Nomeradona Tips Series #2 IES Light

I want to share some of my two cents when it comes to IES lighting.

1. Unit Matters:

Alot of people asked this. Why I can't make my IES light to appear, then they do all sorts of tweaking. Some they even put multi-miilion intensity values. Unit in VRAY SketchUp matters and VRAY uses with its DOF value in Inches. This is the same with IES lightings. Therefore the first thing that you will do is to put your unit in inches. So go to your model info, before you render, be sure your length unit is in INCHES.

Since inches and centimeters have little variance, you can also put it in Centimeter length unit.

2. IES Generator

You can create your own IES using Karba's IES generator. It's free and you can download HERE.

Below shows a sample IES light I created. 0 parameters signifies the mid of the light effect. the bigger the angle the bigger the distance of the effect from the center. Once satisfied, you can save your IES light to any folder.

Load the IES file under. Notice that I DID NOT even put value with intensity. VRAY will read the value of the file. 

Below is the render using the IES light I created using the IES generator.

3. Physical Camera Settings

Control the exposure using your camera. I have a very simple VRAY Physical camera setting. I normally start with F number 1.0, Shutter speed 200, and ISO 400. This is a personal preference. Normally with all the IES file that I used, this work as always. Then I adjust the F number if its too bright, if its dark, I normally adjust my ISO with hundred increments.. I guess I am use too on this.. You can opt not to follow me on this.

Below is another render using the above Camera settings but using different IES file.

Nomeradona Tips Series #1 _ Edge Length

I am making my own series entitled "Nomeradona Tips Series". I want to share some of my tips here in Visualization which I hope will strengthen your knowledge and understanding, to be more efficient with rendering speed and quality. I'm not claiming that I know everything, but what I am sharing is based on reading, experience and personal experimentation. There might be more faster, effective and accurate way and I hope that you will look at my tips in a critical way at the same time comparing and contrasting them with yours. There might be prior knowledge that I acquired which are inefficient, you can perhaps discuss them openly. Thank you very much.. Nomeradona

1. I will be giving tips about displacement. Be sure the face that you will displace is converted to "group". There will be no displacement if you don't make it into group.

Now suppose you are displacing it.  .

2. Notice that size of your map. I am using here a 2000px displacement map. My tip is you resize your maps into lets say 520-600 pixel. For quick results, do you know you can also use your diffuse map as bump and displacement maps. Yes I know sometimes its not correct, but in many cases like this carpet, you can do it. You are actually saving VRAY SU memory usage because it will only remember one texture map.

3. Many visualizers use Light Cache as secondary engine and leaving the Edge length as 4. If you do this with fairly large size maps, notice how your light cache calculates. Often I have seen Light cache crawling and it take ages for the light cache engine to calculate the bounced lights..

4. Here is the render.. Notice the render time, and notice the speed of the Light cache calculation

5. Now we will adjust the displacement edge length to a fairly higher value.. say 20. Now notice the LC calculation and the rendering speed.

 

Thanks: Carpet model courtesy of Son Minh