What about the lights ???

[Hervé]

Is there any news for the Lights.....

[spigolo]

I agree with your question ? I 'm warried aboaut lightwave Light system developement. My studio makes mainly Architectural Simulation for Shops Museum or other important Architectural building. More and more they ask us to study the lights of the building and with Lightwave we have wonderful rendering but the impossibility to give lights values in Lux or Lumen or to load lights specific Photometric curves to the light source. I don't want to use 3dMax for this work as I really hate that software (used in the past always thousounds of problems) but I should say that their range of rendering possibilities from this point of view is much better than the Lightwave one.So I hope Vers. 8 will fill this lack in the radiosity rendering system and may be enanche the rendering speed and fix other problems like the AAliasing wich is one of the biggest problem of lightwave...

[Hervé]

Nothing and that cool.... he he... OK oK and the render ?? nothing ?? really good... keep up the "good " work...

[jb_gfx]

The only new things I've seen are workflow improvement with lights handling. If you use a projection image/sequence you can directly see it in OpenGL when you switch to Light View. You can select mutiple light at once and make them target an object, or move, rotate them, etc...

[Lewis]

Hi guys !

I do also agree that we need some lights and rendering improwments in LW but hey nobody said that this is ALL what they will include in LW8. Acctualy it's said numerous times tha tthis is not complete feature list nor that they showed everything on siggraph. There is still 2-5 months till 4Q 2003 so that might change :). Let's give NewTek some peace and qulity time to work on that. They know what we need/want (request forum is full ;)) so let's hope they'll manage to find improvments in that area also.

I'am using radiosity on daily basis and i do know what's the pain in the ***** to wait those long renders :(.

[Shade01]

Actually, one thing I noticed was that the color picker is totally different from the current picker we have now. What's this got to do with lights? I'm pretty I saw HDR and Kelvin color options and a preset shelf, which should make Radiosity renders much easier and accurate to set up.

[marko]

i was very engaged on last forum and since nothing was changed for two yrs i stop posting. some of the posts are still unsolved so i will give you the links to old forum and hopefuly new lw developers will do something.

few areas are:

architects want
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/37084.html?1041959877

light and control
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/11319.html?1012856198

ambient light
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/33811.html?1036244326

shadows
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/38694.html?1044846531

reflection
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/10940.html?1026320492

engine
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/33151.html?1041189292

photometry
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/34112.html?1039448061
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/35181.html?1038370146
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/29812.html?1033042567

render pause
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/31084.html?1032509316

imageviewer

real lens distortion + bokeh
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/38062.html?1043456470
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/37308.html?1042232554
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/28840.html?1033038913

white balance
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/20810.html?1042072148

modeler uv

modeler hires backdrop
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/38134.html?1043947824

modeler construction planes
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/26304.html?1043454875
modeler


gradients
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/4446.html?1032296532
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/30607.html?1031390624

layout
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/30784.html?1031713774

[marko]

uv
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/9856.html?1002696025

light editor
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/4543.html?1002820980

[colkai]

Wasn't there some comment about global lighting - dunno - the stream got choppy after the first day for me.

There were certainly improvements in the workflow. Manipulating several lights as one and such.

I guess we'll have to wait for a more detailed feature list as and when.

[marko]

they are showing GI ninja pics but no info on webpages!

[Hervé]

Marko, I think it does show now in OpenGL for GI as well as normal lights... no?

[marko]

that would mean that they have implemented radiosity solution... which i would love to see. but i am reserved on this area

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/images/LW8_003.jpg

i cant see on this pic openGL radiosity

[Hervé]

Well, we'll see Marko, I dont know about you , but I am much more concerned about Radiosity, GI, anti_aliasing issues, than for all the new anim stuff, although it looks impressive...

Hervé

[marko]

Agree with you Herve!

As i agree with Paolo Zambrini, Juan J Gonzalez and others doing architectural visualization with LW.

From the posts on previous forum (see above) and on my links page ( http://www.rna.hr/links-sky.htm ) you could easy see what are my concerns.

[Sean Martin]

I've always found it very hard to get soft shadows in lightwave without very large shadow map fuzzies and noise reduction, setting up shoft shadows takes to long i'd like to see the same sort of shadowing that you get from using the Shadow Designer plug in.

In my day job I have to use the god-awful Carrara 3D, the only good thing I can say about it is that it produces very nice shoft shads from spotlights at the flick of a switch which render really quick.

Room for improvement here I think?

