Rendering a light

[Anonymous]

Hi

I've got a project which I need to render an incandescent bulb on an assembly lighting the rest of the assembly. Any tips on how to do this?, I can't seem to make the bulbs filament a light source in any way. Is the effect just achieved through the material properties?.

Thanks

[Marco.Takx]

Hi Chris,

Is this something that helps you?

Self Illumination

[blair]

Use Self Illumination

Page 7-8 

[Anonymous]

Hey
Thanks for the replies, I've not had time to try this out fully. Does the self illumination only reflect a light of a certain colour?. So will need a global light on my assembly as the self illuminating parts are not a light source?.
I guess the brightness can be varied by the opacity of the glass around the filament?.

Thanks

[-niels-]

Not sure what you're trying to accomplish, but here's a quick comparison between lighting a scene with a self illuminated surface and using a point light.

This is inside an enclosed box, so as to rule out the influence of the IBL.

If you take a good look at the render time, you'll see a massive difference.

If i had to render lights, i'd rather use local lights instead of self illuminated surfaces.

(2016 file attached for the heck of it.)

[Anonymous]

Hey 

thanks for the files, very interesting. 

I've been trying to model a bulb on a light As shown in the attachment. 

I've used local lights in this as without it, it doesn't seem to cast a light source from the self illuminance. not sure if this is my lighting setup or something a self illumination object doesn't do.. 

spot lights seem to work best, but the self illuminance setting just gives the effect of the filaments glow and seems to be more difficult to control the brightness of it.. 

[-niels-]

@Anonymous That's a nice design, would make for a great Friday picture if you can get that lighting the way you want.

I'm not sure if Inventor is really suited for this type of lighting, for the best effect i think you will need to use both options.

So self luminance on your filaments to get those to glow and using point/spot lights to simulate the light they bring to the scene.

It'll be a bit weird since your light has a long shape which is hard to do with just a point light.

I know what i'm going to say next is because of my personal preference, but i think it would be easier to do this in 3DS Max.

(or any other program that has more options for realistic lighting)

That would require a learning how to do it there though...

Do you have access to 3DS Max through a suite or collection?

[Anonymous]

Hi Niels

Thanks for your help. I was thinking the same, there's no way or mapping a light onto a piece of geometry.

I do have access to 3DS MAx in my suite, I've never used it. If you could point me in the right direction that would be great.

Thanks

Chris

[-niels-]

Which version are you on?
I'm currently using 3DS Max 2018 with the Arnold render engine and i know that the Arnold lights have an option to use a mesh (geometry) as a light source.

Seeing how you lighted your screenshot, you're after lighting a scene with just your model.
That makes my starting tutorials a little useless (+ the fact that they're for MentalRay) as they're mostly for setting up a scene with Image Based Lighting (IBL).

Here's my macro with the links anyway:

---

If you're interested in using 3DS Max to make renders, but don't know how to start, try the tutorial made by Jakub Reichman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8p6L6TZkOY )

The people over at Design&Motion also have a Tutorial on this, you can find it here:
http://designandmotion.net/autodesk/max-morgan-a-minimalist-guide-to-rendering-in-3ds-max/

And you can find some more tutorial videos by Marion Landry here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowqs8sl9-jv_B1VIOBrWd89aCf6DjbDW

Happy Rendering!

---

I haven't really used the "mesh as lightsource" option yet, so i can't really say how to set it up.

If you're on an earlier version, you might have to use a different render engine like MentalRay or iRay.

(maybe even the default Scanline or ART, though i don't know how well those handle lights)

I'd be willing to give it a go myself if you can share your model, just to learn how the mesh lights works.

[-niels-]

@Anonymous I couldn't resist playing a bit with the mesh light, so i created a simple lightbulb with a longer filament and placed a few in a dark scene.

This is the result when lighted, bit silly in realism but that wasn't the goal.

And if you think the glass looks weird/noisy, it's because i added a little roughness to make it less transparent.

I've attached the 3DS Max 2018 scene, i hope it's of use.

I don't think i'd be able to truly explain the steps involved, but you could import your model into this scene and go from there.

