| Author |
Message |
    
Radim Blazej (radimblazej)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 03:24 pm: | 
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I was browsing the discussion trying to find the answer to following problem. There was one thread, but it did not help to solve my problem:
I want to light an interior room with only accurate sun (set up with time of day and no other light source.
IF i set up the sun to accurate (wattage .5-.9) and casting shadows, I get images like this:
\image testsun.jpg
NO matter what I do, I do not seem to get even close to any shadows in the corners, etc.
IF I turn of the sun and place area lights in the window and skylight, I get result which are pretty succesful and Ic an tweak them but setting brightness and diameter of the lights.
See image
\image test area light.jpg
Where is the problem? |
Radim Blazej (radimblazej)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 03:26 pm: |
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Sorry let's try the images again:
Sun only:
Area lights:
 |
support@formZ.com (tech)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 04:03 pm: |
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Radim,
Your first light looks like it has a very bright sun PLUS Lots of Ambient Light. (Use of ambient light should generally be kept to a minimum.) What you need for a rendering such as this is Reflected light - that is light that bounces off the walls, floors and other surfaces and goes on to illuminate other surfaces. This requires Radiosity.
If you are already using Radiosity, then you are not calculating enough light to process the light that enters your room. There have been previous threads on this, but basically what you need to do is to turn off the meshing for the exterior surfaces so that the calculations can proceed to the interior - which will give you the results that you desire.
Does this answer your question?
ZWebTech Support |
Radim Blazej (radimblazej)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 22, 2002 - 06:28 pm: |
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This is radiosity, no ambient lighting, although I played with option "calculante reflected light as ambient" ON/OFF, did not seem to matter much.
So what you suggesting is to select all exterior faces of walls and go to set attributes and select the meshing attbribute as mentinoned in the forum before? OR do you apply the attribute to the whole object?
It would be simple to do in this model, but if I have more realistic model which may have sunscreens or other exterior projections which may affect the amount of light coming into interior, how do I go about this? On more complicated model it may not be feasible to go around and select all exterior faces one by one?
THanks, Radim |
Chaker Azaiez (chaker)
| | Posted on Friday, August 23, 2002 - 03:26 am: |
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Radim,
Try to run the solution till 99.5-99.9% of the light is absorbed.
Also you should turn on the Atmospheric light.
Chaker |
Chris Grimley (grimley)
| | Posted on Sunday, August 25, 2002 - 02:36 pm: |
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Radim.
After much experimentation and a lot of late nights trying to get the Radiosity in Z to work - I have decided that until Lightworks update their engine it is too time and computationally intensive to use Z as a Radiosity renderer.
Here is a quick image comparable to yours - model built in Z and rendered in Lightscape - that took about 1 minute to calculate the solution. Hopefully the plug-in nature of 4.0 and the new Lightworks rendering engine - discussed elsewhere in these forums - will help your situation.
best,
chris. |
coco loco (cocoloco)
| | Posted on Monday, August 26, 2002 - 01:44 pm: |
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Chris... I don't mean to start a riot here, but here is a radiozity solution I created in about 10min (calculate + raytrace) on a dual AMD XP 1800+ running on WinXP PRO and 512Mb-RAM. Note that it includes reflecions.
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coco loco (cocoloco)
| | Posted on Monday, August 26, 2002 - 01:56 pm: |
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ok... lets try this again...
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Chris Grimley (grimley)
| | Posted on Monday, August 26, 2002 - 02:32 pm: |
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coco.
That is very nice. Do you have the file handy for some settings review? I would REALLY like Z to be my one stop modelling/rendering shop, and anything that can get it there would be nice. At the same time, I think that there are many products out there that are getting ahead of us in the GI/Radiosity arena. This is a simple model and is good for testing. In a more complex model, there is simply too much waiting in Z. Believe me - I would like to have the bumpmap, texture map and ease of use that Z has always had, and not have to deal with Lightscape... but you can get a decent result on complex, many polygonal models in under ten minutes in LS. (and it's over 4-5 years old).
Again - if you can give details on that model, it would be greatly appreciated |
Radim Blazej (radimblazej)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 28, 2002 - 01:02 pm: |
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I am generating images for architrectural clients and I have to agree with Chris, Radiosity in FormZ is far from being a useful tool. I am currently investigating to use VIZ 4 as my interior rendered. I wish I do not need to spend another $1800.
Sometimes I am forced to use Accurender (as clients wants me to use their systems) and I have to say that $ 200 I will get passble interior images in really no time. The easiness of setup and getting decent, let's say 75% quality renderings in currectly way beyond what Formz requires.
Here is what would be great from FormZ/Lighworks:
Real time interchangable materials (in post rendering, Lighworks are promoting this on their web site.