[Hervé]

The lighting system is totally out to date in LW, area lights are a NO way solution (particulary combined with radiosity-) I have shadow designer but it is not a practical solution when you have about 300 different surfaces.... and it's super memory hungry... has some issues with all kinds like double sided polys and the likes... and stting up for dozens of surfaces is not practical, also sometimes you have to break your surfaces in even more surfaces to get things right....

BTW Max has now soft shadows....

Oh and I forgot deep shadows as well as no shadow is linear...

[juanjgon]

Like i say in other threads LW render engine needs to be update to new standards available today in near all other 3D software packages .... but even as is actually LW can produce great images.

I try some other 3D apps ... and speed is only relative ... when you load heavy scenes, all apps has in one or other way problems with speed and workflow. And i always return to LW ... it is slow ... so you need more machines in your render farm to complete work in less time ... but beleave me, no other package has better workflow in layout, material editor, lighting setup, etc. than LW for visualization projects.

I hope Newtek put in top of his roadmap improve LW renderer ... if not rewrite. Some ideas are:

* Change first hit render from Z-Buffer to full raytracing. This is the base to improve antialiasing and other speed issues. Select sampling for first hit and for aditional ray traced hits. You can see this in C4D ... for me one of the best renderer in any package (but whit some problems too ...)
* Improve filtering and antialiasing in textures.
* Select AA sampling per object/surface, type, filter, etc.
* Deep shadow maps, who allow soft shadows and transparent surface shadowing.
* More types of lights (IES, spot lights with aspect ratio adjust and rectangular cone, etc.)
* New GI solution ... photon mapping to solve animation issues, object/surface sampling adjust, save radiosity solution, etc. (Good examples are C4D and Mental Ray)
* Node based material editor (but beleve me ... LW material editor is ver good .. by far better than C4D and of course XSI ... who has not gloabal material editor at all ...)
* Full instance support ... like incredible HD Instance plugin.

I have toons of ideas ... i hope Newtek listen to his users ... at the moment my money and my work are with Newtek.

Regards,
Juan J. Gonzalez

[Hervé]

There is so much room for improving the LW renderer, but so little time....

[Yog]

My work is mainly architectural visualisation, and despite some changes that could be made to Modeler (covered in other threads), I personally think LW is hard to beat for the speed and ease of architectural modelling.

On the other hand, LW's GI renderer has become so outdated that all my arch vis work is ported to MAX+Vray. Vray is so much faster, cleaner and has more options for arch viz I couldn't afford NOT to use it instead of LW.

Take HDRI lighting. To avoid splotches in LW the settings have to be set so high that it is often not practicle (unless you significantly reduce the size of the HDRI and loose some quality for speed), but in Vray (or FinalRender), it is easy to get splotch free HDRI lighting at even fairly low settings.
Also multiple light bounces. In LW I very rarely go more than 1 light bounce, I just can't afford the exponetial render hit. OTH in Vray I often have between 10 to 14 light bounces for internal scenes because I get a much better lit scene with relatively little render penalties.

Some people say that I shouldn't expect a "one button" render solution for GI, others say that true "art" is in being able to render with traditional means, or at least know the workarounds.
From my point of view if there is software out there that can get me a "one button" render solution and it is faster and better quality than LW, then I would be crazy not to use it.

[marko]

vray seems to be realy powerfull

take look here how easythey control blotches
http://www.vrayrender.com/stuff/PMapTutorial/

and nice tutorials from osmosis here
http://www.osmosis.com.au/info/tutorials.htm

marko
www.rna.hr

[Hervé]

Yes, I agree, this is the kind of lighting we're all after.... impossible in LW, at least in anims, sooo much interference between 2 frames, sooooo slow.... and Vray is better quality, but it is only for Max, and as you know my name is Hervé....

well shot Marko.... (as usual)

I reallly doubt (at least as long NT does not recognize its renderer needs work) we'll see Vray in LW as well as mentalRay and other kinds.... they say this is what keep the price of LW low.... so I really dont know Marko... I mean I appreciate your research, but I know NT knows it already, and they are just not interested..."period"

[Hervé]

and render time is under 3 min... where LW will go for hours.... I am sorry I have to say so.... Now Chuck if you think I am not fair or insulting, remove it....

[colkai]

Herve,
Why do you think Newtek are "not interested...period" in improving the renderer??
Do you have some inside information we are not party to?

Just because NT *may* not be looking at integrating another renderer, does NOT mean they have no intention of providing an alternative and as good / superior setup at some point.

Yeah yeah, it won't be in LW8.0 - but really, can you honestly say they don't itended to improve matters. We still do not know the full picture for the final setup on LW8, I think it is wiser to wait and see before stating what is, and what is not, in the product.