Let me know how it works out, i'll try to assist if i can.

[Anonymous]

Hey

Thanks I can't see this at the moment as I'm on my phone. I'll have a look into it and hopefully get something working with3DSMAX.
I get a lot of noise in the inventor renders, I can't seem to get rid of it. Time of render doesn't make much difference. I'd hoped all the stray lights would soften into a nice glow.
I need to get something rendered over the weekend so will keep looking.
The inventor render does seem quite limited in settings, I thought it would be much more powerful.

The mesh setting you mention allows a meshed surface (the filament of a bulb) to become a light source?. 3Dsmax uses meshes and not ipt parts etc?.

Thanks again.

[Anonymous]

I had hoped I could use the cloud to render, can I go from inventor to fusion 360?, is that another option?.

[Anonymous]

Sorry for another question! But being a rendering newbie, to get a scene for my light is it best to just model a flat back wall and table?.
Getting a suitable 3D perspective image seems very tricky.
I imagine this method doesn't have shadows that work as well?. As in it's not a real surface just a perspective image.

[-niels-]

@Anonymous Questions are ok, no need to apologize.

Let's see if i can answer them:

Noise in the render: are you lighting with self illumination? that will be noisy, as you can see in the inventor preview i posted earlier.

It would take ages to get it to reduce to an acceptable level, if it can get there at all...

3DS Max Mesh vs inventor parts: Yes, 3DS Max is not a solid modeler. It can work with imported solid bodies from Inventor though.

The mesh shaped light also works with those solid bodies.

Cloud & Fusion: I don't use Fusion really, but i do believe you can import your inventor models in there as well, so it could be an option if you know how to render with Fusion. I have no clue on how Fusion handles lights though...

Scene for your light: You could use a back wall and table, it depends on what you need to render and how you want to display it.

The lightbulb image i made uses a simple plane as the ground and nothing else, but if you'd need the light to hit a wall and/or bounce of other surfaces then those would need to be in the scene as well.

You didn't mention which version you are on, but if it's 2018 then i'd suggest having a look at the lightbulb scene i attached.

It has that ground plane in it, with a bend modifier so you could bend it upwards. (if you can find out how to access the modifiers in 3DS Max, the tutorials i posted can help with that)

Hope that answers you questions a bit.

[dgorsman]

"Powerful" is somewhat relative in this context - many of the rendering engines that are consider so have relatively few settings.  While a number of the more niche ones have literally hundreds of switches, toggles, and sliders.  However only a select few combinations of those settings produce reasonable results for most circumstances, which is why the others don't really need them.

For the overall goal here my first inclination would be to not try to physically illuminate the scene with the light bulb, at least not for the finished product - it will always look "not quite right".  Now that you've got an idea of what the lighting will look like fake it in with ambient and other lights.  Render the bulb/filament as a separate layer and post-process it to make it look like it's glowing, and composite it with the overall image so it looks like the bulb is throwing light.

[Anonymous]

HI Niels 

Thanks, the image of the bulbs is just the look i am aiming for, I'll have a try with your scene in 3DS. 

I'm on Inventor 2017 at the moment, I've 2018 installed, but I'm not aware of any big rendering changes between them. 

I'm a little confused on the rendering environment, I seem to get more scatter than when in normal assembly mode with ray tracing turned on. is that normal?. I have only so far rendered unto 150 iterations, maybe I need to let it run a little more?. I've changed the anti aliasing a little but to no noticeable difference, admittedly i'm just clicking buttons here.. The help files don't say much on the methods used. 

So in the 3DS example (I've not opened it yet) you've used a mesh face (the filament) as a light source?. 

Just to run before walking.. can I create an animation in 3DS max?, the assembly is configurable, it would be very cool to explode one model and recombine into a different location. Is this too complex?. 

Thanks again. 

[Anonymous]

Ok 

So I got my model into 3DS Max but I can't seem to edit and assign material properties to it. 

The youtube videos although very helpful seemed to just let items be dragged and dropped. but I couldn't get this to work on my model, any tips?. 

I can select the bodies from my model in the tree but can't connect that to a material, so everything renders in grey. 

