LED strip lighting...

Hi, this is another question about lighting and LEDs....

My current LED strip in my model is very accurate - probably too accurarte. I've created a bulb type globe for each LED. This amounts to many (maybe 100+) light sources. The end result looks stunning! But the render time is worse then watching paint dry - we are talking 1 hour + for small quick drafts, and up to 12 hours for large, high definitions shots.

I haven't played with the Linear Light source yet. But is it the thing I really aught to be using to effectively simulate the correct lighting, without taking up a gazillion CPU cycles? The only downside I can think of is that I'll loose the little globe reflections off the semi-gloss walls (see attached photo)

-randall

Attachments:

Bathroom TopView.jpg, 163 KB

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on October 9, 2011 at 8:46am

Note: If you use the image link at the top of the edit window, rather than attachments, you can place your images directly into the post.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on October 9, 2011 at 8:59am

One thing to try would be a strip with a black and white image to represent the LED lights. I made this strip an "object property" light. It is just in front of the back wall and reflected onto to floor. It is then treated as just one light, and has a lot less geometry.

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Permalink Reply by Randy S on October 9, 2011 at 10:40am

Thanx for the tip on properly attaching an image. And thanx for the tip on a better way to spoof LED lighting. I take it when you say "Object Property light" you mean the right-click iRender nxt sub menu | Set Object Properties page?

-randall

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on October 9, 2011 at 11:03am

Yes - Object Properties lets you turn any object - including a face with a texture - into a light.

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Permalink Reply by Randy S on October 9, 2011 at 12:24pm

BTW- if you attempt to create a Linear light - 1120 x 10mm it will crash Sketchup. I could create a 1120x40mm fine. I didn't test anything inbetween 40 and 10 mm because I'm not a beta tester :)

-randall

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on October 9, 2011 at 12:40pm

I was able to create a 1120 x 10 in your model.

However, SketchUp crashes will appear from time to time - often due to something prior to the thing you were actually doing. So Keep that SketchUp autosave relatively short so you don't lose anything.

We made linear lights for people who wanted to do things like try to create a fluorescent light fixture with bulb, etc. and with a linear light inside each bulb. In general, we don't recommend this because it generates a lot of geometry and rarely looks like a real florescent lighting fixture. (The actual ceiling lights in my office are two dirty and too irregular for me to want to replicate actual ceiling fixtures in a rendering)

Some of these old ideas, like linear lights, are left over from previous versions of AccuRender. You will often do better by creating an object, and making it a light with object properties.

Also, if you haven't used it yet, Path Tracer mode will often do a better job with lights because it does a better job of getting the lighting from objects.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on October 9, 2011 at 12:43pm

Regarding being a Beta Tester, we have a lot of users, but we also have an awful lot of features. There are many features which we suspect no one has ever used. Or else just once.

But we appreciator all comments, especially when they lead to our fixing things or improving things.

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Permalink Reply by Randy S on October 9, 2011 at 8:53pm

Yeah, I am definitely seeing better stability when I take whatever arbitrary object I've created - and turn it into a light. For the most part this is intuitive, although I have had a few occasions where I've rendered all 6 light dispersements (for a one-sided light). That being red, green and blue (+ and -) to see exactly where the light is shining. I think I have that sorted now... The axis and direction of light is relative to the Axes of the given component yes? which might not be the axes used by my larger model. Hence to make a light shine upwards - you really need to check the component you are working against.

You might want to try placing the previously mentioned 1120x10 light into the model I uploaded. I could reproduce with 1120x20 as well if I recall. That model seems a bit unstable - probably because I imported so much geometery from the warehouse. The shower/tub combo in particular was extremely complex and they didn't render it to scale - it was about 1000x larger then the bathroom itself! So I wonder if my general stability issues relate to it.

thanx for all your help, putting me on the straight and narrow path to en"lightenment" :)

cheers,

-randall

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on October 9, 2011 at 10:12pm

Diffuse light has to have a direction, so it works best with a single face. We added some settings to try to determine the direction for diffuse light for a component, but the same direction is used for all faces in the component.

Omnidirectional should be used for most cases of a complex light.