I'm creating a set of macros for building a house and have everything 
done except for lighting. I am using sun.inc to position a sun object, 
but the radiosity doesn't work unless I'm looking at a window. If I 
stand at the window and look into the room it's like it's night outside.

Is there any solution to this? Should I put a light-source outside each 
window? Should I make a window an opaque ambient object when I'm not 
looking at it?

Cheers!
Rick Measham

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Rick Measham <rickm*at%isite.net.au> wrote:
Hi Rick,

> I'm creating a set of macros for building a house and have everything
> done except for lighting. I am using sun.inc to position a sun object,
> but the radiosity doesn't work unless I'm looking at a window. If I
> stand at the window and look into the room it's like it's night outside.
>
> Is there any solution to this? Should I put a light-source outside each
> window? Should I make a window an opaque ambient object when I'm not
> looking at it?

Have a look at Jaime Vives Piqueres' LightSys package :
http://www.ignorancia.org/lightsys.php

It contains a macro by Philippe Debar which builds a sky 'dome' that's
perfect for this. Otherwise, create a sky with a fairly high ambient value.

P.S. How's that brush coming along? I want to steal it for a scene. :)

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PM 2Ring wrote:
> Have a look at Jaime Vives Piqueres' LightSys package :
> http://www.ignorancia.org/lightsys.php
> 
> It contains a macro by Philippe Debar which builds a sky 'dome' that's
> perfect for this. Otherwise, create a sky with a fairly high ambient value.

Excellent, thanks for that. I've seen people mention lightsys before, 
but not knowing what it did, I didn't know how useful it is :)
I'll have a look at implementing it later today.



> P.S. How's that brush coming along? I want to steal it for a scene. :)

I never got back around to it too much .. the handle is now an SOR which 
makes it look nicer ..
http://rick.measham.id.au/article.php?story=onebrush

Cheers!
Rick Measham

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> Is there any solution to this? Should I put a light-source outside each
> window? Should I make a window an opaque ambient object when I'm not
> looking at it?

There are several things you should check:
1. Is the max_trace_level high enough, so that radiosity sampling will
actually pass through the windows?
2. Perhaps recursion_limit is too low and the light thus isn't propagated
far enough into the scene?
3. Is count high enough? The higher it is, the more likely it is to "catch"
bright objects?
4. How bright is your skysphere and lightsource?
5. How bright did you set "brightness" in the radiosity-block?

I've used radiosity in my latest image as well, "Prepared for company". I've
got a light shining through a window, but radiosity does the main job of
keeping the room brighter than black. I'm not sure what you're doing wrong,
but there's definitely something set up incorrectly if your radiosity
doesn't get through the window. A trick I did to keep max_trace_level low:
during radiosity gathering, I commented all windows out. I then rendered a
second pass with all windows in place. Two side-effects: the max_trace_level
doesn't need to be that high to get through the windows, and there are no
radiosity samples on the windows, which don't need it most of the time
anyway.

Regards,
Tim

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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Rick Measham <rickm*at%isite.net.au> wrote:
> PM 2Ring wrote:
> > Have a look at Jaime Vives Piqueres' LightSys package :
> > http://www.ignorancia.org/lightsys.php
> >
> > It contains a macro by Philippe Debar which builds a sky 'dome' that's
> > perfect for this. Otherwise, create a sky with a fairly high ambient value.
>
> Excellent, thanks for that. I've seen people mention lightsys before,
> but not knowing what it did, I didn't know how useful it is :)
> I'll have a look at implementing it later today.

You should be able to copy & paste what you need from demo_outdoor1.pov, or
maybe from demo_indoor1.pov, but it's definitely worth going through the
whole LightSys package to see what it does & how it does it. It can be a
bit overwhelming at first, though.

> > P.S. How's that brush coming along? I want to steal it for a scene. :)
>
> I never got back around to it too much .. the handle is now an SOR which
> makes it look nicer ..
> http://rick.measham.id.au/article.php?story=onebrush

Thanks for that, Rick. I think you should render a larger image for your Web
page... preferably with the inscription engraving turned on. :)

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