Don't get me wrong, I am one of those that would love to see some improvements - but LW still has a pretty good renderer - if they didn't, why would so many studios export their MAYA setups to LW for rendering?

[marko]

LW has best raytracer in world but we are searching for improvement in GI and lighting.

Studios are using LW because it is better-cheaper than mental ray, and max plugins are not usable for production.

LW has oldest commercial GI engine. it is same as it was back in sixpointo. only additions were mujltiple bounces and shading noise reduction.

If you have ever tried to make renderings of architectural interiors with lw you would know how hard it is to compete with max and others.

I started my research because i saw people developing interesting stuff not being implemented in commerial engines. Only reason was they havent felt need because they havent worked on typical architectural workflow.

Take a look at this gallery http://www.visualizationmasters.com/VM_Gallery.cfm?Professional=1
only one working with LW (as i can recognize) is Juan J Gonzalez.... and he did exterior (and made a plugin for controling multiple lights)

Is there anyone at newtek who can understand needs of architects?

marko

[Yog]

Originally posted by Hervé
.....but it is only for Max, and as you know my name is Hervé....



Both the developers of Vray and the developers of Final Render are both working on versions for Maya and versions that maybe platform indipendant.

Great if your software allows 3rd party renderers, but of course LW doesn't :(

[Hervé]

Marko...... incredible renders... I think though Samir Youssef is also using LW renderer, and I could see it with "blocked black unlit areas"... like behind the furniture (i talk about the airport one...)

Well NT politics are too much based on "sell for cheap what other sell for expensive, but today, I think NT has reached a point were quality is going to pay first !

The answer from Yog says it all...

Colkai, you ask why I am so sure.... well I'd like to be wrong , But I dont think I will... and as far as the big picture from LW8, if NT has a secret weapon of that sort, better say it so NOW, before people doing Arch-viz are switching to other apps, just for no hassle, and to be with the others up there, high in the sky.... I had beautiful wings NT gave me a while ago, but as I am approaching the sun they are starting to melt....

(you know the end......)

NT, we pick on you, coz we want you to say F.... OR .... yes, we might have a workaround or solution or something, dont you see how many LW'ers are doing Arch-viz... ? Do you really think we're all so cheap, we'll stay with LW no matter what...

Clients fidelity is a very ancient word, yano....

Now all with me... COME ON, enough Blahs blahs, we want peace!..... we want peace!.....we want peace!.....errrr, we want a better renderer or a door to another one..!!

we want a better renderer or a door to another one..!!

we want a better renderer or a door to another one..!!

we want a better renderer or a door to another one..!!

Hervé

[Lewis]

Agreed with you Herve :). We really need better renderer and a LOT faster one.

Two days ago i set one very simple arch render (room with 2 windows and sunroof) Not a single object inside (empty room). I used ONE point light simulating outer light (1500% intensity slight yellow with turn volumetric to emulate sun beams trough sunroof). I set 9*27 radiosity with 2 bounces (one bounce isn't enough 'coz there is no light in room and 3 would be prefered but too loong to wait even test renders). Rendering that on 1024*768 with low enhanced AA was unbleivable high :(. On P4 2,8Ghz with 2GB RAM i cancleed render after 15 hours and I was at 2/5 pass :(. It would took me another 10-15 hours to complete it and mybe more :(.

Also it would be nice if i could at least save that 2/5 passes 'coz now i don't have anything after 15 hours of wait :(.

Please NewTek speedup that radiosity in LW.

[marko]

pausing (stoping) rendering and saving what was in frame buffer would sometimes save my rendering a**

[Lewis]

Originally posted by marko
pausing (stoping) rendering and saving what was in frame buffer would sometimes save my rendering a**

Yeah Marko i know what you are thinking :). I dunno how to implement it but maybe somr kind of image saver wich saves images (option for turning on/off) after EACH pass would be great addition ?

Can that be done ? If current state of render is stored somewhere (memory / Z buffer or what else) can we pull it out somrhow without need to pause/stop render ?

Sounds less complicated tham pasue/render button or ??

[Hervé]

Well, People used to model in any 3D software and bring to LW renderer, coz its quality.... but today I thnk we see the opposite....

read the interview of Kim Goossens on CGChannel.com....

He's modeling in LW, and render in Max.... well in Vray I think in fact...

