Sun analysis tool would be very handy

[dholmes]

And The company I work for has switched over to doing their layouts with some rinky dink on-line subscription program which spits out a rainbow sun analysis on the roof surfaces (Big whoop, I was doing such things back in the day with accurender...) But the company decided to go with this because they can substantiate the results through nrel & pvwatts ( in fact it gets their sun exposure tally straight from the online database. It is enough for the solar industry to stand by for their warranties.


Is there any chance your rendering tool (and I really love your rendering package - it reminds me so much of the simplicity of the accurender days) comes with a sun analysis tool that would spit out results on a selected surface?

I will come back to this later. Getting kicked out of the coffee shop.

Thank you in advance

[dholmes]

And a lot of solar industries would jump at the opportunity to utilize a tool like that since a bunch of solar companies use Sketchup to help display their layouts. We did, but are now gobbled by a larger company who has opted to use a rinky dink on-line tool that uses the more 'trusted NREL data and uses that to display the mock-up rainbow analysis on the rinky dink model surfaces.

I know that a lot of Rendering utilities have a light analysis package as a side car and was hoping that perhaps a build may be something upcoming in further builds. You already have a very user friendly and powerful engine set up in a very intuitive fashion and would love to see it improve further and entice a whole big industry to follow your lead.

Thank you

[Chris]

I combined your posts into one topic.

We have had requests for a light intensity analysis render method that would show lumens in a standard format. Unfortunately that isn't something we can easily incorporate (we don't have direct access to modify the Kerkythea render engine).

I don't know enough about the solar industry to know if you are looking for something similar or completely different. Can you point us to some more information on what kind of analysis you are looking for?

[Fletch]

This is very interesting, thanks for bringing it to our attention. We will get back to you.

[dholmes]

Well.. the rinky-dink program we use right now collects database information of each property (site quality based on the tilt and orientation factor for the proposed array, or roof surface from a set stationing point of location based upon NREL's collection points http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ or it's kmz application w/in Google Earth http://www.solmetric.com/annualinsolation-us.html) and uses this to substantiate production results from designed layouts for warranties and specific incentive programs that are rife in the solar industry.

We had used sketchup prior to due decent presentative designs from and thouroghly enjoyed the process doing so but it wasn't anything the company could completely stand behind w/o hard data results. We had our calculations based upon every kind of shading obstacle on site. whether it be vent stacks, chimneys, trees, etc.

the company now uses an subscription on-line utility to make mock-ups from, which sadly, takes up about double the time it took before and spits out less than appealing results. So me and a bunch of other workers who remember the great way of doing the designs from before have been trying to sway the big bosses to bring it all back up to doing it in sketchup with it's wide flexibility to get the job done with and be somewhat proud of the results that we hand off to the sales department.

That is in due part of what brings me here (Regardless of that, this looks like such a wonderful rendering engine - coming from someone who has used a bunch of them years before and paid a lot more for such cumbersome working proceedures)

The Solar Industry is only going to become *Much* larger and would be awesome if something can come along to facilitate the output needed to pass the designs along from and it seems like all it really needs is shadow fall-offs from modeled obstacles and the site quality data from the industries go-to for the sun data for a given location from NREL.

[dholmes]

is a downgrade from the output that was done before just with the simple render VP from sketchup which a bunch of us had done hundreds of designs from and just calc'd our way all the necessary data from NREL's site and formulas for obtaining obstacle shading by hand (but still far faster than what the company has us using now - I think they believe the tool will get faster because it's so new, but a lot of us just don't see it. Would seem that a simple Sk.U app would be out there to get surface exposure results (sun - in our case a percentage fall-off from 100%) and never have us leave such a flexible work medium such as SK.U)

Thanks for the time

It used to be much quicker with better results:

[dholmes]

Curious.

Does the ray casting in casting shadows in Twilight render see transparency maps w/in say a .gif or png as a usable exposure obstacle? I remember way back in the day that Accurender had analysis tool for light and would shade cast accurately through transparency maps when I used to work in retail interiors. That was such a simple and powerful rendering tool of the time (it would look silly in comparison to what is out now) and it's intuitive and easy to work with methods are so similar to what Twilight Render does now with such Far Better results is what draws me so much to here.

I'm going to purchase regardless for myself. but would be awesome if I could pass such a cool tool off to the industry I work in to use as well too since most all the design department knows sketchup.

[dholmes]

I just brought that up because cropped images of trees are much less process intensive than a modeled tree to use and could even be set as an RPC object. Don't know if an RPC could be tasked to follow the sun instead of the camera though.

[dholmes]

This is very interesting, thanks for bringing it to our attention. We will get back to you.

Thank you for any help that you have to give. I'm going to purchase regardless if only because I've spent ages w/in all kind of cad programs and see this render engine as such a cool tool to have on hand when needed. I definitely see how I could use it now. Just need a little twitch to convince the uppers with though in the industry I work in.

Thanks a bunch!

[Fletch]

Curious.

Does the ray casting in casting shadows in Twilight render see transparency maps w/in say a .gif or png as a usable exposure obstacle? I remember way back in the day that Accurender had analysis tool for light and would shade cast accurately through transparency maps when I used to work in retail interiors. That was such a simple and powerful rendering tool of the time (it would look silly in comparison to what is out now) and it's intuitive and easy to work with methods are so similar to what Twilight Render does now with such Far Better results is what draws me so much to here.

I'm going to purchase regardless for myself. but would be awesome if I could pass such a cool tool off to the industry I work in to use as well too since most all the design department knows sketchup.

Please provide us with a resource such as any official website that describes step-by-step the process that is required to be followed to achieve the calculations you need.

You say "RPC" but I think you mean to say "Face-me" components. RPC is real people content. I do not believe that they can be set to follow the sun, only cameras.