Very powerful is 3DS, seems to be ideal for rendering what I need. 

[-niels-]

Hi Chris,

I'm not going to comment on the Inventor rendering, as i don't do enough with it to give an answer i'd be satisfied with.

Now for the 3DS Max questions; my example uses both a self luminant (emissive) color for the filament and lights that use the filaments as their shape.

As for not being able to assign materials, just guessing here, if you've imported an assembly it might have come in as a "group".

If you drag&drop materials on a group you should get a selection to apply it on "object" or "selection", where individual parts can be done by choosing "object".

It would be easier to "open" the group so you can skip that dialog; select your assembly in the browser and then in the top menu choose "group > open" or "open recursively".

Regarding the "running before walking", yes you can animate... 3DS Max is a very powerful animation tool.

I don't do a lot of animation so i'd suggest looking for some youtube tutorials if you really want to dig into that so soon.

It might be complex, it might be relatively easy... depends on what and how you want it to move.

(note: the reason i was asking which version you were on was because of the 3DS file, which i saved in 2018 and makes use of the Arnold render engine.)

[Anonymous]

Hi

I got 2018 installed. when I open the file I get a message box saying missing dll's. 

I hit ok and the model loads in all in black, when I render it, it just renders black, there is some setting which is missing or not loading in my version of3DS, any tips?. 

I see what you have done made a flat base plane, added the bulbs and made the filaments material emissive. there is a lightsource also for back lighting.

I also managed to load in my inventor model and could manipulate it using the group open reclusively, thanks for that, it's not a very intuitive command!.

I hope from these I can start to replicate your scene with my model and get a similar result. 

Is it possible to setup a scene, add lighting and a camera, then save this to bring another model in a different configuration?. Also can I in anyway assign material properties to multiple objects ideally at once?. if I have multiple bulbs and each has an emissive filament will I have to drag and drop it on each one?. Can I create a group and select them all by name?. Within inventor they are a single item patterned. 3DS sees these as groups which I can expand with the open recursively command. I can't seem to ctrl or shift select them in the tree and assign a material to all. is it possible?. 

I've no idea what the Arnold engine does but the videos you linked to referenced mental ray, are these just different render engines and although will process things differently and have different strengths and weaknesses, either will give me a good result. emissive material works with either engine?. 

I typed all this out then figured out that the missing files appear to be the material properties. I'm assuming these are part of your library which is whats wrong in my model. I think I can recreate these myself in my model, but the scene itself is a great example!. Thanks will try get a finished view up later.

[-niels-]

@Anonymous sorry for the delay, weekend and all...

After reading your post i realized you are using 3DS Max as part of a suite, which means there is a high chance that Arnold isn't installed.

That would cause the missing dll issue, so make sure you download Arnold from your account management page.

(more instructions here: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/3ds-max-forum/where-is-the-arnold-render-engine/m-p/7017181#M135618)

In regards to my scene, yes it's a flat plane, the filaments are emissive and there are 3 (mesh shaped) lights in there, one for each of the filaments.

Your comment about the render engines is correct, Arnold and Mentalray are different ones which each have their strengths and weaknesses.

My scene is set up with Arnold materials and lights, which might not work with Mentalray or other render engines.

Emissive materials work in both engines, but they might need their own "shader" to work.

I'm also unsure if MentalRay has mesh shaped lights.

In 3DS Max, once you've set up a scene you can "merge" other scenes (or parts of other scenes) into them.

If you're going from Inventor for the different configurations, this is possible as well.

Just make sure you "merge" with the active scene and it will be placed at the origin.

As for applying colors, drag and drop is an easy way to apply materials to a single object but there are options on the material editor to "assign to selection".

So,yes, it is possible to select all your filaments in the browser and assign the required color in one go.

Or if you're on the slate editor:

(You can switch between slate and compact from the "modes" menu.)

Hope this gets you going.

And i have to note this at least once; i'm a 3DS Max enthusiast, i like the program a lot but i'm definitely not an expert with the program. (no formal training, just these forums and youtube to learn)

So i'll help as good as i can, but my knowledge might run out at some point.