Natural Light


ShelbyHall
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I am looking for some help to bring more natural light into my rendering. I have tried adjusting the default sun and adjusting my lights but my rendering is always dark. My ray trace looks like it is dark out but I want it to look like its daytime. My first image is before the ray tracing and second image is the ray traced image.

Thanks!

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Justin.plan

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Shelby - For sun light you need to put the sun angle and north pointer into your plan.  Set the time of day

to either early-mid morning or late afternoon to get the sun to come in through the windows.  Rotate the north pointer

to easily rotate the sun angle indicator.  Also, I deleted all but one point light behind the camera.  THe one I left

was not on so I turned it on.  Don't know about the others. 

I also adjusted the pendants(lower) and recessed lights lower. drop off and cut off angle.

There was a texture for the cabinets I think that is not attached.  THe slab cabinet doors definitely need

work to look good in a ray trace.  I did 4 passes.

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Just to give you an idea of what the sun alone will do, here's a very quick example.  Turned off all light sources except for the sun and didn't mess with any materials or settings other than the sun position and lighting intensity.  7 passes...3 minutes.post-46-0-90516700-1453318278_thumb.jpg

 

Edit:  Accidentally left the ray trace running.  Here's 36 passes and 15 minutes.post-46-0-75943300-1453319009_thumb.jpg

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Thank you for all your help! I Turned off all of the lights and adjusted the sun to shine through the window and it is still really dark. This was 14 passes

 

I'm sorry,  I didn't mean to suggest that you turn all the lights off.  I was merely trying to show what could be accomplished without them.  Try adding some light sources back in, maybe mess with the intensity settings in the Ray Trace DBX...post-46-0-57739800-1453331367_thumb.png

 

And try turning up your ambient lighting settings under 3D View Defaults...post-46-0-38867200-1453331398_thumb.png

 

Here's a quick example done without any lights (not even a sun).  Ambient lighting settings down near 20% (don't remember exactly what I set them to)...post-46-0-04116100-1453331088_thumb.jpg

 

Here's another one.  Again, without any lights.  Ambient lighting settings at 100%...post-46-0-73456500-1453331157_thumb.jpg

 

I'm not exactly a ray tracing expert, but hopefully messing with those settings in combination with the north pointer and sun angle (as previously mentioned) will get you closer to what you're looking for. 

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Shelby - good ray tracing takes some time and patience.  It's not a flip the switch kind of thing

but more of an art form.  You have to experiment with different types of lights and their locations

until you get what you want.  ALso, the adjust image properties as Michael suggested.  Different

scenes with different elements and textures present their own challenges.  Good Luck!

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Well said Dennis. There are settings, lights and, material types & properties that all impact on a scences final look. Add to this the users intent and the time one is willing to spend, there are many variables one needs to get thier head rapped around in order to generate a predictable and consistent scene. As you indicate, there is no simple single type of switch one can flip to make it all come together. Given this reality I can only suggest that one must take the time to systematically experiment with a scene in an attempt to understand how it is impacted by a particular setting adjustment. In the meantime, as Shelby did, post your issue and there are many great people here that are more than willing to share their experiences and knowledge to assist. This original posting is a great example, within about 4 hours the improvement in the Raytrace result is Night & Day.

 

Graham

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and on that topic :) I am busy with a small kitchen for a client and just when you think you are getting the hang of it the ray trace Gods decide otherwise. Below you can see that even with ambient lighting turned up and natural sunlight flooding in, it still seems 'dark' to me. I would also like to see more definition between the doors and drawers ( gaps) to make it more realistic. It still seems so artificial. I ran this for 18 passes only. Any other advice?

post-2914-0-20399400-1453406787_thumb.jpg

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and on that topic :) I am busy with a small kitchen for a client and just when you think you are getting the hang of it the ray trace Gods decide otherwise. Below you can see that even with ambient lighting turned up and natural sunlight flooding in, it still seems 'dark' to me. I would also like to see more definition between the doors and drawers ( gaps) to make it more realistic. It still seems so artificial. I ran this for 18 passes only. Any other advice?

Three things…

1. Make sure you turn on ambient occlusion (for the door details to pop a little more).

2. Consider adding some interior light sources to brighten it up further (shadows off).

3. Once the ray trace is completed try adjusting the image properties.

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Applied the advice Michael and the result is below. I did change the upper cabinet color to a darker shade of grey and the render did come out better overall. However I still have the white 'glow' where there should be a dark shadow in the gaps of the cabinets in the sink area. 221 passes. Can anyone help me get rid of this pesky issue? ( without recommending additional software like lumion ) Any ideas are welcome :)

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  • 1 month later...

Shelby - good ray tracing takes some time and patience.  It's not a flip the switch kind of thing

but more of an art form.  You have to experiment with different types of lights and their locations

until you get what you want.  ALso, the adjust image properties as Michael suggested.  Different

scenes with different elements and textures present their own challenges.  Good Luck!

I knew this but forgot.  I have been just letting ray trace do its thing.  today I started with the sun angle but getting a lot of sparkles when I ray trace.

 thanks for the reminder.

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