Does the sun have to be off for interior lighting to work?

[bobo]

I am doing some internal rendering and it seems that one can either have the sun as natural lighting or artificial lights, but not both. Is this the case? The lights although indicated as 'on' dont actually appear on if the sun is active. This seems quite a shortcoming fro interior scenes that depend on both forms of lighting. Any ideas, thoughts?

[beegee]

Are you using "Daylight Sources " ?

from the Help file....
The Daylights command lets you select sources for adding sunlight to an interior scene of your model for radiosity solutions. You can select families with transparent materials, such as windows and doors, as daylight sources. See Radiosity .

Click the Rendering tab of the Design Bar to activate it.
Click Settings.
Select Interior Scene to allow sunlight to pass through daylight sources.
Click OK to close the Settings dialog box.
Click Daylights from the Rendering tab of the Design Bar.
Select daylight sources in the model, such as windows or other families that have transparency.
Render the interior scene in the model.


Note that Radiosity is generally most useful for small interior views where the indirect lighting is significant and is usually not appropriate for large or complex models, or exteriors.

[bobo]

yes, i have selected the daylights sources, nominated them (they turn red tint when activated) and then returned to render scene with lights and sun on.....the lights will not show!... just seems you can have one or the other, not both...

[beegee]

You can have both. Thats what the daylights settings is for.

You need to run a radiosity solution though.

[hand471037]

Also keep in mind that the sun in Accurender tends to wash everything else out because of it's brightness. When a window is made a daylight source, it's taking whatever exterior sunlight it's receiving and then funneling it into the space as if the window was one big flat glowing surface. Without the benifit of Radiosity, which softens and fill out more light within the space, it's not uncommon for the interior lights to be completely lost within the scene.

What I would recommend is to turn the sun way down. In 90% of real-world situation, the window wouldn't be recieving direct sun due to clouds, surrounding buildings, trees, and the like- a Daylight window is almost assuming it's 'floating in outer space' more or less, and is receiving 100% of that sunlight which it's then funneling into the space. Turn down the sun consiterably & use Radosity if you can and you'll start to get a better effect IMHO.

[bobo]

Yes, I have selected my daylights, done a raytrace, loaded version 6.1, checked the lights are all on, correctly located the lights into a normal ceiling, ....... but it does not seem possible to have the sun and lights on at once... Can anyone show me they have actually managed this or perhaps shed some new light on what I amy be doing wrong?.... any help appreciated, quite frustrating..

[beegee]

Did you run a rad solution and load that before the raytrace ?

Refer the test render here , it shows daylight source and lights on together.
( Quick and dirty low res test )

[bobo]

When you say did i load the rad solution, does it not automatically load directly after calculating a solution before going straight to raytrace?... i did not think you had to load it before doing so if you had just calulated it?... any clarification?

As far as the curved ceiling, lighting demo, thank you so much for showing me it is possible. It seems i will simply have to make an in place family...not something i know how to do just yet, but am sure to figure it out now..

[bobo]

Hey, i had to let you know Beegee that the curved ceiling worked a treat, thank you so much for your helpful guidance. It is people like you that really make this forum worthwhile. ... however.... still wondering about the question regarding loading the radiance solution. see previous post to this...

Once again, thank you so much for showing me the way!

[beegee]

When you say did i load the rad solution, does it not automatically load directly after calculating a solution before going straight to raytrace?... i did not think you had to load it before doing so if you had just calulated it?... any clarification?

Thats correct, if your've just run it, you don't need to load it again.

So it sounds as though you've done everthing correctly.

Try setting up a test render , similar to the one I did and see if that runs OK.