[adri]

Hi

How do you control the quantity of light coming from an emitter material?

Say I want to model a 100watt bulb. Does the size of the bulb change the amount of light it casts?

TIA

Adri

[Thomas An.]

If you use "watts" then, ... no ... size does not matter. It will emit 100 watts no mater what the surface area of the emitter. (So a larger emitter will look dimmer, because its 100wats are spread thinner over a large area ... but it is still 100 watts).

Now if you want your emitter to be constant intensity at any given spot on its surface then you can switch units to lum/m^2 ... but then note that if you scale-up the emitter surface then your whole scene will receive more light.

[adri]

Thanks for the reply.

Where do you choose the setting for watts or lumens?

TIA

Adri

[Thomas An.]

Thanks for the reply.

Where do you choose the setting for watts or lumens?

TIA

Adri

It depends.
Are you using a plugin ? ... or are you in Mxl-Studio ?

[adri]

Hi

Thanks for your time.

I'm using both the plugin for Archicad and the MXS when I get time.

Just as a quick follow on...I'm building some lamp fittings in Archicad and I seem to remember seeing something about keeping emitter shapes to simple forms as this reduces rendering times...Is that right?

Thanks again Thomas

Adri

[mrcharles]

The suggestion is to use a minimum of polygons (eg. 1 if possible)... render times increase with poly count...

[adri]

So would a circular disc be better than a sphere?

And wouldn't this make a difference to the lighting effect when you bear in mind the reflector etc?

TIA

Adri

[Thomas An.]

A disc would be ok, but a single square plane would be even better.

About the emitter units ...