Maxwell Render | Official public forum

Forgive me if this has been explained somewhere (like in the manual!) but I haven´t bought V. 2 just yet.

With IES doesn't the light need to have some physical size in order to create the correct softness of the shadows? Do you approximate the physical size and shape of the fixture? Or how is this handled by Maxwell?

Peder

Peder, although I haven't used them myself it says in the v2 manual that the IES data is best applied to a small sphere. Because the intensity is stored in the IES files I don't imagine that altering the size of the sphere will change the softness of the shadows but you can change the colour of the light.

There's a great little IES viewer here - http://www.rip3d.net/downloads/html/015.htm

The size of the sphere you apply the IES profile to will matter, larger size sphere = blurrier shadows. I think you have to get the size of the spehre roughly the size of the emitting surface in the IES profile. It depends I think also on the IES file itself, how sensitive it is to the size of the object, how many measurements it has.

OK. Thanks guys. Then this tool is aimed more for spots and the like and not so much for fluorescent types of fixtures right?

Something like this for instance:
http://www.erco.com/en_index.htm?http:/ ... =en&modus=

/Peder