Ray Tracing too Bright 2016

[Anonymous]

Hello Everyone,

So I felt like in previous versions of inventor, Ray Tracing would produce a considerably darker image than normal. In fact, I made presets that I used for Ray Traced model shots in which the lighting was significantly brighter than the Default or Two Lights settings. These worked marvelously.

However, now it seems like no matter what I do (in Inv2016), Ray Tracing creates an image that looks like the model is directly underneith a thousand suns! I've even turned the brightness to 0 for the default lighting setting and still gotten an image so white-washed that it is impossible to distinguish the geometry therein.

Is there a setting I've overlooked or something else that I need to correct this behaviour?

Thanks in advance,

[mcgyvr · Accepted solution]

Sadly...changes like that happen each year as they fix/update raytracing,etc..

I have to redo my lighting style and usually change materials too each time I upgrade..its annoying but part of "change"..

You just need to adjust your lighting.. Sounds like you might not be doing it correctly if you aren't noticing any change..

Are you using a lighting style with image based lighting?

If so try Exposure?

Did you try to play with the ambience setting in the all lights section?

etc....

Just gotta find the one that does the trick..

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

@mcgyvr,

I don't know why it took me so long to reply to this thread. Maybe I overlooked that received a reply at all???

At any rate, I've gone back today and played with Ray Tracing and the Default Lighting Style's settings to try and figure out what was going on. Here's what I've found:

I turned the brightness and ambiance down to 0 for all lights and also tuned the Exposure (since you mentioned it) all the way down (-3) even though "Image Based Lighting" is not checked. Ray Tracing then produces a very dark result. Slightly turned up brightness and ambiance - no changes. Turned up brightness and ambiance to half - no changes. Full - no changes.

I then went back and rolled the exposure up to about .25-ish and presto... brighter image but not white-washed. Then with a few more adjustments to exposure, I managed to get a result well worth using Ray Tracing for. Thank the Lord. I can finally use Ray Tracing again.

With those findings, I have no idea why in the world the Exposure setting would affect the brightness of the model if Image Based Lighting is turned off. But guess what... it does. Drastically.

So mystery solved (I suppose). This seems to be another one of those work-arounds where you realize how Inventor works in contrast to how it appears to be built to work and then moving forward, you know how to get it to do what you want. If that makes sense...

Thanks for your help mcgyvr.