topic Re: Navisworks Simulate 2017 Lighting Issue in Navisworks Forum

Navisworks Simulate 2017 Lighting Issue

Anonymous — Thu, 25 May 2017 16:33:25 GMT

I have recently upgraded from Simulate 2013 to Simulate 2017 and the changes within the 2013 Presenter Lighting Tab to the 2017 Autodesk Rendering Lighting tab are quite different. How do I add ambient lighting and how do I change the shadow properties in 2017?

Re: Navisworks Simulate 2017 Lighting Issue

dgorsman — Thu, 25 May 2017 19:35:18 GMT

It's a big jump. You loose quite a few of the detailed settings found in the more complex Presenter render types; that threw me for a loop at first as well (I do kinda-sorta miss the option to have certain lights not cast shadows, but...). The lights are pretty much the same as before, although I recommend you only use them for interior shots. For exterior shots use the Environments settings with everything enabled (sun, sky, and exposure); if you only use "sun" the image is a little orange, and if you only use "sky" you need to add appropriate lighting plus it turns a little blue (both of those can be fixed a bit with the exposure settings). Use the manual sun location if you don't want to fiddle with actual geographic/date-time settings.

Sharpness of shadows is handled indirectly through the render settings - higher quality with more "levels" of processing results in more blended shadows.

Re: Navisworks Simulate 2017 Lighting Issue

Anonymous — Thu, 25 May 2017 21:18:11 GMT

Thank you so much for all your help. I was hoping those options were still
there somewhere. I'll just have to spend a bit of time leaning the
Environments tab, haven't had much luck yet, I'm struggling trying to
eliminate the orange color.

Re: Navisworks Simulate 2017 Lighting Issue

dgorsman — Fri, 26 May 2017 16:14:13 GMT

The good news is, is that you can get pretty good results without a lot of the tweaking necessary in Presenter. The Autodesk render engine is also multi-threaded so if you're running a half-ways decent workstation it can kick out renders faster.

Turn on both "sky" and "exposure" to help deal with that orange color. Then read up on the exposure settings, especially color temperature. If you have a typical "brown" color for grade objects I find it throws a lot of orange back onto buildings etc. which requires compensating for; if you switch to grey or a gravel material you may find the scene a little bright.

If you do want to have access to advanced render settings I would suggest it's time to start investing in learning 3DSMAX or similar software. At that point you're going to be pushing the rendering limits of Navisworks anyways.