In the bottom is a picture of the same lava lamp in a ‘room’ at night. The lamp is on a bookshelf and as we can see, the light is working great. It’s a bright blue light reflecting well at only 5% off the surrounding shelves.
The light at its source appears bright white. Maybe it’s faintly tinted blue, but it’s mostly if not entirely white in appearance. My question: Is there a way to keep the effect of the light at it falls on its surroundings, while turning down its appearance at the source?
Think of a window. When you look out a window at night, it’s dark. It’s not a patch of white. You can see everything out the window, but there’s ambient light. The ambient light comes through and illuminates a room to some degree. This is what I’m talking about. Can that be done in SW3D? If so, how?
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
Oh, the gods. That's a great million euro question. The first thing to do is forget about MTL and OBJ, and other codes, they won't help. There is no way to get reflected and scattered light in the SH3D program. But you can make a high-quality ILLUSION of such light in the room. And the whole task will be to find the proportion between the light output of the lamp and the power of the ILLUSION of diffused light. SH3D has a royal lamp for such purposes. This is "Invisible inward light half sphere". make a cap with a size of, for example, 250 X 250 X H200. Lift it off the floor level by 30 cm, cover the shelf rack and your blue lamp with such a hood. Assign a blue color to the hemisphere, too, and start with 1% power for it. Make a trial rendering of 400 pixels at the third quality level. It should take you 3-4 seconds. And now you need to find the right ratio between the power of this hemisphere, the power of your blue lamp and the brightness level in the render settings. Everything will work out! The total power of the hemisphere should be no more than 5%, otherwise it will dominate your blue lamp. You can download such a hemisphere here A better diffused light effect will be from several hemispheres in a low-power room. They will give a smoother diffused light. Or rather, his ILLUSION.
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
a quick example. I applied two hemispheres with an up and down direction. You can do it in different ways. The color of the hemispheres is blue. The hemispherical capacity is 2 and 4%. The power of the blue lamp on the shelf is 70%.
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
Our resident lighting magician at work!
The original LightShapes library: LightShapes.sh3f You can read more about it here (heading "More lights capabilities") and here (halfway down the page).
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
Thank you. <😊 And I appreciate what you’re saying about creating its illusion, as you’ll see in a few moments.
I haven’t seen this library of light shapes that Keet mentions, but thanks for that Keet! I’ll definitely install that!
So, GaudiGalopin3324, basically you’re saying, take or create two ½ sphere light shapes, color them the appropriate color, make them invisible? Place one on the center floor and the other on the center ceiling, do the balancing act between light sources, and it should create the illusion of ambient light in the room? That’s excellent! Great, and thank you! I do have another question though, to take my original question a bit further…
Though the goal is ambient light, is it also directional at all? I’ve provided another example from my current project below.
So, I’m building a reproduction of the crew quarters from Star Trek: The Next Generation. As you can see, there are no windows, but the ILLUSION of windows. <😉 As when I tried to create them as windows, positioning them on diagonals made those annoying 90 degree corner angles appear, and I couldn’t have that. But I digress.
What you see is basically the window shape used much like a canvas. I applied a starscape to it, which then distorted, but turns out I liked the effect. Anyway, to my 2ndary question: If I positioned those invisible spheres, not on the floor and ceiling, but against each window, would they create the >directional< illusion of light streaming in from these illusory windows?
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
I haven’t seen this library of light shapes that Keet mentions, but thanks for that Keet! I’ll definitely install that!
It's the same library as GaudiGalopin3324 already mentioned and gave a link to. I just provided the oroginal link on Sweet Home 3D.
As you can see, there are no windows, but the ILLUSION of windows. <😉 As when I tried to create them as windows, positioning them on diagonals made those annoying 90 degree corner angles appear, and I couldn’t have that. But I digress.
You can solve that by placing the windows in a vertical wall and export both wall and windows. Then import it and tilt it to the correct position. This works assuming your windows are imported as "Door or window" so they cut a hole in the wall. You can set a d value of d 0.3 or d 0.4 for the glass material in the MTL file to make it transparent.
I'll leave answering the light question to GaudiGalopin3324, he's much, much better at that than I am. I do know that if you create the windows like I mentioned that you can place a light behind them that will shine through the glass (if your glass material is transparent).
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
You can solve that by placing the windows in a vertical wall and export both wall and windows. Then import it and tilt it to the correct position. This works assuming your windows are imported as "Door or window" so they cut a hole in the wall. You can set a d value of d 0.3 or d 0.4 for the glass material in the MTL file to make it transparent.
I'll leave answering the light question to GaudiGalopin3324, he's much, much better at that than I am. I do know that if you create the windows like I mentioned that you can place a light behind them that will shine through the glass (if your glass material is transparent).
Really? I didn't realize that would work. That's good to know. Thanks! Unfortunately I don't believe it would work here because that diagonal roof panel is also arced at 7% to accommodate the arced outer wall, and I know that any arc at all causes a problem with doors and windows. You advised me about that with an earlier question I had. I ended up rebuilding that diagonal roof several times from individually arced pieces, to now, one large arced panel, which works much better than the earlier versions did. Oh, I got that yafaray thing installed, thanks!
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
Really? I didn't realize that would work. That's good to know. Thanks! Unfortunately I don't believe it would work here because that diagonal roof panel is also arced at 7% to accommodate the arced outer wall, and I know that any arc at all causes a problem with doors and windows. You advised me about that with an earlier question I had.
With an arced wall that wouldn't work, only with a straight wall. From your image I thought the angled roof part with the windows was straight. A 7% arc is difficult to see on a flat image. If you could keep the part with the windows straight you could still try the window-in-wall method, otherwise you're out of luck. By-the-way, that would mean that your windows also have a 7% arc?
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
The original LightShapes library: LightShapes.sh3f You can read more about it here (heading "More lights capabilities") and here (halfway down the page).
I think I spoke too soon. I can't seem to download the file. I click on the link but nothing happens. By contrast I went looking for other links for it and found a few at a page called Sourceforge called 'Logos Lightshape' and 'Neon Light shape' and those downloaded fine. I saw the confirmation messages stating they were added to the libraries, but not for the original Lightshapes library. Here’s a pic of all of my light options currently under the search word ‘light’. Unless that library was incorporated without letting me know, but that would be a 1st so far. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/am97zj7ey4ekz8...&st=3h6o2aj3&dl=0 Does that link work for you? Do you have another I might try?
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Re: Can light be dimmed at its source (or can the source be removed) w/o losing the effect of light?
With an arced wall that wouldn't work, only with a straight wall. From your image I thought the angled roof part with the windows was straight. A 7% arc is difficult to see on a flat image. If you could keep the part with the windows straight you could still try the window-in-wall method, otherwise you're out of luck. By-the-way, that would mean that your windows also have a 7% arc?
Ok, that's what I'd figured, and, oh, no, I wouldn't imagine anyone else, looking at that pic would know the roof panel was arced. I only know because I made it and I forgot until I just went and checked. Actually, no, the windows only rotate on the one axis so they generally match the wall, but if you look closely you'll see they don't all line up perfectly. I had to push some back a tiny bit further so that they would at least touch the wall due to the arc. Some parts of them sit a little more recessed into the wall than other parts of the same 'window', but this was the best solution I had to sustain the illusion of it all being as it should be. I used to have greater gaps where the windows weren't even touching the walls, and that took me a while to discover because with the common colors, perspective and layout, it didn't show until I manipulated the pieces in certain ways.
