Shadow/darkness Intensity

[Djordje]

wr1nkles wrote:
Is there any way that this dark (Almost Black) area can be decreased so that i am able to see the "actual colour/texture" of the under side of this roof.

The reason i say this is that in "real life", you can still see the underside of a roof and the texture, not just darkness.

///

Also, can this be fixed in any other way than placing a light next to the area, or modifying the position of the light/sun objects.

Yes.

By Graphisoft licensing Radiosity module for Lightworks.

Until you do the Radiosity, the shadow will be black until you put in the fill light.

But:

Think about this:

In life, we NEVER stare at one point, our gaze flits around and the eyes adjust automatically. So, therefore, if you do stare at the sun drenched wall, the shadow next to it IS black - at that exposure. Only, your eye already saw the underside at the roof at a different exposure, and your mind is automatically making a composite image.

Hm?

[Dwight]

soffit darkness is a serious issue. I cope by making the material assigned to soffits glow - a constant, or highly reflective to ambient and diffuse light.

Yes, it is artificial...... and not necessarily solved by radiosity.....

[Dwight]

If you think of the lightworks engine parallel to photographing the building, the same problems occur as faced by a photographer.

Radiosity can solve these problems because you can make light rays decay at a slower rate than in reality, activating and illuminating dark corners.

Shooting upward aganst a bright sky, soffits will be murky.

But I sense a mood change as the frustrations of LightWorks begin to appear among our users. Believe me, writing a book about solving these problems is a big chunk of raw meat and me with no knife or barbeque.

I feel like those guys in "Quest For Fire." My version, shivering here dressed as I am in ArchiCAD's raw fur object is called "Quest for LightWorks," as I rub two stick objects together trying to make soft shadows.

[Dwight]

nikrink expostulated: "reality of the picture."

ha!

the choice is simple - everything should look like Kodachrome on a sunny day!

What do you think people want to say "yes" to? "Happy happy happy", or "gloom gloom doom?"

Unless you are making "Minority Report."

[Vitruvius]

Nik,

Therein lies the nub of the issue. On one hand you have advice to "think like a photographer" yet on the other, most architects wield a camera and know that buildings just don't look like rendering engines make them look. And soffits certainly don't glow in reality!

You can get a great interior shot of the Pantheon, single source illumination via a 30' oculus 135' in the air - but - no computer rendering programme I've seen will give a similar result with the same lightsource.

All the tricks and tips really underline the basic crudeness of rendering programmes - it takes a lot more to make them look real than it would in reality!

I'm personally very curious about rendering but I don't use it for presentations because, quite frankly, it's way too technical and mastering it probably isn't profitable for most architects. A lot of architects can draw very well but renderings always go to specialists for a good reason - work flow and productivity.

But, I'll keep plugging away at it as well.

Cheers!

[Dwight]

absolutely correct! We all feel so betrayed that rendering is not "automatic." And that the people who made the system themselves might be skilled programmers but lack the artistic sense to make it go smoothly.

I give the advice to "think like a photographer" because photographers arrive with enough lights to make a space illuminated well enough to photograph and know how to dodge and burn their enlargements [or digital files] to bring out all the details. Totally unlike reality - more like the accumulated space memory so important to real estate sales.

In the case of the soffit, or any underlying element, the thing turns black without some special treatment. So for people actually interested in representing their work, I humbly hope that solutions like these can penetrate the consciousness of our community.

Illustration remains something that is best practiced by a specialist. Most of my work is for ArchiCAD users who have a complete model but lack the knowledge to create a passable rendering. I can't hope to complete with the really high-end [who aren't using ArchiCAD] guys having ten networked computers on their shelf to rapidly prove and then render jobs in short order.

[Vitruvius]

Dwight,

If I'm going to "think like a photographer" and have to haul around my 2x2 Hasselblad and all them lights and reflectors (metaphorically speaking) - why would I want to shoot architecture?

Photographers have done wonders with nothing more than Sol, a tropical beach, Hawaiian Tropic and....

Cheers,

[Dwight]

the use of light modulation goes back a long way. And there's no beach that yields a publishable photograph without some kind of fill or scrim.

[Dwight]

too bad Gehry's Disney Center in Los Angeles has all of those black garbage bags on the back tower. Think maybe the neighbors didn't like the glare?

[Dwight]

true.