Z4 rendered in KS 4 now...

[Saloff]

Tried KS4. So far, I would say that the environment editor is much quicker. I, however, still seem to more flexibility in setting lighting in scenes. Is there any ideas if HDRLightStudio gonna be available for KS4 on Mac?

And I am still trying to understand how to produce sharp shadow with the help of the light emitting objects...

[Despot]

To get a hard shadow, place a plane or a sphere object and apply the 'Area Light Diffuse' material

Adjust the material and choose light colour and other values...

Change the size of the plane or sphere in relation to the objects you want to change shadow hardness - the larger the emitter object the softer the shadow, the smaller the emitter object, the harder/crisper the shadow.

Scene scale matters also, as real world lighting units are being used (watts/lumens)

Also, you'll need to greatly reduce environment brightness as this will overpower the shadow generated by your emitter

I've attached a render - if you need the scene file - just let me know

[zpaolo]

One question: if you create a plane and assign the area light material, then can you "point" that plane towards "something"? Or do you have to manually tweak the orientation of that plane?

[Despot]

I'm pretty sure that the orientation of the plane in any axis has no effect on the how the light is transmitted... but I could be wrong

One of the mods might know

J

[Saloff]

@biomechanic:

just tried as you said. for some reason, the light from the plane is too strong (even with all brightness levels nearly zeroed). the highlights get blown out, the car body pain is practically killed... I guess I miss some sort of basic understanding of using the stuff. Also, I have a feeling that Spot Light Diffuse produces a more defined shadow than Area Light Diffuse. Or is it again due to the lack of my understanding of how is it to be handled?

Thanks anyway:)

[Despot]

Your welcome, anyway I've attached the scene file...

I think the problems your having are due to scene scale.

For this particular scene, you need to drastically reduce the light intensity - so if you have the light set to 'Lumens', a value of .4 is ok

If you have it set to 'Watts', the value needs to be .0005 or something similar

You might find though, if your using one of your own scene files - then those values need to be increased somewhat

To be honest I haven't tested the other light types as at the moment i'm not particularly interested in them - for me though, the Area Light works best as it is the most realistic visually in so far as the closer the shadow is to the object the more defined the shadow is, then as the shadow moves away from the object it gets progressively softer.

Hope I'm making sense

J

[tsunami]

Nice works,..i like again colors contrast on your work,...but i would follow too biomechanic suggestions...
Keep it..
regards

[zpaolo]

I'm pretty sure that the orientation of the plane in any axis has no effect on the how the light is transmitted...

If it is like you say, then it's not a proper area light plane. An area light plane should work like a plane softbox or open window, and light should come from the normal to the plane face. Of course if you alter the orientation of the plane it might light your scene differently. Although I think area planes are a great addition, I would find it awkward to setup a scene with them in the interactive environment of Keyshot, and the lack of motion relations (parent/child) will have a bad impact.

[Saloff]

Your welcome, anyway I've attached the scene file...

I think the problems your having are due to scene scale.

For this particular scene, you need to drastically reduce the light intensity - so if you have the light set to 'Lumens', a value of .4 is ok

If you have it set to 'Watts', the value needs to be .0005 or something similar

You might find though, if your using one of your own scene files - then those values need to be increased somewhat

To be honest I haven't tested the other light types as at the moment i'm not particularly interested in them - for me though, the Area Light works best as it is the most realistic visually in so far as the closer the shadow is to the object the more defined the shadow is, then as the shadow moves away from the object it gets progressively softer.

Hope I'm making sense

J

Thank you! I am going to try your scene out today to see what I am doing wrong. Will feed back respectively:)

[Despot]

If it is like you say, then it's not a proper area light plane. An area light plane should work like a plane softbox or open window, and light should come from the normal to the plane face. Of course if you alter the orientation of the plane it might light your scene differently. Although I think area planes are a great addition, I would find it awkward to setup a scene with them in the interactive environment of Keyshot, and the lack of motion relations (parent/child) will have a bad impact.

Well to be honest, I don't think I'm far wrong, I've attched another another render where the emitter plane has been rotated 30 degrees approx to directly point at the KS logo ball and as you can see there is no real discernible change apart from its a fraction lighter and the specular hotspot is larger

Apart from that I cant see anything different, not massively anyway.

I totally agree with you though, it is a pain placing emitters with any degree of accuracy easily, but I'm sure that will be corrected in later versions

For me it would be just nice to see a visual representation of the active camera, that would help somewhat...

J

[guest84672]

I must admit, I'm not sure I understand what the issue is?

As far as intensity goes, keep in mind that this is dependent on units that are being used in the scene. When you import an object, KeyShot will automatically adopt the units from the CAD model. For older scenes you can safely assume that the units are in meters. If you want to change that, you can do so under the EDIT menu.

[Despot]

No issue for me Thomas - I like KS4's emitters, they work as expected really...

[guest84672]

ok - thanks biomechanics! Just checking.

[Despot]

No probs - my initial posts were just to help 'Saloff' who was having trouble getting the emitters to work correctly I think...

Then 'Zpaulo' mentioned emitter rotation here :

If it is like you say, then it's not a proper area light plane. An area light plane should work like a plane softbox or open window, and light should come from the normal to the plane face. Of course if you alter the orientation of the plane it might light your scene differently. Although I think area planes are a great addition, I would find it awkward to setup a scene with them in the interactive environment of Keyshot, and the lack of motion relations (parent/child) will have a bad impact.

and I was simply trying to illustrate that rotating an emitter plane does not really have much of an effect contrary to what he was saying

Cheers

J

[zpaolo]

Thomas maybe my question about area lights caused the misunderstanding... I thought that when you put a plane in a scene and assign the area light material to it, it should work like, well, a plane that emits light, correct? I think this plane will be visible and affect reflection too. In some cases it's useful to be able to "direct" the plane towards an object because, correct me if I'm wrong, if the face of the plane is "looking" at your object then this is going to be fully illuminated, while if the plane is angled so that the object "sees" only the edge, it should be less illuminated.

Paolo