Some Of The Same Lights In The Same Room Do Not Work

[AgChief]

I placed four puck lights under a wall cabinet and they work fine.  Then, I copied those four lights to another wall cabinet.  The newly copied puck lights do not work.  I also tried inserting the same puck lights under the other wall cabinet but still nothing.

 

I've seen this happen before with some lights working but other, exact same, lights not working (whether copied from a working light or inserted from the library), and just ignored it because showing the lighting to a client wasn't required.  I've even seen it happening with multiple-light hanging ceiling fixtures - two or three lights work, but there's one that just doesn't - like that one bulb has burned out.

 

Any ideas?  See the attached plan.

 

E-R.plan

[AgChief]

Oh, and I should add that the can lights in the ceiling do not work either.

[Alaskan_Son]

Not in front of my computer, but most video cards have an eight light limit.

[rlackore]

I agree with Michael. Check here to see how many lights your card can handle:

 

 

Regardless of how many lights are toggled on, only the maximum number that your card can handle will be displayed.

[Joe_Carrick]

Which of course has nothing to do with Ray Traces.  For Most Ray Traces you want to "Turn Off" lights that are not in the Room.  Otherwise they will effect the speed.

[rlackore]

Joe's excellent point is the other piece to the puzzle. It's important to distinguish between the "maximum lights" that your video card can "render" to the your screen display, and the number of lights are "turned on" to compute the Ray Trace solution (which doesn't depend on your video card).

[AgChief]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not at my computer but I'll check the card later.

I'm not trying to do a RT, just a simple view with lights turned on. Thinking about it, I know that there are eight lights in that scene.

What's the purpose of only allowing eight lights? Doesn't make sense to me.

[Joe_Carrick]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not at my computer but I'll check the card later.

I'm not trying to do a RT, just a simple view with lights turned on. Thinking about it, I know that there are eight lights in that scene.

What's the purpose of only allowing eight lights? Doesn't make sense to me.

It's not a purpose.  It's a limit of what the GPU (Graphics Card) is capable of.  Some GPUs can only show 4 light sources, some can show 8.  I don't know what the limit is for the real high end GPU's

[rlackore]

What's the purpose of only allowing eight lights? Doesn't make sense to me.

 

Just to be clear the maximum lights isn't only a Chief Architect issue. Chief renders using OpenGL which by default allows only 8 lights in it's fixed pipeline. There are ways to get around this, but none are implemented in Chief.

[TheKitchenAbode]

Just checked this 8 light limitation on OpenGL.org. They indicate that the limitation is the graphics card manufacturers and that OpenGL will in fact support more than 8 lights. Appears that most lighting in gaming is handled by shaders or other methods and not the built-in light function.

 

Graham

[DRAWZILLA]

BTW, if you move your camera out of a room just hit f5 to turn them back on.

[Clare_White]

I am glad someone posted this problem.

 

I am doing a camera view with shadows. 

 

Only 8 lights on in a room, it seems like I had 50 lights on the other week.

 

Working on this large project I had tons of lights no problem. I come back three weeks later and the lights don't want to show, the

 layer is turned on. I did a cross section and found the lights on the floor upstairs. Moved but didn't fix the foggy room.

 

Tech support told me get my video card update. That is usually a good thing to do, but it didn't fix it.

[Dennis_Gavin]

lare - standard render 8 light max based on video card.  No limit on ray traces which are done by the cpu.

[TheKitchenAbode]

It's important to understand that there are two distinctly different ways to display views of a particular scene, and depending upon which method you use there are inherent advantages one has over the other.

 

The first encompasses floor plan, elevations and 3D camera views. These are generated using Open GL (software) and your graphics chip (discrete or integrated), commonly referred to as your "GPU" or Graphics Processing Unit. The generated scenes are dynamic, allowing you to zoom in & out, rotate and move around. As they are dynamic the scene must be rapidly regenerated to provide as smooth a movement as possible, which is the primary reason most users recommend using a higher end discrete graphics card. This becomes most important if you wish to have your dynamic scenes generated with maximum line smoothing and shadows as this requires an extreme amount of processing to regenerate the scene during movement. In respect to lights, their display is determined by the graphics card/chip manufacturer and for whatever reason they have decided to limit them to only 8 active lights for any given scene. This 8 light limit is independent of how many lights you have turned on within Chief, only 8 max will be used, the others will be ignored. These viewing methods are design to be actively used during your design process.

 

The second scene generation method involves "Raytracing" (Raytrace). This is a program specifically designed to render high quality photo realistic static scenes. The Raytrace module in Chief does not use your graphics card/chip or Open GL, it's an independent program that utilizes the main CPU (Central Processing Unit) to crunch through the calculations. This is why most users recommend higher end CPUs such as I7 or Xeon with as many cores/threads as one can afford. These scenes are static, you can't actively move around within them. As Raytracing does not utilize your graphics card/chip it is not limited in the number of lights it can render and it will in fact perform computations on all lights turned on in Chief regardless of the number within the scene. As the number of lights and their type (spot/point) have a direct impact on rendering time most users recommend turning off all lights that are not visible in the scene, which is one of the most effective ways to decrease your rendering time. This scene generation method is designed to generate presentation grade rendered scenes after the design process if finished.

 

Hope this helps,

Graham

[DRAWZILLA]

It would be nice if Chief would automatically shut off lights not in the scene for RT's

[jtcapa1]

I'm having a hell of a time getting the lights to display in RT mode in one room.  I've turned off all other lights except the 8 in that room, but they still won't display even though the light data indicates they are on.  I've had this problem from time to time, especially with custom light fixtures.  Any idea's on how to force them to display??

[glennw]

It would be nice if Chief would automatically shut off lights not in the scene for RT's

 

Perry,

 

There is a setting that may help in some situations, although it turns off everything not in the scene, not just the lights and is only good for the Floor Camera.

It's 3D... 3D View Defaults...Restrict Floor camera To Room.

[Dennis_Gavin]

ANother possibility, especially if custom lights.  Of they are spot lights is the direction set to minus 90....-90 degrees i.e. pointing down?

[TheKitchenAbode]

Is the camera in the room or is it outside with clipping or looking through a door opening into the room. The lights used in camera views are determined by the lights that are in the same room as the camera. Also check the light fixtures light data DBX, at the bottom there are options to display the fixture in all view types, camera view only and raytrace only, make sure the appropriate boxes are checked.

 

Graham