What I'm doing wrong? (Rope lighting, GPU raytrace)

[Renerabbitt]

21 hours ago, KirillP said:

I received a few first samples of LED strips that I'm going to use and duct taped a test environment in the rental I'm living in now. Same 450 lm/ft, almost the same height as it will be in the future house, Less ambient light (coming not from the LED strip) than in the render. The lighting on the wall looks like nothing on the render. (sorry for the mess). Total length of the strip is 16.4'

This is really more about the limit of the render engine being used, more than the imlementation of it in Chiefs environment You could always switch to the CPU based rendering engine in Chief...or just wait to see what magiv they are bringing to X16.
Also did you try my suggestion of switching to a point light with a shrowd, or creating the shrow and specifying it as a light and adding your own light sources....the rope light is not modeled the same as your example light so why would it have the same characteristics?

[GeneDavis]

@KirillPthe example light you show is LED tape with a shroud, spacing not specified, and should be modeled as point lights with an appropriate extruded shroud.

[Brad_M]

On 1/13/2024 at 3:07 PM, KirillP said:

I kinda vaguely remember these details from my 3D years, but here I believe we have a much simpler task. Look at my original picture: why is so much difference between the red and green area? And even more between green and blue? They are lit directly, with the lights right above them (and from the sides too), there's no ambient occlusion happening whatsoever.  

 

Hi Kirill,

 

When rope lights were implemented in X11, we were concerned with performance issues caused by rendering many, many light sources and rendering the shadow map for each light source. So, we added limitations to the light sources created from rope lights that would handle the more common use cases that Gene Davis mentions while minimizing the impact on performance:

On 1/12/2024 at 12:28 PM, GeneDavis said:

recessed ceiling coves, atop wall cabinets, for undercab countertop lighting, and inside cabinets that have glass doors

 

Unfortunately, these limitations currently prevent rope lights from being used as primary light sources in a scene, but that may change with the lighting improvements we're planning for X16.

[KirillP]

On 1/16/2024 at 2:24 PM, Brad_M said:

Unfortunately, these limitations currently prevent rope lights from being used as primary light sources in a scene, but that may change with the lighting improvements we're planning for X16.

Okay, that now makes total sense. The only wish would be to document is somewhere, so that people don't even try. 

 

@GeneDavis @Renerabbitt I tried your advice to put the point lights into a shroud, but I believe my CA skills are not enough to make it right. The construction has started and I have more "physical" issues to take care of, so I decided to abort the efforts for now. 

But meanwhile I found a bug in the renderer, dev team reproduced it and it's a win :-)