[marko]

please check the progress of lightworks

http://www.lightworkdesign.com/siggraph_2003.htm

*Caustics in Real-time
*High-quality, interactive, hardware-assisted rendering
*Cg and OpenGL 2.0 shading integrated into LightWorks
*Physically accurate rendering of real-world materials (provided by the LWA format)
*Interactive Image Regeneration (like VIPER:)
*Cross-platform support for RPC™ content

[Hervé]

.... sure, totaly far away from LW (lightwave), and they say "Create an easy-to-use rendering application in 5 days!".......

well....

PS. I am really not convinced by RPC products tough, but that's a choice....

Hervé

Hey Marko, it seams that we're just a few intersted by new rendering engines....

[juanjgon]

I am very interested in render technology ... always reading new features and trying soft ... and all i can say is that actually LW renderer is one of most old render in all packacges ... still good, but old ... but think about PRMan ... it is one of oldest renderes and still in top of quality ... LW render engine has a good base to work in it ... i have no idea why , for example, there is not advances in texture sampling and filtering ... it cold be only a few days of work to incorporate last techinques into LW, or photon mapping for GI solution ... come on ... algorithms are there for caustics rendering :confused: or orthographic projection, or antialiasing filters, or instanded geometry, or subpixel displacement maps, or per object motion blur lenght, etc, etc, etc.

All this could be implemented without rewriting render engine ... any computer graphics programmer with a bit of experience could do it in months .... :(

I hope somebody in newtek put his hands on LW renderer ... i am not waiting for revolucionary progress, but there is a lot of well know techniques that could and must be implemented in LW today, if not all people like us who need top performace in rendering must go to other solution :mad:

Regards,
Juan J. Gonzalez.

[Yog]

Lewis - is this what you meant ?

2 window openings + 1 roof opening.
1 Spot light that doubles as the volumetric light (no other lights).
16 Light bounces.
P4 1.5Ghz + 512 RAM
AA set to medium (the artifacts on the window are because of the volumetric light, first time ever used in MAX, so probably user error).
Renderer - Vray

= 12mins 30secs

[Lewis]

Hi Yog !

Yeh soemthing similar :).

I had lover room and windows were on same side. Only thing that outside was gradient sky (just blue gradient in backdrop) to simulate bright sunny day. And i colored one wall to green and one to blue. Similar thing like cornell box but with holes/windows :). I used one point light slightly yellowish at 1500% (like sun) and ONLY 2 bounces. That lasted for eternity in LW and quality isn't better that this what you showed even with shading noise reduction turned on :(.

Really slow i didn't belived it will be so slow :(. Even if someone could twek it to be two times faster than i setuped it would still be over 10 hours on 2,8GHz machine :(. That's just BAD and not up to todays standards of speed.

I can post scene in ZIP if anyone is interested to look in it ? Maybe i'am doing something wrong but i don't belive i can do SO wrong to have it 20x times sloower than MAX vray :(.

[Lewis]

It's me again :)

I'am trying and trying and can't figure out why this simple radiosity scene taking soooo long to render ??

Anyone (Yog ? Marko ? Herve ?) care to look inside (only 3,5kb zip) and see how to tweak this. I must be doing something wrong or LW is even slower than we think :(.

thanks

[marko]

lewis:

this is why i made sibenik cathedral....
http://hdri.cgtechniques.com/~sibenik2
..... so people developing GI software can see pitfals of their engines. No progress at lightwave side. (by the way i was contacted by all other developers from bulgaria, brazil to japan)

yog:
interesting vray rendering. i see some errors when volumetric light passes over window

newtek:
we had arnie on this forum before...

[marko]

herve:
not many but mighty ;)
hope that others are not on max forum ;)

lewis:
bit more advices from old form
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/17231.html?

all:
history repeating
http://forums.newtek.com/discus/messages/2/34112.html?

[Yog]

Marko - Yes there are some errors near the window, but as I have never used MAX's volumetric lights before this test I don't know whether it is a Vray error or my mistake in setting up the volumetric effect (there are a lot of settings).

Regardless, Vray like other renderers is not error free (even without the V-light), but for the uses I put it to (architectural visualisation) it does a very good/quick approximation of a technically correct GI render.
By this I feel that Newtek sometimes strives for "exact" technically "correct"simulations (GI and Skytracer to name 2), but this is most often at the expense of speed and render quality (us users often sacrafice the quality to claw back some of the speed). I remember a Newtek employee saying at a previous Siggraph that the makers of FinalRender envied their physically correct GI simulation, Yes, but FR is several magnitudes faster.

Personally I think most of us would prefer a solution that was much faster and gave cleaner results, even if it was only 90% pysically accurate.

