Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

For all the users of Twilight Render (V1 & V2), to ask questions and get started
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siggi
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Joined: Fri Sep 27, 2019 3:19 pm

Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

Post by siggi » Fri Sep 27, 2019 5:04 pm

Hi I am unable to see any lights in my renders - I have followed the tutorial to add lights (within the drum pendant shades) but I must be doing something wrong. Have sketchup pro and twilight v2. Please see screen shots and advise. Many thanks.
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Chris
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Re: Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

Post by Chris » Fri Sep 27, 2019 10:47 pm

Based on your screenshots, do you have a component open for edit when trying to render? That is generally a bad idea (it screws up geometry positions) and TWR should warn you about that. If so, make sure you render with the no components open for editing.

siggi
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Re: Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

Post by siggi » Sat Sep 28, 2019 8:52 am

Hi Chris - thank you for your reply. I don't think this is the issue - the render turns out the same with nothing selected.

Fletch
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Re: Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

Post by Fletch » Sat Sep 28, 2019 4:15 pm

It appears that you are rendering from the top looking down and you have the sun enabled.
Disable the sun. It is likely over-powering your other lighting.

Next, you will not actually see the twilight light object, it does not render as if it were a real light bulb. It is an infinitely small point of light, no matter what you tell the radius to be. The program will calculate the shadows as if the light is the correct radius, but it continues to be a theoretical perfect point of light.

In order to see a light bulb, you must insert a bulb.

For lighting architecture please watch our lighting for architecture video.




siggi
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Re: Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

Post by siggi » Mon Sep 30, 2019 10:49 am

Hi - so I have disabled the sun and increased the light source - but no luck yet. Please see attachment. Do you have any further suggestions?
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siggi
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Re: Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

Post by siggi » Mon Sep 30, 2019 12:13 pm

Hi - finally cracked it - I needed to increase the wattage substantially to see the effect - 10K watts! Don't understand why - but at least I can now see the light!

Fletch
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Re: Interior Lighting - Glowing Pendant Lights

Post by Fletch » Tue Oct 01, 2019 8:09 am

You have made the number one mistake made by all new people to rendering. :^: :whoot:
Your scene is too complex and contains too many variables to easily figure out what is wrong as a new person to rendering. Because of the scene complexity it is also taking a long time for the test renderings, so you are getting frustrated and actually slowing yourself down.


If you want to save yourself many hours of trial and error and pain, you need a simple practice scene to learn from.


Try this:
Please open a NEW CLEAN EMPTY SketchUP scene. No geometry, nothing in the scene. Completely empty.
Disable the sun in the Twilight Environment dialog.
Set sky type to "Background Color" - not "sky color"!
Set background color to black.

These settings will result in no lights in your scene
. The Background Color will not contribute light or reflections to your scene.

Now only the lights you will insert into the scene will matter.
  1. create a box 3mx3m.
  2. delete front face from the box.
  3. create a camera looking inside the box.
  4. create a new Twilight Point Light inside the box.
  5. Do not change any settings on the light.
  6. Render on "Prelim" or "Low" render setting at default image resolution (800px wide)
If the light you inserted is touching the ceiling or a wall, move it away from the wall and re-render.
Move the light to different places inside the box and re-render.
Place a single piece of furniture in the middle of the floor of the "room". I suggest a very simple dining table model.
Paint the simple dining table with 50% grey, this allows us to avoid any problems with the material distracting us from the lighting settings.
Select the light and open the Twilight Light Editor choose Type: spot to change the point light into a spot light.
Now move the spot light around, set the target for the spot light by right-clicking the light and choose "Twilight V2>Set Light Target and point to the top of the table you inserted.
Try placing the spot light near, but not touching, the ceiling in the center of the room and set the light target straight down on top of the table which is in the middle of the room on the floor.
Try playing only with the power setting of the light (default is 100 Watts at Efficacy 13 Lumens/watt)
Change it to 200 watts, 10000 watts, 1 watt.
Now set it to 100 watts and change the falloff and hot spot.
Now after playing with those variables and rendering several times you should be able to see how those settings affect Your rendering of that light.
Now set Fall Off back to default 45 and Hot Spot to default 40.
Now change the color, start out lighter color and move to darker color. See how this effects the rendering/power of the light.
Set light back to white and all default settings. (power 100, efficacy 13, fall off 45 hot spot 40, all boxes checked and color white, set type to POINT.)
Render on Low+ render setting.
Inside the render dialog set Post Process to "Simple" and increase and decrease the exposure. Change back to default 1.00 after this, and try changing the gamma only. Then try out changing both numbers at the same time and see what happens.
This process of balancing exposure and gamma is called Tone Mapping an image. Tone Mapping is critical to great rendering.
While you are there, feel free to play with the other Post Process tabs Bloom, Temperature, and Vignette. These are all covered in our tutorials and video tutorials.

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