[lsda]

Since Multilight afterwards allows light values like 1e12 and beyond, my lighting usually uses standard exposure values, an environment of around 80 and light emitting faces with values like 1e12.
The problem is, that values beyond 1e6 can not be defined in the material itself. Therefore when I batch render a series, I always have to either 1) load emixer data while the rendering processes or 2) reload each MXI and generate an image later. Both ways consume a lot of time, and I would obviously prefer to adjust the lighting beforehand.
Is there a solution to the values themselves or is there a workaround I have not found out yet (probably it is a matter of relative values)?

[lsda]

OK, it's a matter of relativity. I simply divided the shutter by 1e6 instead of multiplying the emitter by 1e6.
Since I have not yet used motion blur, this will not affect my work. How do designers that need motion blur handle/solve this problem?

[Mihnea Balta]

You can manipulate the ISO value without affecting the motion blur or DOF.

[lsda]

Thank you, but the ISO value is limited by 16000, this is only 1.6e2 more, so a lot less than 1e6 more.

[Mihai]

You should avoid using such extreme emitter values, what situations do you need so much light output from an emitter? Instead work with the camera settings to have a proper exposure. You can change both ISO and shutterspeed, if you don't want to change also the fstop which will affect the depth of field.

[lsda]

The reason for such extreme values is that I use emitters as sun light with adjustable shadow sharpness. That is, constant lumen and variable emitter size allow to adjust the sharpness without affecting the brightness. With Maxwell's sun I could not affect the shadow's sharpness and could not avoid the sun's colouring. In other cases I need extremely much light outside to illuminate indoor situation with small openings. Overall it turned out to be the most easy way to handle with 1e12-1e14 light, there has not been any limitation in illuminating the scenes exept the lack of pre-adjusting the light more than 1e6 (limitation in Plug-In only, not limited in Multilight). Wouldn't it be the easiest to unlock the ability of Multilight for every link in the chain?

[itsallgoode9]

I agree with what Mihai said (that's what I've always heard around here). Just to make sure, is your scene in the correct unitS? Considering how high you say you have to turn your lights it seems like the scale of your scene might be off. When people have to use lights that high powered the scale of the scene is the culprit. Unless you have a special situation, I would double check that first. What program are you exporting from?

[Mihai]

It will be more efficient (sometimes much more efficient) to first render to HDR some physical sky settings. If you want to avoid the sun coloration you can set the Sun temp to 6500 which is the white balance set on the Maxwell camera. You can then blur the sun in this hdr as you like in Photoshop to have a bit more blurred shadows. Or if you don't want any coloration you can desaturate the hdr as you like. It might also be easier to just quickly use the Offset in the IBL params to change where the shadows fall instead of moving the emitter around.
The same about interior lighting with small openings, set the camera to something closer to real world values to reach a certain exposure, instead of having emitters with 1 million or more lumens. Some optimisations in Maxwell won't work very well in these cases, when you mix extreme high power emitters with more normal emitters. I guess we need to post a comprehensive tutorial about these situations, it seems many users work this way and it can increase the noise a lot.

[brodie_geers]

Mihai, that would probably be a big help. I've always been confused about the physical sky/hdr thing. I need to give it a go, I just always forget and it seems counter-intuitive (if hdr's are at least as fast and good if not better, then why doesn't the engine turn the physical sky parameters into IBL lighting at render time?).

-Brodie

[3dtrialpractice]

you could maybe just simply use 2 emitters instead of 1 to get double the power for your sun or interior renders(maybe even 3-6 emitters )

OR If you want soft shadows you can utilize the " hide from camera" "hide from secondary rays" Emmit object properties and setup an wide emitter closer to your subject(s) to help soften out the shadows..

also for interior scenes you could use the "hidden from camera/2ndry rays" to help illuminate you interior via "hidden helper" emitters inside the room or by/in front of the window where you want light to come in.. (as with the hidden properties or creating a "ghost" emitter you wouldn't have shadows from it)

i think there is a tutorial on the forum or on the "think" site that shows how to setup a ghost emitter so it don't throw shadows