Default Light Location

[clesh]

In the Revit Architecture User Guide it states "When you shade a 3D view, Revit Architecture aims default light sources, called headlights, at the image. These are not lights that you can physically see or move."

My question is what determines the location/orientation of these default light sources in a particular shade view? The location/orientation seems key to getting colors of materials to render accurately in shaded views.

[patricks]

Looks to me like the shades in a shaded view (shadows turned OFF) are determined based on light coming from the direction of the camera. So it's like the camera is also a light source shining at the 3D model and the shades of various surfaces are determined by the angle and orientation of the surface relative to the direction of your view. And as I said, this of course only applies to views with shadows turned off.

[clesh]

I thought that could be it, but in the two attached examples I mirrored a camera along the center lines of a wall so that the camera angle in relationship to the wall would be the same. It appears the light is always coming from the left regardless of camera orientation. Maybe that answers the question of the orientation of the default light source, but leads to another question. Can you change the orientation of the default light source? And if not, why not?

[Alex Page]

Why not? Because you cant :mrgreen: (sorry, couldnt resist)

But you can using a different tool :)

If you 'turn shadows on' and change the 'shadow intensity' to ''0"
you can palce the sun where you want using the 'sun and shadows settings'

Also you can play around with 'sun intensity' for overall brightness

[clesh]

Your answer to "why not" may be the one I have to live with. I was trying to avoid turning shadows on just for performance and printing reasons. If I just knew how the light orientation was determined, I wouldn't lay awake at night.

[patricks]

I'm not totally sure, but shouldn't shadows turned on with shadows down to "0" not really hinder system performance? Maybe it does, I've never really messed with it.

[clesh]

Unfortunately the performance is still affected when shadows are set to 0. By the way, I think your original observation that the light location IS based on the camera direction was correct. It looks like the it is about 10 to 15 degrees to the left of the camera angle.

Still hoping maybe someone can tell me if that can be changed somehow. Anyone???