Paper Lanterns.

Support Materials and Textures
#1

I’m trying to set up a scene with some Ikea “chinese lantern” light fixtures. In this style of lamp, the bulb is suspended inside a hollow paper ball supported by wire, which acts as a large diffuser. In my case, the lamps are UVSpheres with the top and bottom vertex removed, leaving circular openings.

I’ve tried several approaches to set up and render the scene, none of which is satisfactory:

1 - Omni lamps + AO. All other materials are set to accept shadows from transparent objects. The “paper” texture is given a high alpha and a high Tralu (translucency). However, it seems that the “paper” material absorbs a disproportionate fraction of the light (the “hot spots” below and above the lamp, where the diffuser has holes, are very hot, and the rest of the scene is very dark). Also, in order to let more light through, the paper needs to be made less opaque (lower Alpha/A value), which looks worse, because the material is supposed to be translucent, not transparent.

2 - Radiosity. Slow. Also, I think I’m missing a switch somewhere to specify the scale of the scene – light seems to fall off VERY fast, no matter how bright or dim I make the Emit property of the paper material. When it’s hot enough to light the majority of the scene, the walls close to the lamps are blown out. Also, for ANY Emit value, the paper texture goes extremely bright. – realistically I want to see some paper grain/etc… (then again, I haven’t applied a texture yet, so this may improve).

Any thoughts? I’m attaching the blend, set up for omni lamps + AO right now…

Attachments

amelobby-radiosubdiv.blend (232 KB)

#2

first emit is not a light source it only make mat brighter!

i’ll check some more

but i don’t like to use AO for this i wold prefer to go with a dark wrold instead
can give much better realistic results i think

hapyy blendering

#3

change some of the light and added and empty to camera to ahve more control where it is looking at

what do you think

hope it helps

#4

This is one of the cases where I’d actually recommend to try and switch to another rendering engine. Luxrender is indeed a good idea for scenes like this (which try to simulate real light behaviour, after all). Setting up the paper material might be a little troublesome, but it’s possible (I did something similar in my recent project).

But then I don’t know if you want to do that or rather stay with Blender.

#5

i don’t see any holes in your lamp sphere ?

i tough you said you set some holes in theses?

also i tried to give it some halo but that; does not look very good?
could try other things like stars ect,

but depends what look you need?

also it might be a good idea to give some thickess to ahve some refraction in the paper
it may give more realist effet may be with some SSS too!

experimetn with theses you may find ehat your looking for

hope it helps

#6

This is a case in Which I tried to recommend to switch to Anotherrenderer. Luxrender Actually is a good idea for the stage (the testsimulates the real behavior of light, after all). Creation of printedmaterial can be a little 'complicated But it is possible (I havesomething similar in my last project).

But I do not know if you Want to do more or Blender.