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I have never been able to get a good nighttime exterior render from maxwell

the main issue is lighting up the interior so that it shows up from the outside.

For example..

high rise building i would put planes and set them as emitters projecting down on each
floor. The effect is that the glass looks completely transparent and the light is harsh..

HOW do i set up a good night shot with maxwell render? I have not found any examples
either.

http://www.maxwellrender.com/gallery/in ... full-image
how do i get the diffused glows from inside? Can i just use one large emitter plane?

thanks

maybe there should also be something reflecting from outside.

and if you're in a city - the night is never black but illuminated a lot.

hi MacRay,


http://www.maxwellrender.com/gallery/in ... full-image

how do i get the diffused glows from inside? Can i just use one large emitter plane? That's how i am currently setting up the light...I don't want to model each emitter so im just using giant planes...the light coming from these planes are not attenuated at all and tend to over saturate the lighting..

well whoever did that render understood that real light requires real light sources. he has positioned small spotlights (or ceiling grid lights) where they should be in real life and the render reflects that. using huge ceiling emitters is never going to look real, because by definition it would never occur in real life.

you should certainly consider lighting with real-world emitters if you want this kind of result.

Can i just use a series of repeated small planes to get the affect? or no

what do you mean by REAL world emitters? What would define their geometry? A plane or an actually Bulb?

thanks

there's not much of a need to get THAT realistic by modeling bulbs when viewed from such a distance, so yes simple rectangular planes will work fine in this case.

This is what i'm getting with simple planes: Very bad...anyone know why?

your interior absorbes to much light. Walls and furniture reflect much of the light back out the building.
Also a plane lightsource does not emit very diffuse. Usually office lights are designed to emit more difuse especially above workplaces. Thats why walls and ceilings even look lit.

Try to make the emitters a bit warmer a well, more yellow.
Francois

HI FV!

Thanks for your feedback..what alternative (repeated many times) can I use instead of a plane? How can i make light more diffuse?
Interior does absorb too much light..but how would i fix this without adding extra geometry? (ie furniture etc).

Yes everything looks way too evenly lit..how can i solve this in a practical and efficient way?

thx

just add a little reflectivness to the walls and especially the floor. Maybe a desk with a light warm grey desktop underneath all the lights. Offices just have a lot of furniture, extra lightsources on the desks etc to diffuse the lights even more. If you like you can as a trick add an emitter to the wall textures.

Experiment with multilight to see if the office lights need more power.

nappy wrote:what alternative (repeated many times) can I use instead of a plane? How can i make light more diffuse?
Interior does absorb too much light..but how would i fix this without adding extra geometry? (ie furniture etc).

Yes everything looks way too evenly lit..how can i solve this in a practical and efficient way?

thx

Hi,

I would try to draw the emitters in Photoshop each floor at once, convert it to mxi and assign to ceilings. You can make it uneven and add a good variation in size, shape and position of room emitters easily.