[Lewis]

Yeh marko i know about Sibenik cathedral i have it downloaded. IIRC that was somewhere around 6.5b or 7.0 ???

A alos read those radiosity talks on old forums and probably forgot some of them already but i really wonder about that scene :). How the hell it can be soo slooow and not soo good looking wiht only 2 bounces :( ??

Did you tryed that scene ?

[Yog]

How did I miss that IES light viewer from the last forum ?
Thanks Marko, that's going to save me a lot of time trying to find out what each of the IES lights is meant to look like.

[marko]

nof if only someone would bring IES to LW....

[trick]

Originally posted by Lewis
...Anyone...

Was curious about your setup...so now you try this fast setup...it's not a one-button solution but it would even work in animation situations. One scene takes care of GI, the other one maps it in the ILLUM-channel. You can combine the ILLUM-channel with non-shadowing lights that take care of diffuse channels, in case you want whatever diffuse values. LW isn't just a renderer, it also is a nice kind of AfterFX !!!

gi-testCHANGED.zip (http://www.xs4all.nl/~trick/gi-testCHANGED.zip)

[trick]

BTW:

This trick has originated from the lack of a Lightscape plugin for LW75. By setting up the lighting in a uniformly mapped scene in LS, importing it in LW5.6c, and using the output as ILLUM-channel in LW75 you can make use of the radiosity solution from LS !!! The rendering in LW56c of the uniformly white mapped solution is really fast. The drawback is that for getting colorbleeding you have to make a seperate pass and comp it together in the final 7.5 scene !!

[cresshead]

RE:
BTW:

This trick has originated from the lack of a Lightscape plugin for LW75. By setting up the lighting in a uniformly mapped scene in LS, importing it in LW5.6c, and using the output as ILLUM-channel in LW75 you can make use of the radiosity solution from LS !!! The rendering in LW56c of the uniformly white mapped solution is really fast. The drawback is that for getting colorbleeding you have to make a seperate pass and comp it together in the final 7.5 scene !!


__________________


can you expand on that???

i have lightscape and would like to get my models back into lightwave 7.5 [i have 5.6 as well] for final rendering after they have been "lightscaped".

steve g

[Lewis]

Originally posted by trick
BTW:

This trick has originated from the lack of a Lightscape plugin for LW75. By setting up the lighting in a uniformly mapped scene in LS, importing it in LW5.6c, and using the output as ILLUM-channel in LW75 you can make use of the radiosity solution from LS !!! The rendering in LW56c of the uniformly white mapped solution is really fast. The drawback is that for getting colorbleeding you have to make a seperate pass and comp it together in the final 7.5 scene !!

Hi !

This sure looks interesting :). OK now it's not radiosity but sure it's fast. Only thing what i don't understand is how did you make those images you've mapped ?? One look slike radiosity render and other Also when i move camera "bang" everything is screwed and then i need new images to map - right ? How then will that work in animation ?

Also i wonder why didiy ou changed color of walls :)? I really wanted diferent colored walls to see spread of illumination colored ;).

Thanks for your time and will to check that scene.

[trick]

Lewis,

Look at the original GI-Test.lws which I changed also. This scene renders the radiosity Black&White image which is in the \rendered\ map. This image is mapped in the illumination channel of all surfaces which you want affected by the radiosity. IMO The rendering of the rad.scene is acceptably fast and if you have enough rendermachines this can be used to render a complete animation. All the single frames must be mapped in the illum.channels of all surfaces. AGAIN: color bleeding must be done as a seperate pass for selected surfaces; this is not that easy !!

Another big advantage of this method is that you can do your lighting setup very early on in the process. After that you mapped the radiosity in the illumination channel you can further change your materials realtime with the help of VIPER.

[Yog]

Lewis
I've had a quick look at your scene and the first thing I can think of is to change the light source from a raytraced point light to a shadow mapped spot light.

A few tests :

GI (4x12), 1 bounce, no V-light = 00:41
GI (4x12), 2 bounces, no V-light = 2:32
GI (9x27), 2 bounces, no V-light = 12:44

V-light (point), no GI = 00:28
V-light (shadow mapped spot), no GI = 00:25

Not a great deal of difference between raytraced point and shaddow mapped spot, until you combine it with GI rendering.

V-light (point) + GI (1 bounce, 4x12) = 23:21
V-light (SM spot) + GI (1 bounce, 4x12) = 12:26

Still really slow for the quality (not good), but you might be able to half your time with it.

