Posts Tagged ‘Lighting’

The Daylight System in 3DS MAX 2009 – Part 1

Jan 20, 2009 3DS MAX, Lighting, Rendering, latest

The Daylight System in 3DS MAX has been around for a few releases.  The system aspect of it means that it’s sort of a group containing both a sun object as well as a sky object.  Previously, the sun and sky types were known as standard (similar to standard lights versus photometric lights).  Now, with version 2009, Mental Ray is the default rendering engine and, therefore, the sun and sky types are known as mr sun and mr sky.  These types of objects work well with Mental Ray to create highly accurate lighting environments.  One great additional feature is that depending on the date time and location you set, the lighting level and background will change.  In the first part of this post, I’ll go over how to create a daylight system as well as how to change the time of day thus changing the lighting environment and background.

  • 1.  In my basic 3DS MAX file, I’ve got a large plane to act as a ground plane and a box (fig. 1).

    • cbfig011

    Figure 1 - Basic Box on a Plane


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    Rendering in Revit 2009 – Grouping Artificial Lights for Easy Access

    Jan 13, 2009 Lighting, Rendering, Revit, latest

    Did you know that in Revit you can put all, or some, of your lights into groups?  This is particularly helpful when you want to turn lights off that won’t affect a particular 3D or camera view.  Follow these steps:

  • 1.  While in a 3D or camera view, click the Show Rendering Dialog icon at the bottom of the Revit application.
  • 2.  Within the Lighting group, click the Artificial Lights… button.  When it opens, and the lights are not grouped, this list will look as it does in figure 1.

    • bbfig01

  • 3.  Within the Group Options area, click the New button.
  • 4.  In this example, I’m going to name the group Desk Lamps.
  • 5.  Select the lights from the list, and click the Move to Group… button.

    • bbfig02

  • 6.  Select the group you want to add the lights to from the pull-down menu and click OK.
  • 7.  Now you can simply enter a 0 (off) or 1 (on).

    • Grouping your lights will not only help you to turn them on and off quickly, but, if you choose to organize your groups this way,  it will also help you identify where in your model the lights are located.

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