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wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 28 Jun 2009, 13:59
by owei
wom_archlight by wombat778
  • - Support for IES light profiles with real light profile intensities, and ability to scale profile intensity using real world units
    - Support for photometric (candela, lumen, lux) or radiometric (watt, watt/s, watt/m2) real world-units
    - A photon emitter that supports light profiles, area lights, and is linked to direct light intensity
    - Ability to use area lights with soft shadows while retaining IES profile sharpness/definition
    - Support for color temperatures
    - Light profile rotation
    - A shader to create object/geometry lights
    - A separate simple texture shader to add light profile support to other nodes
    - Works with both Softimage and Maya on Windows 64-bit and 32-bit, Linux 64-bit, and MacOSX (Maya only).
    - Completely free and fully open source (BSD license) with minimal restrictions, so you can compile for other platforms, incorporate the code into other free or commercial projects and redistribute.
    - Comprehensive manual
The goal of the shader is really to be the only light shader for mental ray you will ever need to use.

direct download can be found here:
http://www.si-community.com/download/pl ... ht_1.0.zip

Update - version 1.1 can be found here, see post below!!! - HB


Version 1.2: here
2010 fix (still needs version 1.2): here


NEW: version 1.23 - here

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 28 Jun 2009, 15:31
by Letterbox
I said it there I say it here, this is a great piece of work. The manual alone is excellent!! do doubts as to what goes where and why. Really - many thanks for taking the time and effort to develop it. And making it available to everyone. Super great.

Cheers
Terry

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 28 Jun 2009, 17:06
by wombat778
Thanks very much Terry! I had fun writing the manual actually. I think it also helped me make the interface for the shader better. When I had trouble explaining a particular function in the manual, it means that I needed to make the function simpler to use ;)

Anyhow, please let me know if you have any trouble. Also, please post any suggestions and I will do my best to make them work in a later version. Thanks again!

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 29 Jun 2009, 14:19
by ace63
I've been waiting so long for someone to do this kind of plugin for a 64 bit version of XSI.
My deepest thanks to you wombat, this is great!

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 03 Jul 2009, 08:42
by Hirazi Blue
Updated to version 1.1
The main focus of this version is performance improvements. You should see a substantial improvement in performance with no loss of image quality (e.g., they were pure code optimizations). I also have added several additional methods of tweaking performance including a Shadow Threshold setting and the ability to limit emission from light profiles using spotlight cones. There should also be a MUCH greater improvement now using the falloff settings.
Download it here

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 03 Jul 2009, 12:02
by Letterbox
Hirazi Blue wrote:Updated to version 1.1
The main focus of this version is performance improvements. You should see a substantial improvement in performance with no loss of image quality (e.g., they were pure code optimizations). I also have added several additional methods of tweaking performance including a Shadow Threshold setting and the ability to limit emission from light profiles using spotlight cones. There should also be a MUCH greater improvement now using the falloff settings.
Download it here
Just a note, I really admire what you've done, and what your continuing to do.

Cheers
Terry

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 04 Jul 2009, 09:55
by Jesse
All I can Say is, BRILLIANT! thank you soo much!

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 09 Jul 2009, 09:53
by Rork
Wombat,

First of all, hats off for the shader. It will come in really handy for any archviz stuff I'll have to do soonish.

A quick question though after browsing the (very informative) manual. To get accurate results, do you have to have the tonemapper shader attached to the camera, or can we just work in linear workflow and adjust later?
Just a thought that popped up, as I haven't installed and tried the shader yet ;)

cheers,

rob

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 09 Jul 2009, 17:30
by wombat778
Hi Rork,

I really designed the shader to be used with mia_exposure_photographic. Technically speaking, the wom_archlight light shader will produce the same values internally with or without the tonemapper shader. But, I do not know one would go about turning those into meaningful physical results without the tonemapper (since I do not know what kind of magic mi_exposure_photographic is doing behind the scenes). If you are trying to use a linear workflow, could you use mia_exposure_photographic with a cm2 factor of 1, but leave the gamma at 1?

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 11 Jul 2009, 12:43
by Rork
Hi Wombat,

Cheers for that, I'll try as soon as I have the time. I don't really like the MR tonemappers in XSI, they tend to give me too washed out images compared to other solutions outside the renderer.
And as my workflow is mostly linear/32bit exr nowadays, I'm hesitant to go back in and start using tonemapper shaders again.

rob

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 11 Jul 2009, 13:12
by wombat778
Hi Rork,

I would certainly try it without the XSI tonemappers and see what happens. If you have been able to get good results in the past (for example when using Physical Sun/Sky) there is no reason why you could not use the same process with my shader. Good luck, and please let me know if you run into any problems!

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 23 Jul 2009, 05:55
by wombat778
All,

I have updated wom_archlight to version 1.2. Here is the changelog:

Version 1.2 New Features/Changes
- Added visible area light falloff options
- Default visible area light intensity now is related to light output
- Added ability to use spotlight manipulator in softimage
- Added a Relative Inner Cone Angle mode that operates similarly to the Spread parameter of Softimage's soft_light
- Cosine distribution is now physically correct when using lumens/watts in most cases
- The default distribution mode is now Reference Light mode
- Added an Enable Attenuation checkbox to enable attenuation
- A few minor performance enhancements
- Internal code reorganization and cleanup. Now only one function handles all unit conversions

Version 1.2 Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug where visible area intensity would not affect reflections
- Fixed bug where dark light colors could make intensity inaccurate
- Fixed bug causing artifacts when using lux/watts/m2 at spotlight focus
- Fixed some AETemplate logic bugs for Maya version
- Fixed bug that could cause white dots under certain circumstances
- Other minor bug fixes


Here is the link http://www.highend3d.com/maya/downloads ... -5849.html .


Also, please feel free to host it here. Please let me know if you run into any trouble or have questions!

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 23 Jul 2009, 09:08
by Hirazi Blue
wombat778 wrote:Also, please feel free to host it here.
si-community mirror: wom_archlight_1.2.zip
Done! ;)
And nice work BTW!!! :-bd

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 24 Sep 2009, 20:14
by izze
I was noticing that when using any SSS shader, my light intensity needs to be turned down to .001. Or lower if I could go lower. Everything is correct scale etc. I don't know much about physical accurate lights, so I'm at a loss as to why this is happening. Thanks.

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 02 Nov 2009, 09:22
by j3st3r
I started to use finally wom_archilight, and I'm really satisfied with the results so for. I use SSS without the need of decreasing the intensity, but that may be because I set everything as how it looks in render (trial and error method :) )

What i noticed that even if I set ShadowMaps as shadow, Hair rendering is extremely slow. It looks like that shadow maps are used (looking at the render differences between shadow map on and off).

And finally, is there anybody who worked with photometric light this before? I'd like to know more of the workflow. At this moment I use the candela as intensity unit, but I don't know if I should use other method.

Re: wom_archlight by wombat778

Posted: 09 Nov 2009, 19:27
by Letterbox
Having problems with it in 2010 sp1 x64 win 7 downloaded from above v1.2

I follow these steps and mr fails instantly, db tags mainly. Also for when I try "light object" and photon + GI +FG. (different problems), but mr goes bye bye.
I cant see that i'm doing anything wrong, just following the manual really. Not complaining about that wombat, just want to get it to work.

steps i take...

geometry shader primitive
add in a wom_lightprofile shader
point it to ies file.
select spotlight render tree
create and connect wom_archlight to the light shader input
set to "light profile" in archlight in render tree.