Real life units and NUMERICAL inputs instead of sliders, e.g. Watts, Candelas, Luxes - not a cryptic 0-99 scale.
Library of basic luminaires, recessed downlight, fluorescent, etc.
Simple setup for interior scenes.
Just a souple ideas
Radim |
support@formZ.com (tech)
| | Posted on Wednesday, August 28, 2002 - 01:52 pm: |
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Radim,
We are unsure why you are having such difficulty with RadioZity. Please compress your file and attach it to an e-mail to support@formz.com so that we can see what you have done so far.
You CAN (currently) set lights via real world units with either Radiometric units (ie, watts) or Photometric units. Just use the Accurate options instead of the Simple options.
You can also use Custom Lights where you can import IES data -- which is available from almost every lighting manufacturer's web site for (usually) all of their light fixtures. This will allow you to simulate can lights, wall sconces, or other types of lights.
Version 4.0 will allow light sources to be contained inside symbols, so that you can easily generate a library of your favorite lighting fixtures.
RadioZity is very competitive with other radiosity programs with regards to speed and ease of use -- once you know what you are doing. So send us your file so that we can give you some suggestions and get you back on track.
ZWebTech Support |
coco loco (cocoloco)
| | Posted on Thursday, August 29, 2002 - 02:15 pm: |
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Chris, sorry about the late response. I have been busy lately. Here is the file from the image posted above so you can check out the settings.
Radim,
Maybe you should take a look at this file too so you can havean idea of how this settings work. Of course reading the manuals would help even more.
Let me know if you have any questions about the file.
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Radim Blazej (radimblazej)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 01:35 am: |
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Sorry I got swamped on another real project so I did not had a time to come back to the forum. Here is the file , see if you could my obvious mistakes. I tried it now before I submit it and I got much better results, why I have no clue.
Still one think which bothers me and I do not know how to eliminate it is th multiple shadows caused by atmospheric light. So I need t increse the meshing resolution or turn the shadow off for the sun?
Also, is there any way how to make color bleeding less obvious. IN VIZ/ Accurender, you can set it up in materials, could not find anthing in FOrmz?
Map based/raytraced switch does not seem to make difference. I am very happy about all the help on this forum.
here are sample images
and here is the test file:
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support@formZ.com (tech)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 01:15 pm: |
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Radim,
Your file is getting better. We adjusted your colors a little, as well as some of the RadioZity Options. You will probably get even better results if you adjust your light to a different angle, and perhaps add a few more windows, but we did not want to change too much with your file.
Your Color Bleed is determined by the color of the object, the light that is incident upon it, and the reflectivity of the shape. You also need to pay attention to the ambient and diffuse reflective properties of the objects that are receiving the reflected light.
With regards to your "multiple shadows" with the Atmospheric light, you need to increase the quality of the Atmospheric light. For versions 3.9.2 and earlier, this should be set at about 20% (or about 1/4" from the left) and for versions 3.9.5 (or later) this should be set at about 50%. (The settings for this slider were adjusted to be more useful for the current version of formZ.)
Below please find a modified version of your file and a rendering that was generated in 3.9.2. (Note that if you are running version 3.9.5, you may want to rename your fz_lwrk_RR.dll to fz_lwrk_RR.dlx and then copy the fz_lwrk_RR.dll from an earlier 3.9 version. The original .dll will need to be restored if / when a future patch will be applied.)
Note also that we increased the polygons to 3 times the number of patches (which may be a little high) but this helps to soften the shading in the corners. Perhaps a better way would be to pre-mesh these surfaces - first with a very coarse mesh all over, and then mesh only the edge faces with a finer mesh. Then you could set the number of polygons back to 2 (or even 1).
ZWebTech Support |
Camy Ruggiero (camyz)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 01:26 pm: |
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Hi ZWeb,
I wanted to comment on the great job you did on the floor of this model - what a difference! My only regret is that I was not able to further my studies in Z to enable me to learn how to achieve these wonderful results.
Even the chrome effect is something - I was never really able to get out of the software what I had imagined in my head. Maybe one day I shall find another online school that concentrates solely with FormZ - that would be something I'd definately be interested in.
Again, great results and quite a difference!
Regards,
- Camy |
Matt Edmonds (mattedmonds)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 01:49 pm: |
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Zweb,
Can you give us some setup specs and timings on your renderings...
Machine info, process time, and render time would be helpful.
Also, can you post a screen shot of the calculated mesh?
