I did search for this problem but couldn't find one that fits, so apologies if it has already been covered.
A lot of my 3D real view rendering is very dark. It definitely isn't a real view. For example, I'm trying to find out how a bathroom on the south side (in the southern hemisphere) looks at around 1pm on the shortest day (in June). This is similar to the date right now and our current bathroom, on the south side, is way, way brighter than the rendered 3D view. Through the window, you can see sunlight casting shadows, so there should be plenty of ambient light to light up the bathroom (as per our real life bathroom). The basic rendered view isn't too bad but the advanced view is terrible, as attached. I have no inside lights yet, "Use current time for rendering" is switched off, quality level is set to "high", number of steps is 500 and Antialiasing is set to 4. Rooms on the north side are much better but still darker than I would expect.
Any ideas?
Tony
Hi Tony,
First I would suggest that you check the Transparency setting for the glass in the window, as even the sky looks a bit dark. Mine is 90% and no Specular (reflection).
The other thing I would suggest is to use the highest quality setting (1500 steps).
Rendering does require some experimenting and there are many things that can affect lighting in Real View (as well as in real life.) I have tried to replicate your model to illustrate.
1. The first image is much like what you got - 500 steps.
2. This was rendered on the highest quality setting - 1500 steps.
3. This is identical settings to 2, except that the window has been Flipped, so it has a window ledge on the inside rather than outside, like yours (Note how much lighter it is, as the light on the window ledge is bounced around the room).
4. The last image is the same but has some light coloured paving below the window on the outside (Note the extra light on the ceiling reflected off the paving).
The Sky (background image) does not emit light (unlike a real one) so the only light going through a shaded window, is from reflection off outside surfaces - the outside wall and the window in it (this contributes quite a bit), the window ledge itself and the terrain, which is why the light coloured paving under the window brightened things even more.
I hope this helps you to get a bit more Real View ;)
Allan
Thanks for taking the time to check this, Allan. I wish I was using your system because the changes made no discernible difference to my rendered view, and I even used the highest quality setting, taking nearly 5 minutes to render (it's a shame it can't make use of the other 3 CPUs I have).
I've attached the basic rendering, the advanced rendering with 1500 steps and highest quality setting, and the same again but with window glass instead of semi-transparent glass. It's difficult to see a difference between the last two but the first basic rendering actually lets me see the bathroom.
I didn't mess with the brightness setting as the help suggests that leaving it at zero works like a camera which automatically adjusts for the light.
Even if I got the rendering to be as bright as yours, I wouldn't now know which rendering is "real" and so wouldn't be able to determine if the design I'm working on would actually work.
One thing I didn't mention was that there is a projecting wall on the other side that can't be seen through the window at that angle. This is similar to what we are actually living in now and there is no problem with the light but what I was hoping to check is whether a roof connecting both projecting walls would significantly impact the light. The views attached don't have that roof but I've tried with and without a roof and it makes no difference to the rendered view.
Is the basic rendering reasonably accurate, light-wise?
Hi Tony,
I realised that you have a wall that was not visible (I noticed the shadow of it) so I had also included that. I have now rendered the image again with a roof between the two walls and, as you can see, the difference is negligible as you found. When you see the two images side by side they look identical. When you flip from one to the other in a folder, you can see the ceiling is slightly darker, as is the right hand wall, which gets reflection from the ouside wall on the left. However, in the real world, most of the light into this room would be from the sky. As I mentioned before, the TFP sky does not emit light, so it does not really replicate the real world very well, relying, in your view, on reflected light from other exterior surfaces. When the sun is actually shining into the room the 'reality' of it would be much closer. The Basic render would not be a good representation of reality either, as it does not take any notice of reflected light at all, as does Advanced render, so the lighting in Basic render is largely an 'example' rather than a reality.
