Rendering Issues for BSC

[Anonymous]

I have looked at so many forum posts on rendering and lighting to try and understand why the my image renderings in various grays instead of picking up on the various colors and materials I have selected. If I increase my lighting it becomes white washed and there seems to be no in between. When I implement those forums nothing seems to change all that effectively. I have attached a picture of my model and the model. The majority of the exterior of this unit should be white, but yet shows up as a gray color or everything becomes white washed. Any insight would be appreciated.

[cheryl.buck]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for the file and screen shot. I rendered the model using the RENDER command and did not change any settings. While my render does not look as clean as yours, I did get several white surfaces (as seen in the model), with grays appropriate for shaded areas.

The members more experienced with rendering output may be better able to assist if you are able to share your AutoCAD version, the render method, and render settings used for the screen shot. 

All the best, 

[leeminardi]

It did not look to me that any materials were explicitly assigned to any of your model's geometry as indicated by looking at their properties.  I assigned Cool White to several objects then deleted all your lights except for the 2 interior lights.  I added two spot lights.  One to light up the front and the other to provide some fill in the rear (with half the intensity).    I adjusted the exposure and the intensity and lamp intensity values of the lights.  The interior lights had to be turned way down to avoid saturation and while providing some definition of the interior.  Obviously more tweaking needs to be done but I hope this helps.  Note,  I experimented with add a background "drape".

The Exhaust HEPA Cutout has an excessive amount of detail for a rendering.  It may be more effective to substitute a simple box for it and use a texture map to represent the surface for renderings.  This may help to provide faster and better renderings.

[Anonymous]

@leeminardi 

Thanks for your help! When I downloaded the dwg file you provided to locate your light positions I tried to render it to see if I could get the same results as you did within that file. When I did that there was no lighting in the render at all, as if they off, though I could see their position. Is there a way they could have been turned off? Is there a way to get them back on or am I missing something?

Thank you

[leeminardi]

Did you make any changes to my file before you rendered it?

To check if a light is on or off just open the properties box and select the light in question.  Its properties will indicate whether it is on or off.

[Anonymous]

I had only removed the drape. I redownloaded the file and left everything in tact and for whatever reason it then rendered closer to what you had shared. There are shadows that I would like to have removed from the rendering, is this just a matter of adding more spot lights in the right area to mitigate them? Or is there a setting that you know of that will lessen the shadowing that occurs?

Thanks

[leeminardi]

I believe that since AutoCAD 2016 you can no longer turn off lights from casting shadows or objects from receiving them.  I use Max for rendering but Arnold has made controlling shadows and visibility more difficult.

[Anonymous]

I understand. I have tried to render in 3DS MAX with my model and I was not impressed with the results. It seemed to lose a lot of information and quality wase it was worse than what I was able to get out of AutoCad's render. If you believe it is better I will try to work with it again.

Thank you

[leeminardi]

I did a quick rendering test in Max using Arnold lights and materials (I defined two).  Here's the result with shadows on.

And the same setting but with the one Arnold spotlight's shadows off.

I do not have much experience  with Arnold and am not sure how to reduce the graininess in the image.  There are so many settings!