France
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
I can't believe you've not have loads of replies about your new rendering plugin, it is incredible!! Maybe most people haven't noticed it yet?
I don't think the 2500 hits on the blog article about the plug-in were made only by lost Internet users and search engine crawlers.
would it be possible to give the lights a surface to make them visible in the '3D view' for easier positioning
If you want to make them visible in the 3D view and 2D plan with the current version of the plug-in, the name of their 3D shape should be prefixed by "sweethome3d_window_pane" in the OBJ file (use a sphere.obj instead of light.obj for example) and they should be flagged as windows in PluginFurnitureCatalog.properties file, because the only objects that are not rendered are windows named this way. I can build such a file if you want to, but then these lights will behave like windows when magnetism is active (they will make holes in walls when drop on or close to them).
even when hidden this way it still produces a light source in the final advanced photo render.
Please, consider this behavior as a bug that will be fixed in next version.
Is there any way to make large size lights (like a lighting softbox) so soft shadows can be generated?
That should be possible, by changing light radius. In the next version, I can use a variable radius depending on the size of the light.
Also would you be able add an ambient lighting adjustment?
SunFlow doesn't seem to have such kind of light.
could you add a button to the Advanced photo window so a user can select either Landscape or Portrait for the rendered view?
Why not...
It's so good that I'm surprised you didn't replace the normal rendering method and release it as 'Sweet Home 3D version 4'!
From your remarks, I'm was right not to do that since it's not perfect yet. I'll probably add the advanced rendering parameters to Sweet Home 3D itself when SunFlow will be able to compute light going through panes and other transparent surfaces.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
UK
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
I can't believe you've not have loads of replies about your new rendering plugin, it is incredible!! Maybe most people haven't noticed it yet?
I don't think the 2500 hits on the blog article about the plug-in were made only by lost Internet users and search engine crawlers.
Hi Emmanuel thank you for your reply,
I think possibly half of those are from me finding the plugin so amazing that I kept going back and re-reading parts of the blog
Keep in mind that all the lights generated during the rendering are still unable to go through transparent panes because of limitations in SunFlow. Nevertheless, Sun light and exterior lights are able to light the interior of a house through window panes with this plug-in, because it doesn't render them.
This is one area I would like to ask you about, because I think I have misunderstood what you have written. To see what would happen to the lights I tried a very quick test, here are the results.
Exciting results!
I used walls to build a box shape, added a room, then an extra wall across the middle, placed some windows and a door then some props and four lights on the other side of the room so the only way light could enter was through the door and windows.
PS: Left the time set after midnight to make sure no other lighting could influence the test (important because even with the 'Add sun light' button disabled the Sunlight is still rendered but with less intense shadows, I guess with the button disabled it is simulating external ambient daylight light and enabled is like strong Sunlight on a bright clear day?) Oh and I also made sure the only rendering tick box is the 'Turn on lamp lights'
In case you would like to see how I positioned the lighting I've added a download link for the model. >>> Here <<<
Further ideas: I was thinking rather than you having to develop lots of different lights would it be easier to create a plugin for users to design their own style lighting, so they can choose intensity, radius and also importantly the colour of the lights (at the moment there is only the white lights you kindly made or the yellow light from the supplied candles)
Thank you for your time. Hope your week is going well.
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
Ah I've just discovered what you mean. If a user creates a glass object then imports it but without ticking the door/window tick box then it appears as glass in the 3D view but light doesn't render through it; if they then take the same glass object and import but this time click the door/windows tick box it still appears the same in the 3D view but is rendered as an invisible object so light passes through the space.
Aww I got all excited again after my above test results!
This also explains why I wasn't able to add a shiny surface to one of my floors. Knowing that imported objects can be coloured or textured with an image map I wanted to make a wooded floor with a slight gloss to it (without having to make a massive imported shiny wood textured obj or lots of the same object repeated)
So within (Sweet Home 3D) I used a box (the building has two floors) for the first floor, applied a repeating wood jpg texture and was then going to overlay a thin, small (made larger in Sweet Home 3D to cover the textured box) semi shiny glass obj over the floor but kept wondering why the floor with overlaid glass obj always appeared black with reflections while the glass in a doors didn't seem to stop the light, because they aren't actually rendering the glass as glass.
