[Josephus Holt]

What's the best way to "make" a recessed ceiling light with a halogen (strong directional white light) lamp that casts strong shadows? I modeled a recessed "can", gave it plastic Maxwell attributes with 0 absorbancy, used a 60w square lamp inside but the recessed "can" does not seem to be reflecting the light out as I expected.

[Josephus Holt]

Yes, the emitter is set inside a cylinder which I made white with the Maxwell plastic setting (0 absorbancy) and at the top a baffle and used the aluminum Maxwell setting...could not find chrome. I increased the wattage of the emitter (2"x2"x2" cube) to 150W and I can see the light on the countertop at the island (approx 6' below) but is not casting significant shadows on the floor.

[Josephus Holt]

I'm considering what you said. However, in a "real life" situation with 3 cans at 150w each, that would definitely create "hot spots" on the (island) countertop as well as some fairly strong shadows under the part of the island that hangs over. Does Maxwell override ALL the FZ lighting/shadows settings?

BTW, what does "uv" stand for (I'm aware of uv=ultraviolet")?

Thx again for your help.

[Josephus Holt]

I'll do what you suggest and run it tonight to see how it comes out.

[Josephus Holt]

Your suggestions were definitely helpful. I'm seeing the can light highlights on the countertop now. I know the wood floor is kind of funky, but I'm just using this model to get the "hang" of Maxwell.

I see that there is too much daylight coming in from behind and to the left (there are openings in the model). I'll close those up and run again tonight to see if I can get the cans to produce some shadows.

[Josephus Holt]

adehus, are you the only one checking these posts???

Anyway, I started the render inside FZ with the scene scale set at .025. I then stopped it and rendered w/the Maxwell Render only (it doesn't crash that way).

I'll see what happens tonight by reducing the outside ambient light by "closing" the room off behind and to the left of the eye point.

[dkessler]

Josephus,

I'm checking the posts, but like you, I am new at Maxwell. Just reading about your problems and what the fixes are is a great way to learn. Adehus seems to be the next best resource to NextLimit when it comes to the formZ plug-in.

[Matthew Schrock]

Yes, the emitter is set inside a cylinder which I made white with the Maxwell plastic setting (0 absorbancy) and at the top a baffle and used the aluminum Maxwell setting...could not find chrome. I increased the wattage of the emitter (2"x2"x2" cube) to 150W and I can see the light on the countertop at the island (approx 6' below) but is not casting significant shadows on the floor.

Josephus,

In order to get the effect you are looking for, you will need to model not only the fixture, but the lamp itself. This includes the reflector and the lens that are part of the lamp.

It will take a bit of searching, but there have some great tests posted on the forum showing the result of different reflector/lens combinations.

Matthew

[Josephus Holt]

Matthew, I think the lights are finally starting to come on

As adehus said earlier, would save beaucoup time if NL would document these in a decent user guide.

Anyway, I found the post you mentioned (was hard to find), and although it was still rather general, I got the idea. I created a lamp reflector with a slightly parabolic shape (copied from an actual halogen reflector lamp), and for right now assigned Maxwell plastic with very little absorbancy. Then I made a (dielectric) lens and inserted an emitter. I only placed three over the island for this test to compare to the others. Definitely begins to do what I'm looking for.

In the next couple of days I'm going to focus on perfecting the lamp, I'll try some other surfaces for the lamp reflector and also see what happens when I add thickness to the lens (the one I made is a surface object with no thickness so might not be effective).

When I get it about as good as I have patience for then I'll replace all the lights in the scene with them, adjusting the wattage here and there, and about that time MW 1.0 should be coming out, so it should also render much faster! I'm feeling a little sorry for my laptop, since Maxwell arrived it's been running almost 24/7

[Josephus Holt]

I replaced all the lights with the modeled lamp/reflecteor/lens emitters and ran for 20 hours. I'm not too crazy about the light placements but that's in part what this program should help us to see fairly accurately before it's actually installed real-life. At least the downlights are doing what they should be doing.