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Hi all...

I'm working on a lighting project, real world, designing some LED light fixtures. During the course of the discussion with my client, and never one to hide my enthusiasm for MR, I made the statement "Don't forget, Maxwell is the light simulator, so, given accurate settings within the material, we can see exactly how the light will fall on the surface in renderings, and can mess with it in Multilight". This was met with great response. Then the question was raised, "Does this mean that we can then measure the light within Maxwell to see how much light is reaching the surface?".

Ummmm... stutter, choke, cough... "I'll have to look into that".

So, I pose the question, is there a mechanism within MR that I am unaware of that will, given real world, accurate values for the emitters, give an output that is meaningful? A Maxwell light meter in the scene as it were? This gets even more complicated because these are horticulture lights and measure light differently than just "lumens"...

Thanks,

Not that i know of.

Few from top of my head... worth to look into:
Thea render (photometric analysis),
Lux render Irradiance AOV (open source free, physically accurate, spectral...),
Radiance - A Validated Lighting Simulation Tool,
VRay - Light Meter...
even with Corona you have an option

softwares like Dialux or Litestar 4D can do what you want better than the render engine

render engines do it equaly good

burnin wrote: render engines do it equaly good

The engine render the light but it must be created in professional software if the project need that

as mentioned before... not really, these are not highly complex simulations important for structural integrity - user simply needs a bit of know-how and some practice

burnin wrote:as mentioned before... not really, these are not highly complex simulations important for structural integrity - user simply needs a bit of know-how and some practice

using other softwares is easier and give detailed result better than wait hours to render the lights ;

It's not doubled work, it's rendered alongside (no extra work, you get it for free).
Guess you never studied Lux or Thea with radiance (photometric analysis) in mind - you would know otherwise.
No worry then. Do check if you get the chance and the need arises, it is well worth it

Have a great time.

Is there an idea how trustworthy it is though for Lux/Thea? Are there any comparisons with more specialized/certified apps?

For luxrender it is a relatively new feature called Irradiance AOV, and seem to be in testing/calibration phase. Some recent discussions and tests on the subject here and here.