Area Light 19 - Visible in Render

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

The Area Light 19 lamp object has a check box option to make the shape visible in renders or not - When shown in renders I'm getting a greyish/blackish shape. The light is casting correctly, but the shape is like a blackhole ... I don't understand this, is this the correct behaviour? I would have thought that if you wanted to see the shape in the render it would be because you wanted it to glow as a visible light source?

Does anyone know if this behaviour is correct, or whether I've missed a setting in the rendering settings?

Thanks,

[Anonymous]

There Should Be

[Anonymous]

Sorry, perhaps I wasn't clear.

I wasn't looking for the setting, I'm having trouble with the results of using those settings.

I can't figure out why the shape of an area light, while shown in a cinerender render, looks black.

Any ideas?

[MuazOnline]

there are multiple factors to consider in this issue:
- is the camera looking directly to the light source or it's looking through glass from the outside of the building (if this is the scenario you have to adjust the ray depth configuration to be more than 10)
- have you adjusted the color of the light source to be white or any other colors ?
- is GI (Global illumination) activated in the scene ?
the list is long so I would suggest export the rendering settings of this project and upload it here so I can have more analysis of what's going on.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply Muaz... I guess there's settings that I'm not manipulating correctly.

The camera is looking directly at the light source.

The colour of the light source is a 'warm' white... just a hint of yellow in it

Global illumination is on


I've attached the rendering settings to this post, which I've just tested. I also included the resulting image which is a spherical area light, set to show shape in render.

What do you think? what have I missed?

[MuazOnline]

Hey Nick,

can you try to turn off the AO (Ambient Occlusion) and check for me?
check this photo

[Anonymous]

I tried turning off Ambient Occlusion as you suggested, and it doesn't seem to make any difference in this case.
I've attached the render for reference.

Thanks,

[Barry Kelly]

If I am not wrong I think you will find it is just meant to be a light source, not an actual glowing object.
So it will produce light and making the source visible just gives the shape and size of that source so you can see where it is emanating from.
But maybe I am wrong?

Barry.

[Erwin Edel]

If you want a glowing surface (like a LED TV or some fancy spotlight etc), check out the sample projects from ArchiCAD18: http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/archicad-18/rendering/#sample-project

This is a good tutorial that shows how they make surfaces glow: https://youtu.be/J44LzIypdwE?list=PLnXY6vLUwlWVsI6mb8Txb6MYZ4wdGdvaA