[cholo]

I never use radiosity. Instead I use every trick in the book to make my images look the way I want and sometimes I do so even with shadows turned off. Vertex maps, textures, negative lights, shadow maps, spotlights with projections, you name it. There's a thread of a car I'm rendering in HD to use it as a test to lure clients into using it for Trade Shows and Expos, and if I were rendering with Area lights or radiosity it'd still be rendering the first frame hehehe. Sometimes you have to be creative to achieve the look you want. In any case you have to make the renderer give you the image you want, instead of having it give you the image it thinks you want. Just a thought ;)

[trick]

Originally posted by cresshead
...can you expand on that???...


The trick is that you put rendered radiosity output for each frame in the illumination channel of all surfaces. To use this illumination at its best, you have to generate a solution for the indirect lighting of a completely white or grey model. Import this model into LW56c, animate and render to frames. Use the frames in the Illumination channel of all surfaces on par with the same animation and a copy of the models(WITHOUTthe LS plugins applied) in LW75.

[Lewis]

Heheh guys this realy becomes intertesting thing.

BTW cholo - i understand what you are saying but this thread isn't about cheating or making light rig from area,linear and other lights to "fake" radiosity. It's just fact how LW radiosity is SLOW. For intsance i now have one very complex architecture object (school + gym together) and that object have about 50 or more doors and 200 windows with big sunroof above whole gym. How the hell would that look for rig manualy light by ligth and having so many neagtive and other lights to simulate radiosity look :). I want flytrough and i want renders correctly. But that's way to loong to wait. That's only point here.

I do often use Backdrop radiosity wich is acceptable in some cases but doesn't support multy bounces so sometime it's useles. I also used 5 area lights cube trick but if you set area light to quality 5 you are almost at level of radiosity time renders. In most case i can get away with quality 4 and shading noise reduction but when i do biger renders 1600+ that's visible :(

trick - yeah now i understand (i didn't check that scene at all 'coz i thinked it's same as mine ;)). Overall it's a good trick but for real color things on very big objects too much work and you also need to have another program for composting 'coz you can't do it in LW only.

My point is - IF LW is so damn precise in rendering engine why should i bother myself with 50 ara lights to make light rig if i have radiosity to do it for me and it supposed to do so :). Why do i need to find workaround for something what' implemented (but sadly too slow for todays standards).

My scene looks technicaly correct to me - One point light outside to look like sun and 2 bounces to get nice shading inside - It should work 'coz it's technicaly correct but it's way too loong to wait.

Yog - yes i could use spot light but i rellay vanted point one with volumetrics :). And if we consider those renders are with NO AA that's insane loong time to wait 'coz as you see Vlight point + GI at ONE bounce is over 23 minutes :(. Now hit there 2 bounces and baaam you have 3 times longer rendering time. I noticed that difference 1 bounce 2 bounce on your setup (only 4*12) is 4 times longer.

GI (4x12), 1 bounce, no V-light = 00:41
GI (4x12), 2 bounces, no V-light = 2:32
GI (9x27), 2 bounces, no V-light = 12:44

Aaaahh :( we really need much faster radiosity guys.

Did anyone tryed to render anything with 8 bonces? I would love to hear how many days that would take to render ;).

[cholo]

Lewis: For that particular task you mentioned I'd try subdividing your walls so you get more points in the walls and make a new vertex map for it at 100%. Then, select all the edge points and make them 0% in the vertex map. Then just add a gradient based on the vertex map for the diffuse channel and adjust the gradient to your liking maybe throw in some noise to make it uneven and it'll make it look lots better. After that just use a shadow mapped (big one) spot for the sun and some limited range point lights for the lights inside the school with no shadows. It can be made to look quite good with that technique and it. Here's a much simpler yet good looking scene I did using a vertex map and no shadows, radiosity, whatsoever... It's like a hallway full of mirrors and a single frame doesn't really do the animation any justice, but notice how I used the vertex maps to simulate fluorescent lighting on the ceiling and to simulate radiosity on the floors and mirrors.

[cholo]

Btw... all this is just suggestions to be able to manage today's challenges with today's toolset. I would also like to have realtime radiosity and all sorts of bells and whistles, but sometimes you just have to do with what you have right now ;) And I also forgot, your car modeling tutorial completely changed my approach to modeling, not only cars, but all sorts of stuff... so I think a big thank you is in order also :)

[Lewis]

Heheh thanks cholo :). BTW tutorial is again onile on LWG and looks better than ever ;).

