Outdoor Lighting Problem

[funk]

Ok so I am using Mental Ray Photometric daylight. All is well I have positioned the sun in a spot which I think will set me up for a good semi night lighting effect.
The only problem is my spot lights will not work while my daylight Mr Sun thingo is in place.

As you can see the spot light multiplier has been increase up above 50000 and I can see it in the viewport, so why wont it render?

thanks in advance,

Funk

[Cad64]

Mental Ray Photometric daylight? What's that?
Do you mean the Daylight System? You're not using a Photometric light as your sun are you?

[Cad64]

Can you post more information about the type of lights you're using, as well as your render and environment settings? I am unable to duplicate the problem you're experiencing.

[Cad64]

So did you figure out what the problem was?

[funk]

hey mate, thanks for the reply I was using daylight environment settings as in Mr Sun and Mr Physical Daylight (i think its called) and normal omni and spot lights which wern't showing in renders.
I read in a post that you had a while ago that you need to use 'Mr' lights? and jack up the multiplier to see them during Daylight environments. I wanted to have the sun at about 7pm (so like dusk lighting) with soft lighting effects within the shelter. I havnt been at work so been unable to reply.
But what I ended up doing was just placing a soft spot light (turning off daylight environement) to replicate the night lighting, using just a dark blue background colour, and using normal lights, which worked well, but was trying to use the Daylight environment settings with lights, is that possible?
Sorry i am unable to post more info until tomorrow when Im back at work.
I just love the way that the sun looks with the horizon in renders and the shadows it creates and would love to have some lighting at dusk to compliment it.
Regards to Mental Ray, that is just the renderer I am using because it seems to work best with the Mr Physical Environments.

Regards,

Funk.

[Cad64]

I played around with this a little bit today and the render below is what I got.

I used the daylight system for sunlight and I placed photometric lights at the base of the posts. I set the "Light Distribution" to "Spotlight", used the "Halogen (Cool)" color preset and set the Intensity to 50000 cd.

Give that a try and see what you get.

[funk]

There are so many questions I would love to ask about that render.. =) for instance your bump mapping, but as for the lighting your advice was great. I had never used photometric lighting. Worked very well. I had to use standard lights to sort of GI the shelter though as my boss thought that the up lights weren't enough.

I put rectangle photometric lights in the fittings to create they glow of the bulbs, and then the photometric spotlight which you suggested for the up light effect.

here is an image of my result at 6pm.

dusk1.jpg


The only thing that bugged me was I tried to make the support uplights light up the bottom of the roof, so I upped the multiplier to reach it, but then the light looked to bright down the bottom, So I ended up just putting omni's under the roof.

I need to work on my material mapping I know but im getting better!

Once again thankyou for your help, I'm sure i'll need to post again soon for more advice.

Regards,

Funk

[Cad64]

The only thing that bugged me was I tried to make the support uplights light up the bottom of the roof, so I upped the multiplier to reach it, but then the light looked to bright down the bottom, So I ended up just putting omni's under the roof.

Did you try adjusting the spotlight distribution "Hotspot" and "Falloff"?

[funk]

ok so I upped the intensity to 150,000. I did not really adjust my distribution, check out my screen cap.. anything you would change? Upping the intensity actually worked not to badly, the base doesn't seem to bright.

night000.jpg

result

night000.jpg

not sure what the best file extension to use for clear image results are, .png seems to work ok but doesn't render environments... haha, sorry thats another topic i guess.

I think what im trying to do in this scene is somehow create a GI effect as the lighting is quite focused, and there will be no sun, I need to light up the scene better, I usually end up chucking a directional standard light ontop of the shelter with no shadows to give a all round brightness, not sure if I should be changing render settings instead to achieve that GI effect but?

[Cad64]

ok so I upped the intensity to 150,000. I did not really adjust my distribution, check out my screen cap.. anything you would change? Upping the intensity actually worked not to badly, the base doesn't seem to bright.

Looks pretty good.

not sure what the best file extension to use for clear image results are, .png seems to work ok but doesn't render environments... haha, sorry thats another topic i guess.

.png is great because you get the best of both worlds. You get the quality of a .tif with the filesize of a .jpg. I think it's the best format. And if you want your background included, just uncheck "Alpha Channel" in the "Setup" before you Save.

I think what im trying to do in this scene is somehow create a GI effect as the lighting is quite focused, and there will be no sun, I need to light up the scene better, I usually end up chucking a directional standard light ontop of the shelter with no shadows to give a all round brightness, not sure if I should be changing render settings instead to achieve that GI effect but?

Yeah, you should be playing with your render settings, Final Gather and Global Illumination. But I would need to see your render settings in order to offer advice. Just be aware that increasing these settings can cause very long render times, but will yield much higher quality and realistic results. You just have to find the right balance between speed and quality.

Or you can just fake GI by using omni lights, like you're doing. It's up to you really.