Last thing... can you remind me what was broken in the 3.9.5 release that required the .dll file to be replaced? Does this affect mac users? |
support@formZ.com (tech)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 03:31 pm: |
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Matt,
We tested rendering this file with a g3 500 Mhz computer and it took 10 minutes, 20 seconds. The same file on an Athlon 1200 Mhz took 2 minutes, 16 seconds. Both times include the generation of the RadioZity solution. The Imager does not separate out these times, but about half the time waas generating the solution and half was computing the rendering.
There were many adjustments that were made to the Lightworks dll, and we can not list them all. One notable change resulted in Area / Line lights being ignored with the new dll.
The RadioZity mesh of the file is shown below:
If you change the RadioZity Adaptive Meshing from 5 to 0, you then get the additional meshing as shown below:
This will give you even smoother shading in the corners of the wall.
Camy,
The shaders that we used for the chrome sphere and the wood floor are simply the pre-defined surfaces that come with formZ. Perhaps an actual school (rather than an online school) would be of better help. There is nothing like being in a lab of your peers -- all working on projects and sharing your knowledge -- to really speed up your learning curve.
ZWebTech Support |
Matt Edmonds (mattedmonds)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 04:06 pm: |
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Zweb,
Based on the test file you posted, I'm finding your benchmarks hard to believe. I opened your file on a g4-800 tibook running fz 3.9.5 and the mesh that is generated is much, much tighter than the one in your image... and it takes significantly longer to process. Are you sure you posted the file with the exact settings that you used in your test?
Please tell me I'm wrong.
Also, regarding my last post about the .dll file... one of the questions I posed was "does this affect mac users?"
If so, because I upgraded from 3.8.1 to 3.9.5, I dont have a copy of the .dll file from any prior 3.9 release. Can you send me this? |
Radim Blazej (radimblazej)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 04:07 pm: |
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Thank you very much for your help. This really looks passable. I have tried coco's file and found out that he set up the solution to 4000 iterations instead of the percentage (e.g. 99.6%). This helped a lot, however it took almost an hour on my Pentium 3 1 GHz (512 MB ram).
I did not know that you can put the sliders that high (50% ) for atmospheric light , since I remeber the previous post which warned about putting it too high.
Thanks again, hopefully I will be able to put a post of final room soon.
Radim |
support@formZ.com (tech)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 04:22 pm: |
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Radim,
You will only want to set it at 50% if you are running 3.9.5 (or later). (As noted in the earlier postings, this is too high for earlier versions.)
We look forward to seeing your images in the future.
Matt,
Yes, this does affect both Windows and Macintosh users, and we are also getting longer process times with the new .dll in 3.9.5. We will be happy to send you the older .dll which corrects this problem.
To receive this, please send e-mail support@formz.com, indicate whether you are on a Mac or Windows, and make sure to include your serial number.
ZWebTech Support |
Matt Edmonds (mattedmonds)
| | Posted on Thursday, September 05, 2002 - 05:09 pm: |
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Zweb,
I got the .dll from support, put it in place, and everything sped up and rendering exactly like your scene... Thanks for prooving me wrong!
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Muhammad Yusup Abdillah
New member
Username: Posurm
Post Number: 1
Registered: 03-2008
| | Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008 - 07:06 am: |
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Support,
i dont get the same result of your rendering as the pic you showed in this forum.. what's the problem? what is the .dll? can you further tell me? |
robert smith
Intermediate Member
Username: Bob
Post Number: 94
Registered: 03-2002
| | Posted on Sunday, March 16, 2008 - 12:54 pm: |
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Muhammad,
What result do you get? And what version are you using? |
support@formZ.com
Moderator
Username: Tech
Post Number: 4734
Registered: 04-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 17, 2008 - 08:42 am: |
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Muhammad,
When we render this scene with formZ 6.5 we get results that are very similar to what is shown above. You should be able to just open the file, hit F7 (or select Generate Radiosity) from the Display Menu, and select RenderZone from the Display Menu to render the image.
However, if you do have formZ 6.5, then you can get even better results even faster using the new Global Illumination features of Ambient Occlusion, Final Gather, and Final Gather Radiosity Support.
In the attached file, we have adjusted the options for this file a bit to take advantage of these features. Here is the result that we get with this file:
You can also change the Global Illumination Quality from 2 to 1 to get a faster rendering (although with a few more artifacts). And we only spent a few minutes tweaking these settings. With a little more time you should be able to improve the time to quality ratio...
Does this help?
[EDIT -- after looking at the relative colors on a differently calibrated monitor, the saturation on our recent image appears to be less than the original. If you want the additional color bleed, you can just reset the RenderZone: Global Illumination: Final Gather: Color Saturation to the default value of 50 (or increase this further if you like...)]