I am not sure why yours is rendering so dark. Other things can affect it and the only way to check would be or me to have a look at it, try rendering your specific model and see if I get the same result (and if I can find a reason). I don't think my computer is the reason, as it is not particularly high spec. My Advanced render took less than 2 minutes, but my model was just one room and a couple of extra walls - yours was the whole building which would take much longer. Advanced renders the whole building unlike Basic which ignores the rest and just renders the camera angle. If your model is small enough you may like to post the BLD file here or if you prefer you can email it to me.
You can play with the brightness setting, it won't prevent the 'automatic camera' effect, it will just make it lighter, as if you had changed the camera settings, to simuate using a more sensitive film. You should end up with a lighter image, but that will obviously not really give you any idea of the true brightness of such a room.
None of of the above really helps with your delemma and maybe TFP is not really the program on which to base a decision. If your existing bathroom is a similar situation, then I would use that as a guage and maybe even rig up a tarpaulin or something to see how much a roof would reduce the light. Quite a bit I suspect. At the same time, you do not spend a long time in a bathroom (unless you have a wife and many daughters ;D ), so use of artificial light for those occasions should not add a lot to the power bill. Having the area roofed, depending why you want it, may be well worth the slight electricity increase.
If you would like me to check out the model for you, my email is alches AT iinet DOT net DOT au.
Allan
Allan,
Thanks for the reply and the suggestions. Yeah, I guess RealView isn't "real", so far as ambient light is concerned. I guess that's fair, as it would be pretty hard to program in what was happening to the light outside before it entered the room.
Given that I won't get a realistic view of the bathroom, I don't think it's necessary for you to look into this any further, but thanks for the offer (I'll keep it in mind). The idea of tarp over the walls is not a bad idea and I might just do that.
Thanks again.
Tony
I'd think you might want to know this info too: (but it also depends on what "look/result" you are trying to achieve)
- Interior lighting is best achieved with lights also included inside...otherwise you are counting on outside lighting to light an interior which in real life is often not very bright unless there are many large windows. (In which case you might want to turn off the sun light.)
- or consider adding outside lights which provide more light thru the window but are not seen.
- Yes, being a 32bit program and not optimized for hyper-threading and multi CPUs, TFP could be much faster. Try both renders (basic and advanced) as the results differ . . . . and you will find that using advanced renders, the second render pass (same as basic pass; raytracing) uses all cores (in my case, eight). . . . so the adv result may not take too long compared to basic.
Although in basic renders, only 1 core is used....why? I have no clue why they programmed it that way; seems dumb to me.
I have done many studies of sunlight thru windows at various times of the year and found TFP to be a bit lacking. My approach was to "build" the house in TFP and export as a 3D model, import to another 3D program (I used Carrara) and made videos of sunrise thru sunset. Carrara sun controls are far superior and the sunlight is even corrected for color changes from dawn to dusk. Shadows have many controls too. Blender is a free program that will do same.
Also of small note is that TFP shadows render slightly differently in basic vs. adv. (angles differ).
Thanks for the comments, Doug.
Since most of the time is spent in radiosity, with advanced rendering, I don't think the fact that raytracing uses all cores will save a noticeable amount of time, except in lower resolutions or a low number of steps.
I realise that inside lights would give me a brighter picture but I was really after a view with only natural light from the sun (if indirectly). I realise now that that is probably too much of an ask for a fairly inexpensive product (though I would guess that there is probably some well understood way of calculating how much daylight would enter a particularly sized window that wasn't directly in the sunlight).
I suppose that a separate program is an option but that is quite an expensive option compared to rigging a tarp over my existing courtyard! :)
Hi Tony,
I don't know whether you know this or not but if you do an Advanced render, you can create multiple image from the one render, so if it takes a while it does not really matter. When you do an Advanced render, it calculates the shadows and reflected light for everything - not just what that particular camera sees. So, once the first image has been produced, you can select the Radiosity button and then move the camera and take as many images as you want. It only takes seconds to produce these further images all from the original radiosity render. If you close the dialog box, then you will have to do the radiosity phase again.
