Bad lighting problems

[Pandekage]

Hi guys, first post here, first of all I just want to say this is a great program.

Anyways, I have a set of three overhead lamps in an interior scene, the covers (see picture) a transparent material and the lights themselves set to 100w incandescent preset; power and efficacy are set to 300 and 80, respectively. The lights are intended to visibly illuminate the tables below them, as well as brighten up the left side of the room. I also wanted the lamp shades to light up. As you can see, there is no hint that the lights are on, except that the bulbs themselves are bright yellow. Any ideas on how to fix this? Also, I tried rendering with a black background (without sunlight) and the lights worked normally, so the settings should be okay.



Thanks!

[cotty]

The sun is to bright in comparison to the bulbs, so try to use lightlayers so change the intensities seperately.

[CTZn]

However, if you can find the right balance from within the emitters settings you may improve rendering performances.

Use the adjusted light layer value as a multiplier for emitters gains as starter. That is, if the layer has to be boosted up one thousand times (could be), you would rather multiply the emitters values instead.

You will notice that the stronger a light "base emission" is compared to ohers, the less noise it will produce. So you would best balance emiters "graininess" in regard with the sun's than use plain realistic emission values.

Then, use layers to dim outputs to their planned illuminance, that will preserve their efficiency. Layers do affect pixels internally, not luminaires performances.

I hope that I am making sense, that was perhaps too much of an advanced tip to start with

[Headroom]

And, if you've not already done so , please change your tone mapping from Reinhard to Camera.

[Pandekage]

Thanks! Didn't really make sense, though. I ended up turning them off.

Where would I access the adjusted light layer value for each light? And for layers, would I simply place each set of lights that are in different areas in different layers?

[CTZn]

Thanks! Didn't really make sense, though. I ended up turning them off.

It's okay to turn layers off during this initial balancing stage in my opinion.

Where would I access the adjusted light layer value for each light?

I'm not sure wether you are asking about light layers assignements or base emission values. The first can not be changed from within Indigo as of 3.2.3, the second is a material thing wich is not exposed either. Therefore, the balancing step I was mentioning has to do with the exporter/plugin.

And for layers, would I simply place each set of lights that are in different areas in different layers?

It is a good option if they share the same material, or if luminaires are part of the same electrical circuit in the design for instance. Another way is to set every emitting material on a separate layer for they also have different base emision properties.