Okay so lets give some background. I was flowing a tutorial from the architecture academy. Its basically a 2floor house with a pool in the foreground. Anyways they wanted me to create a indirect light source to cast light on the ceiling of the 2nd floor. That worked just fine. Later in the class I had to upload several IES lights to the 2nd floor. These lights also worked like they were suppose to. So at this point everything was fine. Later on, I decided to delete the IES lights and change them by switching them from VECTOR CURVES to PNG. I did this because it would give me more control over the the position of the lights.
But now none of my interior lights work on the 2nd floor of the house. Now if I were to altD my lights (IES/Emission) and move them to a new layer OR outside the mesh they work just fine. They cast light.
How do I fix this? There seams to be something inside the 2nd floor blocking out the light. Anyways any ideas?
Here is my Light Path Node setup. The odd thing is, is that this node setup is what the tutorial asks for. So at some time before the windows on the 2nd floor were working. That means I was able to see my emission/IES lights on the top floor. Since then I didnt adjust the window light path node set up. I’m still trying to wrap my head around how the light paths nodes work. But how does this look to you? I tried moving the noodles around but I didnt get good results.
Also it does seam like the windows are a problem, because if a zoom into the house in rendered mode, I can see the throw patterns of the lights. So it must be the windows right? Any other ideas for fixing this?
The tutorial tells you to leave the bottom input of the second Mix shader unconnected?
That’s imho hardly ever a good idea, as no input = shadeless pitch black.
Is there any way you could post a simplified example scene that shows the problem? Would make troubleshooting for us so much easier…
Yes, I just finished watching the tutorial again, the window glass Light path node set up is correct. I can vouge for that because it worked before, because I was able to see the emission/IES lighting.
Here is a more simplified example: I took an IES light inside the house duplicated it and moved it OUTSIDE the house. Once I do that I can see the light throw pattern on the exterior of the house. So in conclusion it seams to be that, any lights “emission/IES” inside the house on the second floor dont show past the windows. (But before they did):eek: . Before it was very bright, shadows etc. It looked great, but now its flat. Its driving me crazy.
What I actually meant was: Can you post an example file that shows the problem? You could e. g. delete everything but the lamps and the windows, make sure the relevant textures are packed into the file and then “Save As” with a new name. Then upload e. g. to pasteall and let us have a look.
There are so many possible factors that can contribute to this issue, that it’s almost impossible to diagnose without having the full picture. I guess that’s also why you got so few answers to your question so far…
Is there another .blender uploader that has a higher limit? I’m having a hard time getting the blend file under 30MB
This is a snapshot of what I would upload. It does seam like an issue with the windows. As you can see, the lights are working, but something with the window isn’t right
Low light situations with glass/gloss can be very problematic in cycles, but there is something very obvious and basic which you need to address first. Samples. You have the preview set to 10 samples. In the render settings, samples, set preview to 500, get a cup of coffee and see what you get. Then you may have to clamp and play with other settings.
And for sure you can’t just leave the bottom slot on a mix shader empty.
Well I just tried raising the render preview samples to 500, unfortunately it didn’t work You can see my node set up for the glass, I want to maintain realitstic glass, so what would you recommend putting into the bottom slot of the mix shader?
I would delete the rightmost mix shader, and just feed the output of the single mix shader into the material output. Window glass doesn’t do much refracting and I think most arch viz in cycles uses transparent mixed with glossy based on viewing angle. Show a screenshot of 500 samples.
Set filter glossy to 1 - 5, and you can try clamping indirect to 1. Still not working?
Then save a new version, pack the images, get a Dropbox account and upload the blend.
@CorsaiRally: Your problem is in your glass material. The lamps inside shines on the floor and than the rays bounces as diffuse rays. They hit the window and the shader sais it is pure black for them. They never reach the camera because the shader blocks them. You need to input the trasparent BSDF into the second (currently empty) slot of your second mix shader. If that doesnot work there is another problem in your scene.
EDIT: What I wrote is incorrect. I tried the shader and it works well, so the problem must be somewhere else.
Well I tried deleting the mix shader (rightside). The results are the same. I also tried plugging the transparent shader into the 2nd mix shader slot, that didnt work either. I’ll have to use dropbox.
You have set “Clamp Indirect” to 0.06, which means that all brightness values for indirect rays will get cut off at 0.06 ( = next to nothing)…
Clamping might be a bit tricky to understand: That parameter does not mean that the brightness is cut by the entered value. It is cut to the entered value. So, the lower the value, the more of the brightness will get cut away and clamping values below 1.0 will result in a pretty extreme brightness cutoff. Imho the clamping values should always either be 0 (= off) or >1, otherwise you’re even clipping away the 0.0 to 1.0 brightness range of any non-HDR image.
You might need to tone down the strength of your lamps after adjusting the clamp setting, otherwise they will totally blow out the room.
See how you got an answer within an hour after posting your scene file? That’s why you should always provide scene files with your support questions…:eyebrowlift2:
Lol, :eyebrowlift: Okay well I’m going to try adjusting the Clamp to see if that works…
UPDATE! - The clamp indirect was originally set to 0.06 I changed it to 0.00 and the interior lights come through the window!!! But you are right in that fact that I have to adjust the IES light intensity so it isnt so blown out. Also there are tons of fireflies but this can be fixed by rendering a high amount of samples?
There is nothing wrong with using clamping against fireflies - if the values are somewhat reasonable…
I mostly start with something like 4, perhaps going down to 2 in extreme cases.
Its weird as I was playing around with the clamp settings, the windows would become black. I never had this problem in cycles before, especially while following a tutorial.
You can see my node set up for the glass, I want to maintain realitstic glass, so what would you recommend putting into the bottom slot of the mix shader?