I am concerned why you image is coming out so dark. Even if it not practical to use TFP to see how bright the bathroom would be, you should still be able to see it and get some idea how things will look. I feel that something else is affecting the render, so, if you would like, I would not mind looking at it anyway, to see if I can find out why.
Allan
Yes, I just remembered another trick....if an image is too dark you can do post render work.
The best is Photoshop (make a copy layer and set it to "multiply") and there are many other ways to get brighter, better images with better contrast, clarity, color, sharpness etc.
You can do a lot with almost any image editing s/w. Free, GIMP, can do great stuff too.
Thanks for the tips, Doug. I'll keep them in mind.
And thanks to Allan regarding the fact that the radiosity calculations are for the whole building. It's quite cool to be able to move around in fairly high resolution.
I've sent Allan my bld file to see if he can spot why it's rendering so darkly. However, this design has been through many iterations and I've now seen a better way to arrange the rooms, which doesn't have the potential issue of a roof over the rear courtyard blocking light to the bathroom. So I'm not so concerned but, as this progresses, I will be checking back on these tips to get some good views inside the house.
Quote from: Tony Weddle on May 31, 2013, 09:32:07 PMAnd thanks to Allan regarding the fact that the radiosity calculations are for the whole building. I will be checking back on these tips to get some good views inside the house.
My approach to rendering several views (as well as used for design work) is to insert several cameras, each named for a view, and using the view manager to create a tabbed view (always 1 for floorplan and as many others for 3D as needed).
There are 3 big advantages: 1) able to render repeatable same views for comparisons 2) named cameras listed for easy adv renders 3) easy to jump between views.
In the render dialog box, once the first adv/radiosity render completes (I always set to do follow-on auto raytrace too)...without closing the render window, you can select another camera view from drop down list) . . . and these renders go fast with raytrace done with all cores and no re-do of radiosity.
see attached screen grabs from current active project
Thanks for that tip, Doug.
I've now redrawn my design, adding some internal lights. Rendering is fine with lights on but still dark with just daylight. For example, this is the main room of the house, with daylight switched on (which seems to turn off the internal lights for advanced rendering, which is fine). Time is noon on the shortest day of the year, so lots of sunlight should be coming in. In my current actual home, the main room has less windows, though similar proportion, I'd say, and it's cloudy, at 3 in the afternoon, but the light is way better than the rendered image of the new design. I have the number of steps set to 500 and the brightness set to 1.0. It was much darker with the number of steps set to 200, so I guess I could just about manage to get a bright image with many more steps and brightness notched up more but surely this should be a lot better, even with default settings? I also notice that the default wall coverings appear to be a gloss finish (you can just make out reflections next to the table here but some reflections I've seen are almost mirror like, when reflecting sunlit surfaces). This seems bizarre for wall finishes but now I've got lots of wall sections with gloss paint, effectively; what's the easiest way to get a matt finish for all internal surfaces?
Hi Tony,
The only way to get a decent render internally is to set the quality to max (5) and 1500 steps. Use a very small size image to save render time and check for brightness. When satisfied make the size larger. Most of the lightening occurrs in the final steps. To render internal views with lights on, turn daylight off. Daylight will turn interior lights off.
Some texture do default to gloss and gloss surfaces will increase render time and affect lighting results too. I only use gloss on obvious surfaces (glass, polished timber etc) and only a small amount (Speculation setting 1-5% only) .
The gloss level is changed in the materials library on the Properties / Appearance tab, but you need to change this before using the texture. It will not update textures already used in the model. to change existing ones you can select a wall, right click and Select All Similar then right click again and go to Properties and change the setting (click the texture image and then tick the Display box at the bottom). The Specular slider will change the setting on all the walls selected but be careful if you have other rooms with different textures on the opposite side of the wall. The left and right side of the wall is in relation to how it was drawn, where the green wall end marker is where you started and red where you finished.
Let me know how you go.