France
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
Hi,
I just released the version 1.2 of the Advanced rendering plug-in with the following new features: - I removed the threshold set on shininess. In the previous version, a shininess smaller than 64 was ignored. If some objects get too shiny, you can decrease their shininess by setting the "Ns" value in their MTL file (a 0 or 1 value meaning not shiny) and reimport them, or by setting their color in Sweet Home 3D with the furniture modification dialog. - I enlarged a little lamp lights to soften shadows. - I added "Depth of field" and "Fisheye" lens types. When "Depth of field" is chosen, focus point is computed at 2.5 m (100 inches). This distance sounded reasonable to me to get a nice effect, but we could change it as it could also be possible to change the depth of field itself. - I added 3 check boxes to render walls, floors and/or ceilings a little shiny. They will change the shininess of all the walls, all the floors and all the ceilings. I guess it could be nice to set the shininess individually on each wall side, floor or ceiling, but I'm not sure it's so useful.
Here's a capture of the 1.2 dialog:
As you can see, shininess (on the walls and the floor) and focus blur (on the objects at left) remains quite subtle, and I hope you'll like it that way. Objects very close to the camera or very far from focus point will get blurer as shown on this image:
Of course, don't expect that these additional options will speed up rendering process!
As plug-ins management automatically choses the most recent version of a same plug-in available under different versions, you won't be obliged to remove previous versions after installing the new version.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
UK
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
Amazing! Thank you Emmanuel
You do realise as a photographer I'm now going to ask you for the ability to control the depth of field by selecting an aperture setting from a drop down box (f/1.0 - to f/22) and also the ability to choose the point of focus
The last part could be quite difficult so I'll give you a few days off first! (Just kidding) I guess the virtual visitor in the plan view would need to have a marker projected in front of it to indicate the point of focus and also a dotted triangle expanding both towards the virtual visitor and away at the same time, to help illustrate the depth of field.
Just one idea for a future release!?
PS: Are the new larger size lights available to download or does the new plug-in interpret the 3 lights as a larger by default? Can't wait for a massive softbox size light for ultra soft shadows, it's your new lighting plug-in and soft shadows that add the most realism to a final render.
France
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
You do realise as a photographer I'm now going to ask you for the ability to control the depth of field by selecting an aperture setting from a drop down box (f/1.0 - to f/22) and also the ability to choose the point of focus
As an amateur photographer myself, I would be tempted to add these settings myself too. But as Sweet Home 3D developer, I prefer to keep it simple and propose more depth of field choices to advanced users. The idea I have in mind now, is to propose maybe 6 different "depth of fields" in the Lens combo box: - Short depth of field / Focus 1m, - Short depth of field / Focus 2.5m, - Short depth of field / Focus Infinity, - Great depth of field / Focus 1m, - Great depth of field / Focus 2.5m, - Great depth of field / Focus Infinity. What do you think of this idea?
Are the new larger size lights available to download or does the new plug-in interpret the 3 lights as a larger by default?
The new plug-in interprets all light sources as twice larger.
If you want to create soft shadows maybe you could use reflected lights close to a shiny surface or an umbrella as a real photographer would do. In case you need it I created the umbrella 3d model you can import.
---------------------------------------- umbrella.zip
(9407 bytes)
(Download count: 8385)
(Shiny umbrella 3D model.)
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
UK
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
Hi, I like your idea of offering a choice for different depth of field. will you be sticking to the laws of physics in that a close focus point always allows a shallower depth of field than a further focus point?
One question in connection with shallow depth of field does SunFlow only have one method of blurring the out of focus areas?
From my first render, with shallow depth of field, sadly SunFlow doesn't produce smooth bokeh, which even though it is out of focus, it doesn't make it look as out of focus as it could be as some edges are quite sharp and angular.
db4tech
PS: For those wondering what 'bokeh' is, in photography it is the quality of an out of focus area in a photograph, some camera lenses produce nice silky smooth graduations in the out of focus areas, while others produce strange uneven busy patterns.
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France
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
A bokeh parameter is available in SunFlow but I didn't try it. I'll have to try it.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
UK
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Re: Simulate sun position and lights/shadows
Sounds interesting!
I have created some extra (coloured) lights for use when using Emanuel's new Advanced rendering plug-in.
There are 8 new lights in total (also notice the fireglow)
The original basiclights.sh3f will need uninstalling or duplicate names will show, this pack also contains the original lights. All lights including originals have been renamed, so when used in a model they will all stay together on a furniture list, making finding them and editing easier.
These have been cleared with Emmanuel.
Have fun! db4tech
Edit: Fix and replace broken image link
---------------------------------------- BasicPlusExtraLights.sh3f
(138071 bytes)
(Download count: 1296)
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last edit by db4tech at May 11, 2010, 1:18:04 AM]
