Night Scene-Backlit Window Effect

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drewski58
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2010 1:08 am

Night Scene-Backlit Window Effect

Post by drewski58 » Wed Sep 22, 2010 1:07 am

I've been using Sketchup and Indigo for a few months but I'm having trouble creating a good night time scene with lighted skyscraper windows. The textures that I have available were taken at night and the windows already have the look I want, but I need to somehow mask off the lighted areas and make them emissive while keeping the rest of the texture dark.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

drewski58

StompinTom
Indigo 100
Posts: 1828
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:33 pm

Re: Night Scene-Backlit Window Effect

Post by StompinTom » Wed Sep 22, 2010 3:24 am

drewski58 wrote:I've been using Sketchup and Indigo for a few months but I'm having trouble creating a good night time scene with lighted skyscraper windows. The textures that I have available were taken at night and the windows already have the look I want, but I need to somehow mask off the lighted areas and make them emissive while keeping the rest of the texture dark.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

drewski58

Hm. Hard to understand what you mean. Post the texture and a sample rendering of where you're at and where you want to get and I'll take a shot.

drewski58
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2010 1:08 am

Re: Night Scene-Backlit Window Effect

Post by drewski58 » Wed Sep 22, 2010 5:57 am

Ok, I've uploaded a sample texture that will hopefully illustrate a bit better the effect I'm going for. Essentially, I need a way to make the windows emissive, as though the light was really coming from inside the building. I guess this would be like a "glow" effect, but I'm unclear as to the proper terminology. I'm thinking I need a way to mask off the windows from the rest of the building so that the proper areas are respectively light or dark.

I suppose another way to do this would be to actually create a non-drawing light source and place in front of the window.

Anyway, thanks again, hopefully the texture sample will help.

drewski58
Attachments
HighRiseNight0003_4_S.jpg
Night Building Exterior

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dag
Posts: 189
Joined: Tue Feb 02, 2010 2:28 am

Re: Night Scene-Backlit Window Effect

Post by dag » Thu Sep 23, 2010 1:23 am

Slap this material on a cube and enable aperture diffraction.
Attachments
skyscraper.pigm
(297.49 KiB) Downloaded 176 times

StompinTom
Indigo 100
Posts: 1828
Joined: Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:33 pm

Re: Night Scene-Backlit Window Effect

Post by StompinTom » Thu Sep 23, 2010 2:06 am

Set that texture as your diffuse/color texture, enable Emitter for the material and away you go. Alternately, in the Indigo Material Editor you can specify the texture to influence the actual emission. I think they're just two alternate ways of skinning the same cat, but play around with it.

The first way, if the texture is black, then it won't emit (black = 0, multiplied by the power of your emission = still 0). You may have to adjust the contrast of the texture.

Or, make a high contrast version of the texture so that only the bright parts will emit, and slot that into the emission texture in the Material Editor, while using the normal texture for a diffuse texture.

Good luck!

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