Allan
Quote from: Allan Chesney on June 14, 2013, 11:31:41 PMLet me know how you go.
Not very well. I think I might have to give up the idea as I'm fighting against the program.
I got a reasonable rendering but forgot to change the wall paint to a matt finish. So I did that, saved to a different file and then tried to render on the highest resolution. The program stalled. After a restart, I tried again on a slightly lower resolution (high) but got an object parsing error. It seemed to be the floor but I couldn't figure out what it was complaining about. Then the previous design file started getting object failures. I thought it might be some wall joins, where I got an internal wall to join flush with an outside wall. That seemed to fix it when I tried on a low resolution but when I went up to higher resolution, the object parsing error came back, even though I didn't change anything in the design. I just gave up - it's taking far too much time. I tried repairing, shifting walls and floors but nothing worked, so I'll have to make do with the normal program 3D view, unless I've got oodles of time later to do the complete design again from scratch.
Thanks for your help.
Hi Tony,
If you are getting parsing errors there almost certainly a corruption somewhere and Advanced Render and higher resolutions will complain! You mentioned you suspected a Floor issue. Did you delete and replace it? The way to test is to turn everything on in View Filter then turn off all floors and render. If it works the floor is the problem. If it fails again turn floors back on and turn off walls and render again. This way you find the group of objects with the problem. If you have other Locations then you can filter them out also.
Send me the file if you would like me to check it out. Would be quicker than starting again.
Allan
Tony,
If you want both inside and outside (sun, faked) lighting, turn off sun, place exterior street type lights in place to shine into interior (placed to simulate sun position but not so you can see the lamp post thru the window in the rendered output).
You can often change textures of light fixtures to transparent/invisible to keep from seeing the fixture....or position the fixture out of view but adjust the light bulb position to desired height. (For example located a light fixture above the ceiling and below upper floor, but set the red lite bulb cube perhaps 1' to 2' below the fixture.)
I have tried many lights at low wattage to get even lighting distribution but with little success.....low wattage bulbs get overwhelmed by one higher wattage bulb or the sun. Best to have all lights about the same power.
Often a small light fixture position change can fix undesired/unrealistic shadows. Ray-trace shadows are harsh. Advanced renders distribute light/shadows better...usually.
Hi Doug,
I think from Tony's original post, his aim was not to produce an image as such but use TFP to see if it would show how much natural daylight would lighten a room without needing artificial lighting. It is obvious that it is expection too much of it to expect that - faking it defeats the purpose obviously.
Interestingly Envisioneer has a new rendering engine and one of the options is a 'real sunlight calculation' (haven't tried it yet). It may do the trick but I have a suspicion that TFP won't inherit it.
Allan
Thanks for the comments, Allan and Doug.
Allan, I was prompted to try again by your reply. Yes, it did seem to be the floor except that the error started to appear after I'd already had successful (if dark) renders. I'd considered removing the floor and re-inserting except that I have room divisions and may want more. Re-inserting the floor effectively removes the divisions, which can't be re-drawn as the help says they can only be used with automatic floors (which I find remarkable as I think the old Floorplan 3D had the capability). Anyway, I tried replacing the main room floor as I don't think I will be dividing that room (though the option is now closed to me). It worked. But the floor was created automatically, so I don't know what went wrong.
I didn't get a reasonable midday render, as below (note the loss of colour on the matt walls and at the far end). I've now added some curtains (drapes) to the ranch sliders in the main room and now daylight rendering is much darker than I expected (and check out part of a chair back on the left, which has lost all of its colour). However, I can use internal lighting for any renders I want, but is there any way of opening the curtains, other than creating my own? You're right that I wanted to see if there was plenty of light inside, during the day but I agree that I'm expecting too much, despite the program's claim that it's like using a real camera, which it definitely isn't.
Thanks again for your help.
[Edit - actually the first render is with curtains/drapes, so I removed them for another render (highest quality, 1500 steps), attached, which isn't much better]
Mmm. I think the camera was set slightly into the wall/ranch slider, at least on that last render. This seems still darker than I would have thought, but it isn't too bad.