ZWebTech Support |
support@formZ.com
Moderator
Username: Tech
Post Number: 4916
Registered: 04-2001
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 03:17 pm: |
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<<An error occurred on the Forum, and a number of postings from and to Kea in this thread were lost...>>
Part of this lost discussion included the following:
quote:Kea,
Below, please find some general tips for rendering with Global Illumination.
Always start by setting the correct Scene Size. Then, for best performance set the Quality and Level of Detail to 1. Always render with the RenderZone Renderer set to Raytrace whenever rendering rendering with Ambient Occlusion (AO) -- or if you have a multi-core / multi-processor computer.
Ambient Occlusion generally gives you the biggest improvement in image quality in the shortest amount of time. So that you can see the effects, increase the Ambient Lighting Levels (perhaps to 30 - 60%) or increase the Additional Contrast Option. Using a high ambient can also reduce the need for other fill lights in a scene, and allow you to concentrate on using accent lights only where necessary. If you wish to optimize AO, turn off the option to Receive AO for any little objects where this will not be noticeable. (Leave Cause AO On -- unless you specifically do not want to see this.)
If you have a scene where the bouncing of Light is important (such as interior renderings -- especially with daylight), it can be very helpful to add Final Gather (with or without Radiosity), although this can add some time to the rendering. To optimize this, turn off Cause and Receive FG or Radiosity (if you are using these and do not need to see the effects on certain objects). You can also use the Radiosity Bounding Box to limit what affects the calculations. And if you want to use Radiosity, you can typically get good results in a very short period of time (perhaps 1-5 minutes of Radiosity for a file for many types of files).
Once you have been able to get the desired lighting levels, look to see if you notice any shading artifacts in the AO or FG, you can then increase the Quality setting. Typically 3 is a good setting for a final rendering, and often you can get away with 2 without noticeable artifacts.
Of course there are many settings in terms of lighting, surface styles, geometry, etc that affect a rendering, so you should also see the Rendering section of our Frequently Asked Questions:
http://www.formz.com/support/faq.php
If you need help with a specific file (after you have attempted to make the noted changes), feel free to send it to us. We can take a look to see what additional changes can be made to improve quality and performance.
Hope this helps,
ZWebTech Support
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Kea Lim
New member
Username: Kea
Post Number: 11
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 03:33 pm: |
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Zweb,
I reduced resolution from 600 pdi to 300 dpi, It manage to render, but still take a long time. May be I will try to clean up some the objects that wasn't in the sense. The quality are about the same between the 600 dpi & 300 dpi (on screen). I did not print the enlargement yet. I like the image with the AO, but would like to improve it more; may be I would like to add some enviremental reflection. I need to spend more time trying any other suggestions.  |
support@formZ.com
Moderator
Username: Tech
Post Number: 4917
Registered: 04-2001
| | Posted on Monday, April 14, 2008 - 04:48 pm: |
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Kea,
If you need further suggestions after following our suggestions, please set your file up exactly as you would like to render it, use the Save a Copy As command to save the file in to a New Folder, check the options to include all referenced Symbols and Image Files, zip the folder, and upload it to our FTP site so we can see exactly what you are doing:
ftp.formz.com
name = dropbox
password = i8ugdl
Let us know the name once the upload is complete and we can have a look.
ZWebTech Support |
Kea Lim
New member
Username: Kea
Post Number: 18
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Tuesday, April 15, 2008 - 06:47 pm: |
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Zweb,
Do I need to have an FTP program to upload. I used the link above, but I didn't see an upload option or I just drop in the public folder? |
support@formZ.com
Moderator
Username: Tech
Post Number: 4927
Registered: 04-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 16, 2008 - 08:23 am: |
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Kea,
Enter this address in Windows Explorer, then go to the File Menu and select Logon As. Then enter the name and password. (Alternately, you can use an FTP program such as Fetch.)
Once you have entered the name and password, the Pub folder will disappear, and you can just drag your project into the "empty" folder.
ZWebTech Support |
Kea Lim
New member
Username: Kea
Post Number: 19
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2008 - 12:55 pm: |
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Zweb,
I have uploaded the file for you to digest. My goal is to have this render as an evening scene, but still bright. With some sky reflection on to the building and on the AC paving. I would like to keep the 3d plants because I don't like the look of the image trees integrate with 3d bldg. Hopefully in a few years computer will be fast enought to render it more quickly, and the next version of FormZ will improve the render time. Thanks for your help. I have learn a lot in this forum. |
support@formZ.com
Moderator
Username: Tech
Post Number: 5007
Registered: 04-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008 - 03:20 pm: |
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Kea,
We have posted your answer in a new thread here:
http://www.formz.com/forum2/messages/16/26981.html?1209064534
ZWebTech Support |
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Closed: New threads not accepted on this page
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