The Beach House

[matsta]

hey guys

starting a new project, i'm going to be trying my hand at a more detailed interior, especially with regards to lighting.

my goal is something similar to this:


so far i am done with the stairwell, although a bit steeper than in the pic i think it came out nice:



i have one problem that keeps on rearing its ugly head, lighting. i need someones advice. i am going to be using both mesh lights and a exterior sun, whenever i use an ext sun i never know weather to use linear or Reinhard, mainly because with Reinhard u lose the control of ur mesh lights. also how come whenever i use an exterior sun i can NEVER get the sky to show up, its always just an oversaturated white light coming in through the window (cant see anything outside).

could someone please suggest settings for both the sun sky and tone mapping that could help me overcome these troubles...?

all help greatly appreciated.
greetz
mat

[matsta]

ok guys, i have made a little test room. could someone please setup the lighting of this scene for me, just so that i can see which settings work best, bearing in mind the parameters i would like to keep.

greetz

[matsta]

lit with env map, i had to put the gain of the emiiters up rediculously high along with the power in order for them to even show up.



i REALLY dont understand gain and scale.

[drBouvierLeduc]

Hey, looks very promising.
I think when you use sun/envmap and emitters at the same time, you have to use efficacy scale. Not that sure though.

[OnoSendai]

Hi Matsta.
When working with sunlight + mesh emitters, use the efficacy scale for the meshlights. That way you can work with familiar physical values, and the lights will have the correct brightness relative to the sun/sky.
Search the manual for 'efficacy_scale' for more information.
When working with ENV maps it's not so easy, because the env map values aren't calibrated against anything; the units are unknown.

[Zom-B]

When working with ENV maps it's not so easy, because the env map values aren't calibrated against anything; the units are unknown.

This explains a lot
Any chance to get one day a "on the fly" calibration of used ENV maps??

[CTZn]

Any chance to get one day a "on the fly" calibration of used ENV maps??

I don't agree with this one, scaling a cloudy sky to sun illumination makes no sense, that's still a job for Violet and thats it

[CoolColJ]

I normally have to use an efficacy scale of 200 for lights to show with sunlight+sky for a 100 watt blackbody emitter. Whereas a value of 17.5 will be plenty bright with black background

[matsta]

hmmm thanks for the help guys. im gna give the efficacy scale a go now, do you guys suggest linear or reinhard? and if so wat kinda linear/reinhard settings should i be using.

greetz

[matsta]

hey guys...

playing around with those settings here is wat i got, untinemapped:

linear: scale 0.1; 10*0



and

reinhard: burn 6 : preS 1.13 : postS 0.38



note that the roof lights settings are at 200 power with 400 efficacy/lm

environment in both cases is sunsky.

[matsta]

the sky that can be seen out the window in the reinhard version is what i want in my linear render. but the lights in the linear are "correct"... mesh lighting with sunsky relly should be a whole lot easier than it is :S, surely there must be something ono can do to make it more efficient :S perhaps im just being a noob

greetz

[OnoSendai]

matsta: It should be efficient.
You model your room, place the lights, use some real world values (eg 150W power and 17.5lm/W), and you're done.
Does your room have the correct size?, e.g. is it about 3 units (meters) high?

[Zom-B]

The Size is correct, but in your file in the first post,
the light mesh is also emitting light upwards,
kill these faces for a small overall speed up.

[matsta]

ZomB could u post a render that u have done by any chance? im really quite confused. my settingss are the ones ono recommended but the scene is either way to bright or way to dark. there is no middle ground and its taking close on 3 hours to resolve a TINY 500 x 300 render.

greetz

[matsta]

pi seriously think im just going to ditch the sunsky and just go with mesh emmiters, maybe trow some curtains over the window

getting the 2 to work together is just to much hastle.