Hi Tony,
Yes you will get very different effects if the camera is inside the wall! It actually does better than a real camera in that way - a real camera does not do at all well inside a wall ;)
Actually many times TFP renderings are very close to an automatic exposure camera. If you take a photo with a window and sunlight coming in, the camera brightness will drop to prevent overexposure of the sunlit area or outside scene and everything else will be very dark. A brightly lit object in the foreground will have a similar effect on the background. If you point the camera into the darker areas however it will adjust and be brighter - unfortunately, because TFP renders the whole room, it still sees the bright spots and darkens the other areas as a result.
That's my theory anyway! ;D
Re the floors: What are you using the room dividers for? I have just tried using it to make some different floor surfaces within the room and it worked regardless of the way the floor was inserted. I deleted the original auto floor and all the room divide lines were still there and other floors could be inserted into the divide zones. Again, depending what you are using them for, there are likely other ways to achieve the effect you want anyway.
Allan
Hi Allan,
Well, in one earlier attempt to get the rendering working, I deleted the whole floor, then inserted another for the whole perimeter. The room divisor lines were still there but there but I could not paint anything except the whole floor in a room. The help says this: "Note: You cannot divide a floor that was created with a Floor tool." That seems pretty final. In fact, I just tried dividing the floor of the main room, for which I had replaced the floor and clicking with the paint brush inside on area covered both areas. So I'm not sure how you managed it.
In several rooms, I'm using the Room Division tool to have tiles next to the ranch sliders and carpet elsewhere.
For now, I'm OK, provided I don't want to tile different areas of the main room in different ways, which is unlikely but possible (e.g. tiling the kitchen area differently).
Hi Tony,
The Paintbrush will not work but if you insert a floor into a divided section it will work. If the division is surrounded by another floor, eg to make a central carpet surrounded by wood, then click a carpeted floor in the division area, select the inserted floor, right click and elevate it by 1mm. This will raise it above the timber floor around it So you will see both textures and PaintBrush will now work.
For this scenario however it is easier just to insert a rug. The rug can be changed to any texture, eg your tiled section. The rug automatically sits on top of the floor but you can set it to microthin so the edge does not show.
Another option is to insert a floor, right click and choose Cut Opening. You can then put a new floor in the opening.
You can also insert floors "by Picking Points" (start insert then right click before clicking into the room). This can be any shape and if you have OBJSNAP on you can easily join to other walls and floor shapes. PaintBrush will now work also as they are separate floors.
Allan
Thanks, Allan. you certainly know your stuff! That gives me a few ways to do it. It's a shame that the program help on Room Division doesn't include pointers to the information you've given, since it clearly indicates that floors created with floor tools can't be divided. Your information seems to directly counter that (and it works, I tried), which, my having failed with the materials paint brush, seemed to be accurate.
Oh well.
Thanks again.
Tony
Hi Tony,
What the Help says is technically correct. When you use the Room Division tool on an Auto floor you can use the PaintBrush to change the texture and if you drag the Division line the texture will move with it. Effectively the floor is divided and remains flexible.
If you use the Room Division on an inserted floor you cannot use the PaintBrush but you can insert another floor into the Division and it will work. Technically you now have 2 floors in the one space and the two textures will fight with each other in 3D views. That is why you Elevate one a fraction. If you now move the Division line, the two textures will remain where they were. The floor is not actually divided - you just have 2 adjacent floors, the Division simple being an insertion marker. It can be moved or deleted but the floors will be unaffected - they will remain where the Division was when they were inserted.
It amounts to the same thing except for the flexibility of the Division line. However the inserted floors are now flexible in their own right so the end result is the same. As you said, links in the Help files to the other options would be a good way to go.
All the best with your project.
Allan
Hello Friends of Turbo Floor Plan.
