Azimuth) and 0° (Elevation) it is also vertical
- I moved the group (plane / area light and "light pivot") in Z direction 100 mm so it correlates the environment size (but I have to move the pivot inside the group back ( = -100 mm to keep it in the center)
- Then I rotated the group "Light (Pin)" 30° around X so it correlates to the Elevation value of the pin
- To match the final position (Pin with plane) I moved the group 10 mm global in Y direction - the environment height would change this value always

So as I think - If you reset the "light pin" group to 0,0,0 0°,0°,0° - you'll get a plane with area light. Then delete the dummy cube in the center. Now you can add a new model to the library with only geometry active (it's not necessary to add the environment, cameras and the other stuff)

Finally you'll get a model that can be changed similar to the break down notes.


Hope that helps

Cheers
Marco

[DMerz III]

 

Hello @ all.

Eugen is right, that this isn't as easy as in Light Studio.
But I faked it - like I was thinking about that request, when I wrote my first reply to this post.

Here're some notes as breakdown to my scene.
- The environment has a size of 100 (= radius of 100 mm).
- The rectangle pin has a size of 10 --> the plane has a scale of 35 (= factor 3.5 from pin to plane)
- The pin has a brightness of 5 --> the area light has 25 Lumen defined (= factor 5 between pin brightness and Lumen)
- The plane is vertical to the scene, because if the pin location is transformed 0° (Azimuth) and 0° (Elevation) it is also vertical
- I moved the group (plane / area light and "light pivot") in Z direction 100 mm so it correlates the environment size (but I have to move the pivot inside the group back ( = -100 mm to keep it in the center)
- Then I rotated the group "Light (Pin)" 30° around X so it correlates to the Elevation value of the pin
- To match the final position (Pin with plane) I moved the group 10 mm global in Y direction - the environment height would change this value always

So as I think - If you reset the "light pin" group to 0,0,0 0°,0°,0° - you'll get a plane with area light. Then delete the dummy cube in the center. Now you can add a new model to the library with only geometry active (it's not necessary to add the environment, cameras and the other stuff)

Finally you'll get a model that can be changed similar to the break down notes.


Hope that helps

Cheers
Marco

you're blowing my mind. I kind of follow... pardon my ignorance, but where did you get some of the #s (such as pin size 10 times 3.5 - where does 3.5 come from?

Is there some math behind the pin brightness to lumen conversion as well, or is that something you've figured out by trial and error?

[Sven]

There might be a misunderstanding about #3.

Sven is asking for is something like this "Youtube Link (start from 00:31)". That cannot be done with the model library.

Yes, that's what I meant, playing with area lights as if they were pins in the HDRI editor. I didn't know that Blender could do that, this 3D software gets better every year.

[INNEO_MWo]

Hello David.

This was just trial in a quick scene. Guess I have to test it with other scenes with different sizes and other unit systems.

Hope that some of the Luxion Devs might give us a hint.

[germannick]

I could not agree more on #2