Working with LightWorks - Questions, Tips, Tricks...

[Karl Ottenstein]

Mark B's C4D thread was getting cluttered with LW issues, so I thought I should start a new one to talk about LW issues in general as we all get used to the new functionality. Hopefully, Dwight will share more of his tips and images here! 😉

My minor frustration of the day involves the SunObject and SkyObject lamps, as I'm setting up a new project template for 9.0.

You place one of each of these in your project - location doesn't matter- to get a multi-light sun, for soft shadows, and a multi-light sky dome, for a nice ambient effect. The params let you control the number of lights, etc. Then, you UNcheck "Sun" and "Ambient" in the LW photorendering settings, so that these lights will be used instead.

Here's the rub: If I place the SunObject and SkyObject off to the side of my printable area (they can go anywhere, but figure out where to cast the light) ... then when in the 3D window, when I zoom extents, the location of these lamps is included in the extents (even though they are invisible), and the model is too small. Solution: put the lamps into a layer that only shows up in 3D visualization layer combos, and place the lamps within the model area. Now they don't interfere with plan views, and don't mess up 3D extents either.

Well, one down. Here's the more unfortunate things about using these 'lamps'. When using "Sun" and "Ambient", harsh as they are, they are always ON, regardless of layer or selection settings.

But, if using this LW methodology with sun and ambient off, if you select just some elements, or perhaps a floor, or perhaps display everything visible (but happen to have the LW lamp layer off) ... then you're in the dark. These lamps have to be on a visible layer, and part of the selection set to produce light. Kind of obvious when you think about it...they are lamp objects after all, but not that obvious when you're used to the old 'sun/ambient' behavior.

I frequently render marqueed areas of a building for example. Can't do this with these LW lamps, unless I move them into the marquee.

Am I missing something, or will I have to just keep turning 'sun/ambient' on and off depending on what I'm rendering? On the plus side, the values of these checkmarks are saved as part of a view.

Looking forward to stories of other people's experiences as you dig into LW. 😉

Karl

[Anonymous]

Actually you started the C4D thread Karl, I just got heavy handed.

Anyway...

If only I had read your last post before I tried to use the LightWorks rendering engine.

Dwight Atkinson's apartment model exported to C4D. Initial light and texture setup by Jesper Lund, messed with further by Mark B.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Burginger wrote:
If only I had read your last post before I tried to use the LightWorks rendering engine. I could have saved the cat, which I kicked out of the window in frustration.

I hope your cat has some of his/her 9 lives left and is back on your lap, casting soft shadows.

Karl

[Dwight]

Actually getting some decent results. For more speed in the flythru have reduced anti-aliasing one notch - not perfect but acceptable.

Using cyclorama background for panoramic city image - new LightWorks material definition "constant" defies shadows and highlights - perfect for a wrap-around background.

[Dwight]

get yellow sunlite in there and bobsyeruncle.

Mauve windo lite against ceiling for soft glow.

This is easy to do in Lightworks. Only took all evening to tweak it.

[Dwight]

Yeah. That will be a big step. I wonder why it is taking so long. Probably having trouble with the localization. There are so few people who can translate from English to Strine.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Dwight wrote:
Actually getting some decent results. For more speed in the flythru have reduced anti-aliasing one notch - not perfect but acceptable.

Looking AMAZING, Dwight! I'm impressed with the level of detail and entourage that you've modeled in the scenes you shared ... and thus must be throughout this project for the flythru. What a lot of work!

As you've no doubt seen with watching the movie, vs looking at the stills, there is a psychological trade-off between resolution and motion. (As long as you don't have vibrating 'fringing' happening!) I can't recall who did the study and made the remark over 30 years ago when raster devices began to be used for computer graphics ... but they tested people's spatial perception and found that a low-res image that was moving conveyed the same spatial sense as a high-res still; similar relationships discovered between color depth - low color depth motion allowed the same perception as a high color-depth still. (Depends on speed of motion I suppose. A shoot-em-up game moving at the speed of light hardly needs perfect textures, but an adventure game does.)

Please keep sharing! I hope that after your project deadline you can submit some high res images from this home to the GS render contest and share here, too.

This is easy to do in Lightworks. Only took all evening to tweak it.

Karl

[Laszlo Nagy]

Karl wrote:
But, if using this LW methodology with sun and ambient off, if you select just some elements, or perhaps a floor, or perhaps display everything visible (but happen to have the LW lamp layer off) ... then you're in the dark. These lamps have to be on a visible layer, and part of the selection set to produce light. Kind of obvious when you think about it...they are lamp objects after all, but not that obvious when you're used to the old 'sun/ambient' behavior.

I frequently render marqueed areas of a building for example. Can't do this with these LW lamps, unless I move them into the marquee.

Am I missing something, or will I have to just keep turning 'sun/ambient' on and off depending on what I'm rendering? On the plus side, the values of these checkmarks are saved as part of a view.

Looking forward to stories of other people's experiences as you dig into LW. 😉

Karl

If you make these lamp objects visible on all stories, that gets you a bit closer to the ideal

[Dwight]

Lifesaver Tip of the Century to Laszlo:

I rarely work with stories [storeys] but it is easy to imagine the frustration of having no light when initiating a rendering from an upper story without a light object ..... hope it is not the fifth floor because if you can't figure this problem out, you would want to jump!

[__archiben]

laszlonagy wrote:
If you make these lamp objects visible on all stories, that gets you a bit closer to the ideal

thank you! and so simple too!

another 'tip of the month' award to mr nagy?

~/archiben