Lighting Plugin for Sketchup

Pixero · 15 Dec 2007, 08:25

Wow!!!
It looks great. Cant wait til its released.
What a christmas present it would be...

juju · 18 Dec 2007, 12:08

OMW, please please please do not stop development on this. Remember to update here on a regular basis, it will be appreciated.

stuartb · 20 Dec 2007, 14:00

It is really rather interesting to be sure! Would love to be on the beta-test list too if there is one Adam . . pip pip!

marne · 20 Dec 2007, 15:00

I agree with the others! damn, that looks great will be a big thing, when released (it seems to be one already:) ).
One thing i noticed: in the left corner we were able to see the "render-progress", and compared with the "real" renderplugins it was really fast. so i wonder on what machine this "rendering" was done.

Thanks in forward!!!!

greetings marne

AdamB · 21 Dec 2007, 15:37

Another video showing the light-tweaking ability of this plug-in. I think its important to be able to play with lighting quickly and experiment before committing to a hirez render.

Again, really appreciate any feedback.

Gaieus · 21 Dec 2007, 15:43

Adam,

This is just something really cool. One of the most genious plugins I have ever seen.

When you export animation with these lights, does tha "classical flickering effect with the shadows" also appear or is this somehow free from that effect?

tomsdesk · 21 Dec 2007, 16:16

This is dyn-o-mite! This will keep me from having to learn a PR renderer for my DWC's. I'm ready when you are!!!

jenujacob · 21 Dec 2007, 17:13

this has go to be the best plugin ever!!
i was wondering whether those lights casts shadows when blocked by objects????

AdamB · 21 Dec 2007, 17:36

Geometry occludes light sources (though materials can be marked as non-occluders)

Adam

AdamB · 21 Dec 2007, 17:39

Can you point me at some video that shows the effect you're thinking of. I'm not sure I understand.

Thanks.

Adam

@gaieus said:

Adam,

This is just something really cool. One of the most genious plugins I have ever seen.

When you export animation with these lights, does tha "classical flickering effect with the shadows" also appear or is this somehow free from that effect?

jenujacob · 21 Dec 2007, 17:40

woohooo! thanks for clearing that up!
may the forces of ruby scripting guide u through this ordeal!!!
best wishes!

Gaieus · 21 Dec 2007, 18:23

Adam,

It's when shadows are on in SU and your camera (during animation) is moving from sunlight into the shadow or vice versa. All the (sun)lights appear to flicker like in this video (some 37 megs though - in the second part when the camera goes into the church and moving to and fro).

AdamB · 21 Dec 2007, 20:09

Took a while to download on the wet piece of string it was at the end of!

OK, so it looks like z-fighting / z-bias issues caused by almost coplanar geometry. Not your modelling I hasten to add! Its the geometry projected onto yours by the shadowing method in SU. So no, this plugin doesn't suffer from that issue.

BTW Nice model! Any chance of me trying it on my stuff?

Gaieus · 21 Dec 2007, 21:43

Ah, definitely it's not the Z-fighting with coplanar faces (I know what that is like) but also a kind of "flickering" effect.
It used to be fixed in SU4 but then due to some copyright issues they had to get it out of SU5 already (older users can talk more about this). Kind of annoying for sure - the only way to avoid it to turn off shadows or try to walk on the bright side of the street (and always look up and smile - maybe GE is taking a snapshot of your area )

Well, I can send the model (say in email - it's about 2-2.5 MB) though it's been a bit "tweaked" ever since (some basic, single faced monastery and plants and some terrain etc. added) though I never really tweaked it for it was going to be used in 3DS Max anyway for final rendering etc (see here ).

Also this version is that I used for playing around in Kerky (not with much success) so there are light fixtures in it but you can clean the model as much as you want...

tomsdesk · 22 Dec 2007, 04:56

Adam...Oh yeah, what Coen said: I'd shell out for it today! (Only forget SU7, please, I want to use it now with my sweet love SU5 :`)

Viktor · 22 Dec 2007, 12:28

In the second youtube-film you use three sliders to adjust the settings of the light-emitter. I think that a focus-slider (from sharp to soft edges) next to the zoom would be very useful.

Viktor · 22 Dec 2007, 12:44

How about getting rid of the update-button? Realtime lighting in sketchup...doesn´t it sound wonderful?

Not a programmer so just stop me if I´m wrong here:
Would it be possible to make the program update only one emitter at a time? It seems like unnecessary processing to update the whole file every time. And could it autodetect relevant changes=autoupdate?

I guess your answer will be that this would use to much of the computer´s thinkingpower.
Well, it was worth the try.

Viktor · 22 Dec 2007, 12:51

Wouldn´t this be the perfect way to do the light setup for a render? Any plans to cooperate with Podium??

kwistenbiebel · 22 Dec 2007, 13:03

Some quick questions:
Q1: Does this feature use texture baking?
And if so: are we able to export the new textures?
And if so 2: can we use the default 'pages' animations without extra calculating time?

Q2: can it bake a physical sky ?
Q3: Can it be used with customised styles? (e.g without visible edges in rendering etc...)

Cheers,
Kwistenbiebel

tbd · 22 Dec 2007, 14:12

Viktor: I proposed to Adam a collaboration but it seems it doesn't fit the roadmap

Biebel: Q1, Q3 - yes. regarding Q2, I dont know as I didnt saw any textures in the videos, only color. doing multitexturing (texture + lightmap) only in ruby will be slower