Your suggestions are valid and very good only problem is that this particular school model i s total mess :). I got model already made and he has been in VRML format . After conversion i had 380k traingles and 4688 layers in modeler :). Program wich saved VRML saves every part of model as single object so 3D converter gave me so many layers. Then i cut pasted all that into one layer 'coz haveing 4688 layers in modeler rotates same object at least 3x times slower than same geometry in one layer (sounds wierd but it's true - anyone know reason ?).

So basicaly now i'am fidling with 300 diferntly named surfaces as (material_001, 002, 003... and so on). Real nightmare 'coz i need to select poly by poly and check in "info" window what is that surface to rename them to something normal so that i can tweak surfaces :). Aslo "select connected" function isn't applyable on this model 'coz many parts are staying separated even after merge points / merge polys option.

So basicaly i'am stuck and if i build model by myself i would sure take in mind your ideas but right now that's tough job :).

But i think that we all agree on end that LW needs faster radiosity - right :) ?

[marko]

i can only say that lw users are big enthusiasts. trying to proove whats not possible. the radiosity in lw can not compete wih vray, finalrenderer and similar.
as i said lw was here with gi long before any other rendering on the market, but since then no progress.
in lw you canot make any decent interior. even original cornel box or its variants are not looking good. http://www.winosi.onlinehome.de/Comp1.htm take special care about shadow areas and reflection of floor squares to walls
lightscape has old style of gi caled radiosity and it was very complicated in workflow (careful modeling) but results for interiors were fast and good looking.
for some programer it is very easy to convert lightscape solution to lw vertex maps. why nobody dit it i dont know.
also converting IES to light projection image is no big deal.
reprograming light editor for multiple light editing or creating light instances like in image editor shouldnt be that hart. ant thing that was annoying me for years: in requester you cannot slide your mouse to values larger than 100% if your light value is 350% trying to slide it will drop your value to 100% !?
it should be here since 6.0!!!

[richardo]

by the way trick you can render lightscape solution files in lightwave7.5 :-)

you just need to re-assign the ls plug-in to each surface manualy!!

Richard Quinn
Frameload DA
Norway

[trick]

Originally posted by richardo
by the way trick you can render lightscape solution files in lightwave7.5 :-)

you just need to re-assign the ls plug-in to each surface manualy!!

Richard Quinn
Frameload DA
Norway


?????...This is the latest....

Is that the latest build for 56c, which did not receive direct lighting in LW56c, or the build before that which DID. To receive direct lighting in 56c I had to switch the newer build for the old one togo around this bug. How about crashes ??? Where did you get this tip from ????

Thanks :) :) :)

About suggestion for [8]'s renderer:

Make a hybrid solution: progressive radiosity solution which can be saved and used on a per surface basis; surfaces that are affected by animated objects should be rendered with a photon based radiosity. Or better: split up the shadowcasting and the indirect reflection effects, for faster and more dynamic calculations !!!

[richardo]

hi "trick"

the lightscape conection works but as somebody else said here it is alot of work bla bla bla............you are correct about the bug and having to switch the new for the old plug-in if you want direct light in 5.6c but the way to do it is to save out your lightscape solution as a 5.6 scene file and re-open it in 7.5................and reapply the ls shader to each of your surfaces and you have to change it manually.........................i found this out by chance :-)

one of the major draw backs is that you can not save any alterations to your scene or objects while in 7.5.....................
so basicaly you can only render................but you do get to play with bloom and all the other image filters etc....................

as for lightwave 8 from what i have seen and read on the forums it looks like marko's wish for instancing of lights ala max has been done :-) which is nice, it will make faking gi alot easier..............;-(

i for one will have to go back to using max for internal stuff if newtek do'nt speed up there radiosity. its hard to fake gi radiosity
when you are competing against firms that are using v-ray or finalrender.................

Richard Quinn
Frameload DA
Norway.

[richardo]

sorry

and regarding crashes, i suppose you are talking about crashes in 5.6!! this occures if you change the "ray recursion limit"
limit from the default value of 16 to anything lower..............multithreading might also be a problem on some machines................

Richard Quinn
Frameload DA
Norway.

[Hervé]

Better Radiosity..... better what ?? Look for the word radiosity (english) or "radiosité" (french) , how do you say in German ??

Tell me the definition you find in dictionnary.... if you find it....

