Much has been revealed ! ! !
Reading posts about rendering left me very much at sea until today when I discovered - with Allan's kind help - what the View/3D_Real_View rendering process does and what it produces. The attached file is the result after fiddling with the lamps and turning them off. With them turned on, there was too much light and I couldn't find any way to fix that. I tried changing the wattage of the bulbs in the lamps with no perceptible effect.
This is a view of a master suite in the design I'm working on.
rh
As you have discovered there are a few bugs in the rendering area, but they are working on it, so hopefully a patch will be available soon.
Once you get the lighting right you will be amazed at how realistic the results can be with Advanced rendering. Basic render will give you reflections and harsh shadows, Advanced with give 'true' lighting. As light comes in through a window for example, it will bounce off the floor and back onto the walls and ceiling as real light does. If you have bright red carpet then you will have pink walls/ceiling as you would in real life. If you only use down lights in the ceiling then it could be quite dark as it only receives bounced light but this is what would happen in reality.
Getting the light right is the challenge at present. One of the first things to learn with TFP is the technique of double-clicking!!! Try it on almost anything and you will be surprised what opens up!! On lights for example you have found how to change the watts to a new wattage. Try double-clicking the Wattage description - you can now set the Scale of the watts out of 100%. If you had a 100W globe then you can reduce it down to 1% or 1W! You can also Load another bulb in effect -you may load a 10W globe and reduce it to 1% - so what's that, .01W I suppose. At present this is what you need to do to get the lights right. (see image for the directions)
On the Settings/ Program Settings/ Rendering you can also reduce the overall brightness (be gentle with this) but personally I have had better results reducing the lights themselves. On the same screen you have the Quality setting - 3 is a good average. 1 and 2 will not produce all the lights, while 5 gives the best quality shadows but takes longer. I did one fairly large project today and for a 1024x768 image it took two and a half hours! Do your initial practices on Basic (it is quick) then Advanced but use a small image. Leave the big image for when you have the lighting right.
On other problem I have ,that I think will also be addressed in the patch, is that you may have to close and re-open the program between each Advanced render or it gets brighter every time! This may be where your superbright results came from.
Your bedroom is looking good - it will be interesting to see how it will look in Advanced rendering. I just made a very quick bedroom with 3 table lights and one ceiling light (out of the view). Table lamps were 5% of 60W and the ceiling one 10% of 60 - that may give you an example. It was Quality 3 and took 4 minutes. Notice the golden glow on the ceiling from the floor and the shadows in the corners as there is no direct light there. Note too the 'gentle' realistic shadow under the bed.
Hope you enjoy the new learning curve!! It is worth it!!
Allan
Another "trick" if you feel the lighting is not right....especially if fixtures show unwanted shadows...
- select the light fixture and adjust the position of the light source (little red cube) in x,y,z to get it in/out of position of a shade or lens etc.
- install an invisible light anywhere....insert a light fixture and make all the materials transparent...position as needed....especially good to fake light up a dark area
may be not "authentic" so use with care to express your ideas of "desired" image....vs. realistic (as calculated)...but also remember calculated lighting is also not exactly correct either.
Thanks for the input, guys!
Playing with lights and rendering might well keep me from finishing the remainder of the project ::)
rh
Finish the drawing first - the screen view is pretty good anyway and a Basic render can be quite real, especially on outside renders. If you really want photographic results TFP will do it but you may not need to go to that extent - it just depends on what your aim is with the project. You can waste a lot of time unnecessarily if you do not have 'photraphic' needs. They are very satisfying however when you do and get the lighting right.
Allan
Another alternative is to export the whole model (or parts you wish to render better) as 3D to .3ds or .dxf and import in another 3D program or to a 3D render program
There you can texture and render to your hearts desire with many controls/capabilities not available in TFP including animations/movies etc.
Same is true for developing detailed dimensioned drawings
Or you could buy Envisioneer, the "parent" of TFP (and much more costly but I don't think the rendering capabilities are much different tho it has had an upgrade version released in 2008)