Artificial indoor Lightiing with no sun light

[djwaterman]

I'm still using the Kray demo and trying to see if this is a worthwhile plug in. Is anyone doing scenes of indoor lighting where there is no windows and no outside light. I'm thinking of a well lit interior such as an art gallery. What would be the best approach to lighting a space like that and having it render fast?

[jure]

It depends a lot on what kind of lighting you are trying to achieve. If it's more indirect diffused light then lumi polygons work very well. If it's more point lights then you can use spot or IES lights. You can also use area lights but try to avoid using many of them because then it gets very slow.

[djwaterman]

Thanks for the advice, I'm trying it out now.

[djwaterman]

Actually, I guess it's a kind of indirect lighting that is achieved by lots of down lights, these are subtle and light the walls and it all becomes bounce around and end up looking indirect.
But, if not actually using lots of little spot lights and using lumi polys, will I get the effect? Don't lumi polygons show up in the reflections (which might be good if they were the size and shape of real light sources but would give the game away if they are large and just simulating a general fill).

And the other thing, if you use spot lights or Photometric lights, do these show up in reflections as they would in real life? Or is that something we have to fake by putting luminous geometry in all the light fittings?

Too many questions I know.

[jure]

Actually, I guess it's a kind of indirect lighting that is achieved by lots of down lights, these are subtle and light the walls and it all becomes bounce around and end up looking indirect.
But, if not actually using lots of little spot lights and using lumi polys, will I get the effect?

Possibly, but using very small lumi polys with very high luminosity value doesn't work well. It's perhaps better to use combination of both then. Using spots for direct effect + couple of bigger lumi polygons to brighten ambient up if needed.

Don't lumi polygons show up in the reflections (which might be good if they were the size and shape of real light sources but would give the game away if they are large and just simulating a general fill).

Lumi polygons won't show in reflections if you do this: set object to unseen by rays+unseen by camera and add the following command to kray header or tailer: lwo2unseenbyrays_affectsgi 0;

And the other thing, if you use spot lights or Photometric lights, do these show up in reflections as they would in real life? Or is that something we have to fake by putting luminous geometry in all the light fittings?
Too many questions I know.

No the light fixture itself needs to be modeled as an object to show up in reflections. Spot or IES lights are just mathematical representations of the intensity of light Emmit from a single invisible point. So it's not that we have to fake it, it's that lights as they are used in 3D programs are "fake". If you would want to replicate the reality exactly you would have to model the complete light fixture with bulb and everything but that would be very time consuming and slow to render.

[djwaterman]

Brilliant. Although that header command seems like something that should just be a button for as dummies to click. So far I'm liking the results.

[jure]

Brilliant. Although that header command seems like something that should just be a button for as dummies to click. So far I'm liking the results.

Yea we will put it into next GUI.