[Petero]

can someone tell me where i can find tutorials or help implementing IES lighting in Maxwell? thanks. Peter

[Half Life]

In a plugin or in studio?

Best,
Jason.

[Petero]

I use formZ-with a plugin, so normally i just model a rectangle with one side and assign it a maxwell emitter material. but i don't know what would be the procedure if i will use IES info. should i model a circle? does the form or shape of the emitter have to correspond to particular criteria? thanks a lot.

[Half Life]

Create a new MXM material with an IES based emitter layer.

You want to assign the IES file based MXM material to a small sphere (lowpoly is fine) -- the material will define all the lighting characteristics... the sphere is just there to give the correct normals to replicate the testing environment used when measuring the IES file from the original light fixture.

I'm not sure if the new Bonzia3D plugin will work for this but I remember reading in the release notes it had that feature as well... and how they implemented that may be different in their plugin.

Best,
Jason.

[Petero]

ok, great. this is going somewhere. so an IEs is always mean to be mapped to a shpere? and the shpere could be any size? cool i will try it. thanks, Jason

[Half Life]

It could be any size but if it is too large it may cut off part of the light -- it's best to keep it small... slightly smaller than the original light source is a good bet, but 1cm usually is small enough (for LEDs I've used smaller).

Best,
Jason.

[Petero]

why wouldn't there be 'instructions' for this somewhere? is it just common knowledge regarding IES, or is it that most people already have learned the basic principle from other software?

[Half Life]

Are you having issues getting it to work?

The part about applying to sphere I originally picked up from the manual (and then did a bit of research online about how they were made) and the part about the size learned from trial and error...

In general I kind of think of this as part of the design philosophy of Maxwell -- this is really a scientific product not a strictly commercial application... that it has any commercial application is just a side effect of the science/math at work and some hard work on a GUI. Being that it is designed like that I think Maxwell rewards those who dig deep, do "research', and test... but is generally easy enough that with a bit of time anybody can get really nice results(compared to most render engines).

I know very few people working in a production environment have time to approach it that way though...

Best,
Jason.

[Petero]

hmmm...that's interesting.to be honest i am not even working- i am jusr surfing and asking questions. tests soon. i am not a scientific type. i studied painting, ended up illustrating, and now am maxwelling. you definately have answered my question. the culture surrounding the software. very intersting indeed. i fond th e manual too succint- basically showing you what you could do if you tried hard enough. nothing like a real manual. i mean they explain some stuff, but it's far from exhaustive. i do get good results compared to my previous render engine, but i am sure that i am not at all optimising my materials for example. my V 1.& materials seem to creat extra BSDF's for example when i open them in 2.0, and then i end up sort of groping around -fumbling with re-tweaking the material, and probably en dup losing some of the finer effects built into the material.

i am just not savvy enough to remember the intricate relations between the subtle settings (Nd and all the rest....

[Half Life]

I come from a painting and illustration background as well

I've got a bunch of free videos on the THINK! site that are free and cover alot of the important basics of materials in V2(and up)... I think of it as an addendum to the manual:

http://think.maxwellrender.com/tutorial ... thor=73948

Start at the 7th down (called introduction) and go on from there in order -- it should help alot

Best,
Jason.

[zdeno]

...
In general I kind of think of this as part of the design philosophy of Maxwell -- this is really a scientific product not a strictly commercial application... that it has any commercial application is just a side effect of the science/math at work and some hard work on a GUI. Being that it is designed like that I think Maxwell rewards those who dig deep, do "research', and test... but is generally easy enough that with a bit of time anybody can get really nice results(compared to most render engines).
...

not only Saint but very wise too.
pure truth

[Petero]

Jason

I watched a few videos of yours, and i will continue to do so- thanks for the help.

Peter

[Fernando Tella]

At Think! site you also have the manual specific for each plugin:

http://think.maxwellrender.com/-318.html

[Petero]

Hi, the plugin manual doesn't mention IES lighting.

thanks to Jason's posts, so far i have succeeded in opening a 100w emitter material- assinging some IES data I downloaded from the ERCO website, and getting it to light a simple box space . by using multilight setting, i control the intensity just fine.

as far as controlling the direction hjowever, i still am in ignorance.

I found this website that goes a long way to explain:

http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/LuxRender_Lighting

however what i do not understand is how to control the 'axes' of the light. the above site leads me to understand that an ies file will spread the light around a sphere(i used a small shere as Jason suggested) or point evenly-then within that, the ies data then defines the size and shape of the dispersion.

my question: how does one therefore identify the direction of the 'cone' when assigning an IES data emitter to a shere? is there some default setting , or handle?

thank you!!

Peter

[Half Life]

The normals of the sphere determine the direction the light is pointed (the top is up and the bottom is down), since the IES data is mapped to the sphere surface similarly to how any texture based material would be -- this works great in Sketchup which is a faceted poly modeler but my understanding is that with nurbs this becomes a bit more complicated... I know in the Rhino plugin JD set it up using the native lights in some way, I'm not sure how it might be implemented in your program.

If your program can generate a sphere that is made of polygons then rotating/moving the applied IES light will be as simple as rotating/moving the sphere in the usual way... in Maxwell Studio it works this way as well.

In Sketchup I attach a bit if "pointer" geometry that will show the direction the bottom is pointing without rendering... in Sketchup this is an "edge" or line (which Maxwell ignores) but you could easily use anything you like and just hide it to Camera and GI.

Best,
Jason.