Different emitters, light layers, surfaces

[olafmar]

Hello,
I am trying to model my flat, in order to be able to plan in detail power, shape and position of the luminaries for my living room.
I am currently setting up the lights, since the model is already enough for some first tests.
I have some questions:
- if I apply the same emitting material to different surfaces (for example, 24W to a cylinder within a custom component representing a fluorescent tube), will 24 W be the sum of all the tubes (=instances of the same component) I have? in other words, the sum of all the surfaces with that specific material? I plan to copy the same custom component to different parts of the room, one per luminary.
- if I want to adjust independently the different luminaries, should I use different light layers with the same material, or different materials within the same light layer? could you help me on this topic? Maybe I don't get the advantages of each solution.
- I played with an emitter and I set 4000 K as color temperature, the same value I read on the fluorescent tube. I used the camera model with the dscs315 model and I experimented different white points but the result always appears more yellow as it should (maybe 2700-3000 K). I used one of the material presets, so I think that the material definition is correct! What could I change to make the light whiter, as my eyes and my camera (D40, if it matters) show?

If you have further suggestions, please let me know! I started using Indigo very recently...
Thank you.

[djegoo]

hi

as far as i know, when you take an emitter material, let s call it E1 of 100W power, and let s take a emitter mesh, like a 10cm x 10cm square calles Sq1, the full power will be attributed to this square.
If you copy the square, Sq1 will emit 50W, and its copy Sq2 too, and so on.

if you want to have 100W on both, then you will need to multiply the power by the number of emitters, and i think division is proportional to the emitting surface (maybe i m wrong? but this is what i notice when i work)

2nd point : if you wish to have different temperatures, then yes, you will need to create a Second emitter material, let s call it E2, and, when you render, it can be on the same layer as E1, but this only means that they will both be rendered on the same layer, and that when you modulare their color while rendering, they will change, starting from the temp you would have given them.
If you want to modulate them independantly then you neeed to put them on 2 separate layers.

i hope it helps
For the white balance/temps/displayed render, i cannot help you, i noticed that every tonemapping had their... tone, and it always affected on the render, whatever the temp of the ligh emitter. i often use the Advantix 100CD (top list one) and result is always very nice.

[djegoo]

oh I forgot about white balance : I often use the D65 with the advantix 100 CD tonemapping. i find the combe very satisfying

[pixie]

oh I forgot about white balance : I often use the D65 with the advantix 100 CD tonemapping. i find the combe very satisfying

I'm more fan of DSCS315 myself, but I swing between those two...

[Whaat]

I think SkIndigo might handle emitting materials a bit differently than the other exporters. There are two cases:

1) If you don't enable instancing of the group or component that contains a light emitting material, than all faces in the model that have this material (including faces in other groups and components) will share the power and efficacy settings. So if you have 10 faces that use this emitting material and the power is set to 100W for the material, than each face will emit a power of 10W

2) If you enable instancing for the group or component that contains a light emitting material, than all emitting faces inside that group or component will share the power and efficacy settings. So, if you have a luminaire component and you have a face inside that component that uses an emitting material AND you have enabled instancing for that component, than the power of that luminaire will be 100W (if that material settings is 100W)

[olafmar]

Thank you very much! I will try and I will eventually post a couple of images showing the results.

[djegoo]

WOHOOO whaat i did not know about instancing lights!
My last knowledge about light and instancing was that we could not create instances with lights... i must had read wrong or maybe my knowlege was too old!
ha that enlights my day! gonna test some renders then! haha