How to make a LED light stripe?

Vejlstrup

Hello all.

I'm trying to make a LED light stripe, but it won't enlighten the wall it's attached to, only light up the roof.

The stripe is actually just a list with a 1 cm LED-stripe in it.

See image for reference.

Thanks.
Andreas

Tobobo

Can you post the model?

Vejlstrup

Yes, sure. See link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c758qs4tqa0rk5l/LED_Stripe_Modelskp.skp

I've both tried both with a emissive material and rectangle light, both with smaller and wider rectangle stripes.. Nothing seems to really give the wished effect with a gradient light going up the wall.
Afterwards I'm going to install IES-lights in all the spotlights, so the LED is to make a nice ambient light all around.

Thank you.

Tobobo

hey,

I've had a look at the lights and there is a few things I've changed.

I have purged the file
Flipped the rectangle light so they have their front face up.
Raised and angled the lights towards the wall.
Turn off the 'no decay', 'double sided' and turned up the intensity.

When I am lighting a room, I classify my lights into three categories:

functional Lighting
Accent lighting
Highlight......lighting

The LED strips are accent lighting and so shouldn't be used to light the whole room (functional lighting)

EDIT: I think you need to add some functional lighting as well as the spot lights

I've attached the jpeg and the file.

Hope it helps

LED_Stripe_Modelskp.zip

Vejlstrup

Thank you very much Sir, exactly what I wanted.
I will see if I can learn from some of your changes.

In the real room, the funtional light will probably come from the spotlights, but it's not quite sure yet.

Thank you very much.

Vejlstrup

Can I ask you in which way you purged the file? I used a Cleaner plug-in, but I'm pretty new, so it would be nice to know which function you used.

TIG

Just use Model Info > Statistics > Purge Unused... to do it to everything.

My 'Purge All' tool is very similar... but that allows you to purge only specific types of thing - e.g. 'Layers' - if desired it also can report what it has done in more detail...
http://sketchucation.com/resources/pluginstore?pln=PurgeAll

dkendig

fyi, purging unused materials from the sketchup model, will cause certain V-Ray materials to not function properly. This is because we allow materials to use other materials as sub materials. Sub materials may not be applied to any objects in the SU scene, so it assumes it is safe to purge, even though this will break any materials utilizing that sub material

jiminy-billy-bob

@dkendig said:

fyi, purging unused materials from the sketchup model, will cause certain V-Ray materials to not function properly. This is because we allow materials to use other materials as sub materials. Sub materials may not be applied to any objects in the SU scene, so it assumes it is safe to purge, even though this will break any materials utilizing that sub material

Can't you find a way to prevent this ? Like, if a material has sub-materials, apply it to an empty group.

group = Sketchup.active_model.entities.add_group()
group.material = mat

Or do this temporarly when a "purge materials" button is clicked from the Vray UI. The material would still get deleted when purged from SU's material window, but not from Vray, and you wouldn't pollute the model.

I use a similar snippet from TIG for my own plugin, but with layers.

dkendig

we handle a purge unused properly when you use our UI, but no, we aren't going to litter a SketchUp model with empty groups to prevent the native purge unused tool in SketchUp from removing materials that are used as sub materials. SketchUp needs a way to mark a material as being used, or an observer that allows us to handle that function, once they add that ability, we will support their native tool.

jiminy-billy-bob

@dkendig said:

we handle a purge unused properly when you use our UI

Ho sweet, I didn't know !

Tobobo

@tig said:

Just use Model Info > Statistics > Purge Unused... to do it to everything.

My 'Purge All' tool is very similar... but that allows you to purge only specific types of thing - e.g. 'Layers' - if desired it also can report what it has done in more detail...
http://sketchucation.com/resources/pluginstore?pln=PurgeAll

TIG's tool is the one i use to get around the VRay linking of sub materials, i just remove material from the 'to be purged' list

dkendig

@tobobo said:

@tig said:

Just use Model Info > Statistics > Purge Unused... to do it to everything.

My 'Purge All' tool is very similar... but that allows you to purge only specific types of thing - e.g. 'Layers' - if desired it also can report what it has done in more detail...
http://sketchucation.com/resources/pluginstore?pln=PurgeAll

TIG's tool is the one i use to get around the VRay linking of sub materials, i just remove material from the 'to be purged' list

That isn't necessary if you use the purge unused option in the V-Ray material editor

Tobobo

@dkendig said:

That isn't necessary if you use the purge unused option in the V-Ray material editor

What I meant was I use TIG's plugin to purge the model of everything else without losing the VRay materials.