Hehehehervé

There is a script over here in the forum section.... for faking....

www.savinoff.com

Cheers

Hate that word, Faking.... hmmmm, false.... wrong.... no good .... bad... very negative word... ha ha ha

[Pavlov]

Hi all,
i totally agree with Marko: LW users are surprisingly enthusiast of what they get. I know several methids and workaround, too: but why should i waste my time in complex rigs, slicing objects and such, if almost all other tools make the work better ?
LW engine is by far the most outdated between hi-end softwares, and so its light toolset.
All i can ask by now, if NT doesnt have energies to put hands heavily and soon on render engine, is:
*MAKE RENDERING ENGINE A PLUGIN CLASS, PLEASE*
I guess Vray, Brazil and other programmers would be very happy to bring their engines to such a large userbase... ;)
Maybe NT ignores that most LW users are involved in VIZ market, and just a minority deals with Char animation. Here in Europe, it's a 1:50 proportion.
So Newtek, please: let external developers make something for us, unless you are planning to revolution rednering engine in a very short time. Making Viz in LW is beginning to be unconvenient.... sad, but i wont upgrade anymore unless i see strong improvement in rendering area, and i can see there is a bunch of other users which will do the same.

Paolo Zambrini

[trick]

Originally posted by richardo
sorry

...i suppose you are talking about crashes in 5.6...


??? No, if I have to work with non-75-compatible LS-plugin I'm concerned about stability in 7.5 !!! How is stability when other added NON-Lightscaped objects are lighted and animated !?!? How stable is project-merging ?!?!

[richardo]

Trick

What exactly do you want to do??

If you want to start adding objects to the scene you have to do it in 5.6 and then save the scene.......................................

If you are talking about incorporating characters? why not just render out light maps from lightscape and stick them in the lum. channel and comp. in your animated objects....................

Richard Quinn
Frameload DA
Norway.

[trick]

Originally posted by richardo
Trick

What exactly do you want to do??

If you want to start adding objects to the scene you have to do it in 5.6 and then save the scene.......................................

If you are talking about incorporating characters? why not just render out light maps from lightscape and stick them in the lum. channel and comp. in your animated objects....................

Richard Quinn
Frameload DA
Norway.

Rendering lightmaps in LS forces me to do camera animation in LS which is too big hassle for my projects. Interior projects are always done completely inside LS. Exterior projects are completely done in LW, because a lot has to be animated and therefore I'm looking for the best hybrid rendering solution which can handle Rad/GI in these kind of environments. Also I doubt if there is a perfect alignment between LS and LW camera's (have you actually tried this ?!?)

Calculating the radiosity in LW and putting THAT in the lum.channel is far easier (also on modelling) and in the end faster !! It also gives me a lot of freedom because I can choose the individual surfaces too which the precalculated front-projection-mapped illumination is applied. Since I'm only interested in indirect lighting, not colorbleeding, this solution is the best for me. For now GI and radiosity is the only big missing in LW, so I don't just wanna switch to another package for that !!!

[marko]

they are listening

see my message to newsgroup in 1998
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=hr&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=6sj2fg%24uoj%40as041.tel.hr

:(

link to an interesting site
http://graphics.ucsd.edu/~sagarwal/bean/bean.html

[marko]

i do sound silly to myself

but i hope there is someone out there listening

http://www.gregdowning.com/HDRI/tonemap/Reinhard/

This is a free plugin for HDR Shop (also free) that will map the color and brightness values in a 32 bit per channel HDR down to values that you can see on your 8 bit per channel display

[marko]

Accurate Light Source Acquisition and Rendering

http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/~goesele/Projects/LightAcquisition/

this is even more precise than IES

[jorbedo]

Can somebody explain to me how to use the Lightscape shader into LW 7.5 when importing a 5.x scene with Lightscape solution?

I read this form Richardo:

hi "trick"

the lightscape conection works but as somebody else said here it is alot of work bla bla bla............you are correct about the bug and having to switch the new for the old plug-in if you want direct light in 5.6c but the way to do it is to save out your lightscape solution as a 5.6 scene file and re-open it in 7.5................and reapply the ls shader to each of your surfaces and you have to change it manually.........................i found this out by chance :-)

http://vbulletin.newtek.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8802&perpage=15&pagenumber=4

[The ripper]

I kind of agree with what have been said so far.

I think lights/Radiosity need improvements in terms of options, speed,...

I don't know if NT is working on it or not but I think what would be cool from them would be to say something like 'Don't worry guys we're working on it'... that would probably stop people(including me) from getting frustated about the new release of LW!

The Lightwave render engine is still for me one of the best though!

Cheers

[WizCraker]

It does look like they are working on the Rendering on their jobs page they are looking for a 3D Rendering Engineer. Hopefully this means something good like adding to the team not that they currently do not have a programmer already doing this.