High School Gym

[sfaust]

Thought I'd throw out a rendering I just did. This is more of a design study rendering for in-house instead of a client presentation rendering, hence the lack of entourage, etc. Still a little "light mold" happening too, but looking pretty decent I think...

[sfaust]

and another angle, minus the light mold this time...

[dbaldacchino]

Nice work Steve!

The downlights somehow don't seem to be casting the right scallop pattern on the wall. I would expect to see it start a few inches below the ceiling line instead of right at it. Perhaps the lights have a lens emitting light at the ceiling plane?

[SCShell]

Hey there,
Really nice first rendering Steve! I have been enjoying the MR learning process myself. I like the way you treated the corner in order to accomodate the pass through service openings and sign pop outs.....very creative solution!

Keep 'em coming!
Steve

[sfaust]

thanks.

regarding the downlights, you're right on the pattern. There isn't a lens, but the inside of the fixture has a glow, that may be part of it, I'll see about turning that down. Also, they are defined by an ies file, but right now the emitting point of the ies web is right at the ceiling plane. Can someone with more knowledge of photometrics tell me, should that point be up into the light where the bulb would be? That my fix it...

Steve, thanks, I thought it came out pretty well. I'm actually pretty happy with the things we were able to do with this project considering the budget we were given (very small).

[sfaust]

Ok, got it. For some reason it was not picking up the photometric web. It was doing it in the family, but somehow when it got to the project it couldn't find it. I went to type properties of the fixture in the project file and re-browsed to the ies file and that fixed it.

Does anyone know if this would be because it's an ies that isn't stored in the default location? I have been storing them on the server, but maybe they need to be on the hard drive... Anyone know?

Turned off all the lights except that main ceiling so this one's a little darker, but here it is...

[patricks]

Pretty nice. Can you have an exit sign that high, though? Seems like I remember a maximum allowed height for those, since smoke would mask it pretty quickly.

[sfaust]

hmm. That makes sense, but I couldn't find anything in ANSI 117 or IBC 2003 with a height attached. Do you know where the requirement is?

With regard to the rendering, I went back and re-looked at my settings for my light intensity and they were way low. Like I was using about a 60 watt incandecent instead of a 100w metal halide. I made them correct and that made a lot of difference in the look and lighting, and it did a lot for the light mold as well! The trophy case image had a ton of light mold before, even with high settings. This one is just on medium and it only has a little...

[dbaldacchino]

Nice! That looks much more realistic. I like the way you tackled the signage too.

I honestly haven't gotten around to play with lights yet (geez, close to a year since Mental Ray in Revit!!) so I can't answer regarding the IES location. The light family itself doesn't seem to be of great importance in terms of how it's modeled if you're using the photometric info.: lighting will still be interpreted correctly. The issue obviously is if you're doing a close-up shot, as the lights themselves don't look very real (no sense of depth or reflections). But the lighting in the space looks correct. One might have to model the light families a bit differently, but making them too complex might kill render time.

There seems to be no height restriction on exit signage. IBC just says that you have to locate them such that "no point in an exit access corridor is more than 100 feet (30 480 mm) or the listed viewing distance for the sign, whichever is less, from the nearest visible exit sign". Take a look at this too:

http://forums.mikeholt.com/showthread.php?t=65956

I'd say use your judgement. If your ceiling is in the 12'-0" range or under, you probably should be ok. Otherwise try to find a wall. Now back to rendering :)

[sfaust]

Throw a couple more out for good measure. I'm having fun playing with Mental Ray :).

As far as the sign, yeah, it's at 16'-0", we'll probably need to look at a wall location...

[andrew.lawrence]

Very nice work. Can you tell me what is "light mold"? THanks.

[aaronrumple]

Very nice work. Can you tell me what is "light mold"? THanks.

The splotchy look of the lighting when not enough photons are shot. There is little control of this in Revit.

[SkiSouth]

Steve,

Do you have any lens in the light family between the light emitter and the model? (IES question)

[ejburrell67787]

The splotchy look of the lighting when not enough photons are shot. There is little control of this in Revit.

Does adding more light or light sources help with this? We have been getting the same effect in some situations.

Cheers, Elrond

[sfaust]

Ski, no there is no lens in either of the light families, should there be?

As for controlling light mold, it seems to me that having less variation in light levels helps reduce light mold. Low levels don't seem to be an issue (unless they're REALLY low) as long as its consistent. That's why I think the original images I posted had issues. There were bright patches of sunlight as well as much darker shadowed portions of the room, and as I said later in the thread, I found out that my light fixtures were essentially set to a single 60w bulb, which would make the room pretty dark generally. Once I bumped them up to what they were supposed to be it balanced the light levels quite a bit by bringing up the general ambient light and I was able to get much less light mold with lower quality settings.

Regarding specific settings, the indirect light smoothness is what mainly effects this. Turn it up to reduce light mold. Remember that turning it up also increases render time, so play with it, don't just crank it all the way up (see below). Thanks to Jeffrey McGrew and the handout from his AU class for that tip...

sidenote warning for those wondering about rendering settings, DONT CRANK IT ALL THE WAY UP! :). I had last Friday off, so I figured I'd crank up some settings and let it go over the weekend and get a really nice image out of it. It's got 3.5 days, certainly that should be enough time, right? Well I started with medium, then granked the blurred reflection precision up to 10 since I have VCT floors, turned soft shadow precision up to 9 since I have some shadow lines, turned indirect illumination smoothness up to 10 (hey what the heck, i've got 3 days...), added an extra II bounce, and turned daylight portals on for windows since the space has a clerestory...

I came back this morning to find the timer at 3 days, 14 hours, and 43 minutes... and the 26% complete. Fortunately that was just for fun, and to be fair, I also bumped the resolution up to 2400x3000. So just a word of caution, all the way up is overkill :)

incidentally, it did look like it would be an incredibly nice image by February :)