I'm horrible with lights....

[Dai Vernon]

I never really know if my raytrace will turn out right. I have a nice chandelier in the room with the lights on. I have the interior ambience turned up and I have the sun shining in through the front bay window. I let it raytrace over night and this morning it is just way to dark to print and show to my customer.

What would you guys do in this room? Since this is only a concept of what his addition would look like, any lighting ideas are doable.

Should I put in some pot lights in the celing? And to what intensity?

Thanks for the help, I **** with interior lighting.

[ank345]

Set The Ceiling To Be Emisive....

[Dai Vernon]

Currently my material is set to the default bone. I should edit that bone material to be emissive?

Thank you for the reply. I've seen your renderings.....unbelievable!

[Curtis Johnson]

Nice design - I look forward to seeing your next post after your changes.

[ank345]

Set Your Ceiling To White ..make Sure They Are Not The Same Color As The Wall ...then Set It To 75% Emissive

[Dai Vernon]

Thank you Alan, it is raytracing right now. I will post the new pic. when it finishes raytracing......in about 4 hours

Thanks for the comment Curtis, hopefully the client will like it too!

[Dai Vernon]

Ok, so it's not perfect but I guess it'll do. I changed the ceiling to white and 75% emissivity. But for some reason the "cream" walls changed to olive. Not a problem because it looks alright. Still a little dark but much better from before.

Any other suggestions to get this room looking AMAZING??? This project is worth over $130,000.......with 10% commission I want the raytrace to just blow them away.

Thanks for the help!!

[mcqueenhomes]

Have you tried a photo editing program, and adjusting brightness/contrast/color?

[dgavin]

Dai,

Another option is to use lights from the 3D menu and place them accordingly. For instance one could use a point light set 60" off the ground to brighten the whole room. Sometimes 2 are needed depending on the room size and amount of brightness. WIht this option you would probably have to adjust the emmissivity of the ceiling down some.
It really is an art form.

[Dai Vernon]

Hey Jason,
Yeah, I wish I had photoshop or something. I just have some useless old picture editing program that can barely get the red out of eyes at best.

I see some Chief Users raytraced pictures, you know the ones that Chief posts on its site, or some of the pics posted here; that's what I'm after. And they did the rendering entirely in Chief.

I guess it's mainly practice. I usually just render exterior shots, interior is proving to be much more difficult. I have a meeting set with the client for tomorrow, I guess I'll be rendering all day and night.


Dennis, I never knew that those lights existed. I will definately try it out. I've changed the size of my screen to speed up the raytrace process, once it's perfected I'll do another large 3-4 hour one.

Thanks again!

[lbuttery]

Dai:

Try Paint Shop Pro X it is only $50 (after rebate) and is considered to be very capable.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...lance&n=229534

Lew

[Night8917]

Hi Dai.

If you don't have a Photo editing program, download one of these, they are free and they will cover the basic need for editing.

http://www.gimp.org/windows/
Gimp was rated the best free photo edit program by a Swedish Computer magazine.

http://google.picasa.com/
I tried this one and it works well, easy to use.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/cpicturele.html
Have not tried this but I guess it works like the others.


Take care of each other.

[Dai Vernon]

Hi Dai.

If you don't have a Photo editing program, download one of these, they are free and they will cover the basic need for editing.

http://www.gimp.org/windows/
Gimp was rated the best free photo edit program by a Swedish Computer magazine.

http://google.picasa.com/
I tried this one and it works well, easy to use.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/cpicturele.html
Have not tried this but I guess it works like the others.


Take care of each other.

GREAT!! Thanks a lot! I will definatley be checking these out.

[Enovikoff]

Dai, congratulations on getting the rendering to work. There are reasons why you were having trouble getting the lighting to work that I believe have to do with the design, not just Chief. You have to be careful with Chief, you can modify lighting options until you can render something that will look much better than the finished product can ever look, and you'll be fooled into not putting enough effort into the actual lighting design! I wanted to point out a few things you could do to improve the design for your customers:

- I generally try to avoid a large skylight in the middle of a room, especially at lower latitudes (I don't know where you're working.) If the room is to be used during the day, the bright beams of sunlight will contract the occupants' pupils, and the rest of the room will look dark and depressing. At higher latitudes, you have to do some calculations, perhaps the beams won't reach the floor, which is the worst place for them to hit. The bright beams also make it hard to read unless you're sitting in one of them, and ruin the view of any televisions in the room. If it's to be purely a sitting room, maybe your design could work without much problem. Some solutions include hanging a cloth baffle in the skylight to diffuse the light, or switching the skylight tower to extend above the roofline and have clerestory windows around its perimeter. This would allow diffracted skylight to light the room gently.
- Don't forget that a large skylight lets in a lot of heat as well as light. You'll want low-e glass.
- I didn't see any recessed lighting around the skylight. Because of what I mentioned above, and also just to get enough light in the room for anything other than conversation, I'd put recessed lighting along the walls or halfway between the walls and the edge of the lowered ceiling. Juno makes some pricey but amazing wall-washers in their Aculux line, that don't leave the usual grainy headlight arcs on the walls. Chandeliers are great eye-catchers, but few put out enough light to brighten a big room, so I always pair them with recessed ambient lighting and wall-washers.
- You have an amazing variety of window/door shapes around the edge of the room. Since the room has some symmetry, changing the window/door arrangement to have symmetry as well could yield some nice benefits.

Good luck!

-eric

[Dai Vernon]

Christina and Eric, thanks a lot for the time invested in those posts. Very informative!

The Roof Lantern originally did have windows around the base walls, but due to costs they have been removed. The client's backyard has been professionally landscaped and the amount of time for me to re-create that look is ridiculous, so I just opted for the traditional boring backyard.

Eric, I would have never ever thought about the latitude/lighting issue. But it's very logical when you think about it. We will be using our Heat Mirror 22 glass which allow zero heat to come through, it's also tinted so maybe that'll help with the situation.

I should actually get better furniture in the room, I just chose one of the ready-made sets.

The appointment has been changed to friday so I have some time to work on it some more.

Thank you all for your advice, I'll definately be using it for this and future projects!