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ianjolin
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Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

Hi Everyone I am new here and I think this tool is great. I have run into a final hurdle with the design for the reception room. We are going to have lighted white Asians orb lanterns.

I have been trying to create them myself with no success. I have tried adding light sources to the center of transparent or frosted orbs with no success. Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you.
[Feb 16, 2019, 6:09:53 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Puybaret
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

Looking at recent Ceciliabr's attempts, I'm not sure it's possible to easily design a perfect translucent lampshade.
Maybe it could worth trying to design the lampshade as a light source itself with Enkonyito's plugin.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
[Feb 19, 2019, 11:56:09 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
hansmex
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

It would be interesting to see a tutorial how you can use Enko's plug-in to make a light source...

H
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Hans

new website - under constuction
hansdirkse.info
[Feb 19, 2019, 1:16:44 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
enkonyito
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

It would be interesting to see a tutorial how you can use Enko's plug-in to make a light source...

The PVR-1.6 plug-in can manage the opaque or unviewable rectangular light panels composed of 2 triangles.

The PVR-1.7betaTest plug-in can manage any 3D shape transformed into opaque light.
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EnkoNyito
[Feb 22, 2019, 2:19:17 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Jonnie63
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

@ianjolin

You probably want a quick practical solution.

The following is definitely not that - I include it only for interest.

There is a rendered called Mitsuba - it can be loaded as a plugin to Blender.

It is capable of some very special material effects, it can deal with multiple optical layers so you can for instance define a gloss transparent layer on top of a reflective metal.

Mitsuba requires a little effort setting up a scene, it can be driven without Blender and does have a GUI but that requires writing the scene script yourself which is fine for a single object but probably a bit much for an entire scene, I used to use Mitsuba for rendering objects and found it very powerful for getting a material to look "just right".

Mitsuba was a research project and is not developed but it is maintained to some degree - it is stable and very well respected, well worth a look if only for interest - the PDF doc is worth a browse pages 101 onwards where sub-surface scattering materials are covered, this renderer offers the user a great deal of power in terms of being able to design multilayer surfaces and realism to optically complex materials but there is a big price to pay in terms of getting it all to work and learning how to use it. t

This is the direction you would be heading in for translucence as light scattering within the material is what distinguishes translucent materials from semi-opaque ones, you will also see a variety of materials representing frosted glass and you can go a lot further than that.

https://www.mitsuba-renderer.org/releases/current/documentation.pdf

See pages 61 62 for frosted glass pics
See pages 101 102 for translucent examples

Pages 41 and 42 offer some hope here, there is a plugin for Mitsuba (standalone) that enables Mitsuba to import OBJ files ( which SweetHome can export ) containing multiple objects, it can interpret the mtl file that comes with the OBJ file to deal with simple surfaces BUT the user can over-ride that mechanism for specific objects or rather the materials that those objects use - so in a nutshell you would be hoping that Mitsuba could easily handle the simple materials automatically but for a small number of key items you would take another path.

I think I will take a look at this - I have not used Mitsuba since leaving the world of windows in favour of Ubuntu a year ago ( did not like forced updates from MS ) - I have found it difficult to get Mitsuba working on Linux.

As far as I understand it the process would be ....

1. Export your entire model from SweetHome to OBJ

2. Examine the associated MTL file in a text editor and see if you can get a handle on the material used for the light shade - you just want a name or ID.

3. Write a simple script for Mitsuba which simply loads the OBJ and then provides alternative materials for the key items you want more sophisticated materials for - eg your light.

If I can get something working that is a reasonable method I will post working examples here.

I may have to re-enter the world of Windows10 - not so keen on that bit !!!

Jon
[Apr 2, 2019, 10:14:55 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Jonnie63
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

Hi again,

I booted up win10 and had a play in Mitsuba using the GUI interface - it looks very workable to me.

I prepared for this by exporting my model as OBJ from SweetHome. I set all ceilings apart from a bedroom that has a mezzanine to not display.

I used the Mitsuba import OBJ plugin to import the OBJ and MTL file to Mitsuba. Around 30 warnings during import which I am sure were down to unlocated textures - ignore for now.

Here is the render produced by Mitsuba



The original is sharper than this - mediafire sharing has converted from png to jpeg and compressed. Some artifacts that would need cleaning up.

The black square over one bedroom is down to my laziness in not setting no ceiling on that room -( a global option would be an enhancement inmho ) and something has been lost in translation as my windows seemed to have lost the quality of transparency in the translate - all can be solved I think - treat it as a rough first pass.

The good news is that Mitsuba converts the OBJ into an easy to read XML scene file.

Here is a random extract from mine....


<bsdf id="Samsung_QLED_55__Studio_Stand_mat2_mtl_2_material" type="diffuse">
<rgb name="reflectance" value="0.0307263 0.00151703 0.00151703"/>
</bsdf>

This correlates name-wise with the TV I placed in the scene in Sweethome so really no problem locating BSDF data for each object or rather each mesh in each object in your scene - as long as furniture has sensible names then you can navigate this file using search.

Even better if you click on an object in the preview 3D view in Mitsuba it will tell you the object ( mesh ) name so if you have one object of interest you should be able to confine your interest to one part of the file using simple text searches to find where you need to be.

