[alemanda]

Hi,
One question.
Is it possible to drive in some way the exporter from ArchiCad to MXS in order to hide some objects from the GI?
This would be very useful to hide the lamp objects containing (inside them) the IES emitter.
Thanks.
Regards

[Daniel Hruby]

You can do this easily in Studio. Just apply a unique material to those objects in archicad and when you open the MXS in Studio, you can select all objects assigned that material and hide them from GI.

Another way to negate materials in ArchiCAD is to create an invisible material (MXM) and link it to a special ArchiCAD material that you apply to objects you want to render them invisible. This however wont solve your specific issue if you still want to see the fixtures.

If you are trying to increase your light into the room though, you should just add some emitter planes to add light fill to your scene. The light as it escapes the fixture assemblies should probably be left intact as it will create real shadows from the fixture housing. You can use multi-light to increase or decrease the additional fill planes. You will probably need to also make them invisible to camera in Studio.

[alemanda]

You can do this easily in Studio. Just apply a unique material to those objects in archicad and when you open the MXS in Studio, you can select all objects assigned that material and hide them from GI.

My point is to do all this inside Archicad without using MXS.
I think is possible.
It's just an idea for the developers of NL: I think could be possible driving the exporter AC2MW using the ID of each object in archicad (Wall, Slab, Roof, object, CW, etc. etc.).
For example you add GI in the ID field and the exporter hide it from GI, you add CAM and the exporter hide it from camera ... etc etc.

[Daniel Hruby]

Great idea. You could probably create a couple codes to control the behavior of an object. Hidden from camera (HC), hidden from GI (HGI), hidden from reflections (HR), and Hidden from Z-Clip Planes (HZ).

[Daniel Hruby]

It occurred to me that perhaps you could also establish instances using this method? You could put down one tree and make 10 copies of the tree. Then ID those 10 copies with a code to instance them. Perhaps by writing in the Name of the GDL Object to instance? The plugin would then need to use the position and rotation and scale information and apply it to an instance of the original tree object???? Or could you even more simply write INSTANCE into the ID field of any copies and have the plugin figure out what the object is an instance of?

[alemanda]

Using the ID you can control many aspects of the MXS file ... I'm sure it's not so difficult to implement ...