My problems:
1. I can not make the rendering of the image "clear";
2. I can not insert a railing at the top of the stairs.
3. And my biggest problem: I do not know if it's because of the amount of items, but when I see the picture, I walk by it, everything is very slow.
I do not use hardware acceleration, even having a video card offboard.
My system and hardware:
1. Windows 7 home edition 64bit SP1
2. Intel Core i5-2500 3.30 GHz
3. 4GB of ram
4. NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT
If a colleague can spare some time to help me, I appreciate it.
And, if possible, be clear, step by step, because I am pretty new in using the program, close to the capacity of you.
But I'm learning .... :) ...
Thank you.
Do not worry about the shape of the roof, because here in Brazil, we do not have snow, especially in Rondônia.
Your PC is adequate and should not be very slow. Not super fast, but reasonable.
Did you try using hardware accdelearation "on"? It will make screen work much faster. Or are you talking about renders? If so, what are your render settings? some renders can be very slow even on a faster PC..
Don't know what you mean by making an image "clear"? Please explain more.
I did not open your .bld file (no time), but railing at top of stairs should be easy...it is a separate item, not part of the stair itself...just insert railing.
Doug.S
Ok Doug.S
Let me explain.
1. the "clear" information is about when I use the RENDER, and the image appears like this one attached.
1.1. using advanced render options
1.2. quality level: level 5 (no problem about the time to render)
1.3. number of steps 1500
1.4. updat display every20 steps
1.5. image brightness 0
1.6. enable daylight (clear sky)
1.7. ray trace automatically after radiosity: marked
1.8. enable effects: not marked
1.9. Country: Brazil
1.10. Ciy: Rio de Janeiro
1.11. date today
1.12. time 08:30am
1.13. daylight savings time: not marked
1.14. North direction: angle 175
2. about railing, I think if I turn off collision it will work (I'll try).
3. I'll activate the hardware acceleration.....
If you open the .JPG file, you will see about the "clear" image that I said ... :)
And, when you can open the file "bld", you will see that the colors of the front, they are not dark.
The colors of the front, are not black..... so, what is happening?
About the slowly, is when I move the house. Walk aroud, go ahead, each movment with the mouse.
Thank you again.
There are a few simple answers to your problems.
First the "transparent" railings: These are not transparent but you have used a corrugated metal texture which is shiny, so all you have is a reflection of the driveway and grass. If you set the texture to 'dull' you will not have that problem or use the paint textures instead.
The black walls are 'freestanding' in the sense that they are not connected to make a room (see image). The Exterior texture of a wall only appears when walls join to make an enclosed space. Walls that 'stick out' from the enclosed space are by default regarded as Interior walls and will render black as interior walls only react to artificial lights or reflected sunlight through windows. You can fix the problem by using the Room Divide tool to draw what amounts to an 'invisible wall' between the open ends and then the Exterior texture will appear and render correctly. You can also use the Wall Properties / Basic / "Force Left (or right) Side To Be Exterior". The side of the wall you need to change is left or right depending on how the wall was drawn, where the green marker is the start and red the end.
Exterior rendering is generally good using just Basic and this will also render the walls correctly. Turn off interior lighting in this case. Advanced rendering is generally used for interior views with artificial lights. It can be used for exterior views but usually Quality 1 is sufficient and the Exterior walls must be defined correctly as discussed above.
Moving around is slow as you have a lot of furniture, objects and cars, that use up computer resources when you move. Turn on Hardware Acceleration and use the View Filter to turn off things that you do not need while you are editing the plan. Turn them on when you render.
Exterior rendering is generally good using just Basic and this will also render the walls correctly. Turn off interior lighting in this case. Advanced rendering is generally used for interior views with artificial lights. It can be used for exterior views but usually Quality 1 is sufficient, but the Exterior walls must be defined correctly as discussed above.
Allan
Good morning Alan
Has anyone told you "I love you" on international day friend?
I'm kidding.
But, thank you so much for your explanations. I'll try to make the modifications.
And happy day friend.