The above XML BSDF tag is precisely where you would copy paste more esorteric material data straight out of the
Mitsuba PDF document if you wanted to alter the appearance of that mesh then you might go to page 62 of the Mitsuba pdf https://www.mitsuba-renderer.org/releases/current/documentation.pdf and copypaste

<bsdf type="plastic">
<srgb name="diffuseReflectance" value="#18455c"/>
<float name="intIOR" value="1.9"/>
</bsdf>

and then to remember to add the id...

<bsdf type="plastic" id="Samsung_QLED_55__Studio_Stand_mat2_mtl_2_material">

to the first line.

If Mitsuba does not object to identical ID's it might be an idea to simply add the new BSDF after the original but leave the original in place so that you can do non-destructive testing - the hope would be that Mitsuba would just assign these values to that ID twice but your new data would over-write the first, otherwise just take a note of the old BSDF values and the copypaste your new ones in taking care to preserve the ID.

I have not looked much into the issue of changing view position although changing view direction can be done simply in the Mitsuba GUI.

The above render took around 50 mins on my 8 core machine.

I am used to driving Mitsuba to render small objects I found it a different beast when dealing with a whole
room so my choice of defaults may not be great but here are the render options I chose.

Integrator: Path Tracer
Independent Sampler
1280 x 720 pixel image size
Samples per pixel 2000

Its really a lot less complicated than I thought....

Steps are

1. Get the GUI version of Mitsuba working on your machine ( should be easy for windows users ).
2. Export your model from Sweethome as OBJ setting display of ceiling to false for overhead shots otherwise you will just see black roofs.
3. Import the OBJ into Mitsuba ( its silent twin the MTL file will be automatically uploaded at the same time ).
4. Choose a view
5. Set render options ( click on COG symbol ) - suggest 20 samples per pixel and then ramp up to 2000 if your machine is fast enough.
6. Save the scene file (XML) that Mitsuba produced for you) - take a look in any text editor and play
around after first saving a copy.


Whether or not Mitsuba is a good path for folks who are not interested in frosted glass or translucence I don't know. It depends I suppose on what other renders people are using and whether they are faster or easier to use.

Personally I kind of like the Mitsuba angle - I sometimes prefer to be able to edit a script and run that, I don't get on well with Blender and of course once a script is set up it can be copied and adapted.
[Apr 2, 2019, 12:57:34 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Jonnie63
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

Agghhh - apologies - sorry I made a mistake

**** page 62 in what follows should have read page 69 *****

The above XML BSDF tag is precisely where you would copy paste more esorteric material data straight out of the
Mitsuba PDF document if you wanted to alter the appearance of that mesh then you might go to page 62 *** <== ERROR should be 69 *** of the Mitsuba pdf https://www.mitsuba-renderer.org/releases/current/documentation.pdf and copypaste

<bsdf type="plastic">
<srgb name="diffuseReflectance" value="#18455c"/>
<float name="intIOR" value="1.9"/>
</bsdf>
[Apr 2, 2019, 1:46:54 PM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
Jonnie63
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Re: Lighted Asian orb lanterns assistance request

@ianjolin

Here we are - two images of the corner of a room in the house I am designing - one with plain glass and the other with frosted glass with two different degrees of roughness. One of the human models has a problem but it is confined to that model so I am not taking that as a negative but an issue with the model.

As before these images have been converted from png to jpg and compressed by mediafire so not as good as what I see on my screen when looking at the originals.

First the plain glass, in terms of realism I am pleased to see the dappled shadows from the leaves on trees outside, the faint reflection of the chair window left and the reflection of someone's legs top right.



Then the version with very rough frosted glass window left and less rough frosted glass window right.



These were produced as indicated in an earlier post by editing the Mitsuba import file as produced by the Mitsuba OBJ file import plugin.

The edit involved a text string search and copy paste a few lines from the Mitsuba pdf doc - 5 minutes at the most.

Overall ease or difficulty?


On windows its not that difficult to get Mitsuba up and running - folks with hybrid graphics cards may encounter one known issue, I would be happy to help. It must be remembered that Mitsuba was developed as an academic research tool but it has been maintained over the years by the developers.

On Linux Ubuntu - Mitsuba install can be complicated, if people like the renderer I would be happy to document the process I used - its all down to graphics card issues and supporting libraries.

Once the GUI version of Mitsuba is running ok then importing a very large OBJ export from Sweethome is easy - the rendering is also easy although I would offer recommendations for choices and pre-sets in the rendering engines and settings used.

Editing the scene file produced by Mitsuba so you can mess around with materials is not much more than a bit of easy detective work and use of materials given as examples in the Mitsuba pdf doc.

I will happily put together concrete tutorials if people are interested and want to get it working quickly.

I am on Linux and yes it took me time to get Mitsuba working properly on my machine ( unlucky on graphics card drivers ) but it was worth the hassle for me because I want to get a feel for the emotion of the spaces I am designing - how they affect me and my family.

People can walk into a fantastic designed house but feel oddly cold about it. I feel for us really realistic and honest renderings are the key and past experience has shown that Mitsuba is great at giving an honest appraisal of materials and lighting - I have tried renderers such as Kerkythea ( a long time ago ) and Luxrender but always felt that Mitsuba is a lot faster, accurate and faithful to materials.

I will try and help any who are interested, perhaps on a new thread?
[Apr 3, 2019, 8:18:33 AM] Show Printable Version of Post    View Member Profile    Send Private Message [Link] Report threatening or abusive post: please login first  Go to top 
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