Below is the official description for each one. If you do plan to attend, feel free to drop me a line via my contact form with ideas and topics you want me to cover in those classes, its always good to get fresh ideas from attendees! See you there!

Autodesk Revit and 3ds Max Design for Lighting and Daylighting simulation

5/7/2012 – 9:00 am to 5:00pm

This session will provide an overview of the tools available to you in the Autodesk products family for exploring, defining and validating lighting projects. Focused on the interoperability of Revit and 3ds Max Design, you will learn what is possible to achieve with Autodesk Revit and 3ds Max Design for electrical lighting design as well as daylighting design.

An overview of the rendering capabilities or mental ray and iray will be provided as well as production oriented strategies to integrate lighting photometry and solar information for lighting studies. Tips and tricks will be provided to support project workflows where the design elements are changing and evolving on a regular basis.

Learning Objectives:

• Get a general overview of BIM technologies applicable to lighting design projects.
• Learn about interoperability strategies to adopt when translating data from one software to another.
• Learn about capabilities and limitations of lighting simulation technologies.
• See production examples used in the context of real projects.

L12D08 - Challenges associated with Weather-Based Annual Daylight Simulations

Co-Speaker: Jack Bailey, One Lux Studio, NYC

5/8/2012 – 9:00 am to 12:00pm

This workshop will walk you through the various challenges associated with annual‐based daylight simulation that we experienced with our projects. From the data collection stage through the validation of weather data, to the development of custom tools to integrate window shades into annual simulation, we will present examples of how to successfully predict a building’s performance with regard to daylighting over a year.

Learning Objectives:

• Become familiar with metrics and guidelines associated with daylight simulation.
• Understand the capabilities and limitations of lighting simulation technologies.
• Gather a knowledge of existing tools for daylight simulation.
• Understand how occupancy and shading devices affect daylight performance.

1. Autodesk Revit and 3ds Max Design for Lighting and Daylighting simulation (Monday all day)
2. Challenges associated with Weather-Based Annual Daylight Simulations (Tuesday a.m.)

The official Lightfair 2012 schedule can be found here

The FBX import/link or 3ds Max does not create layers based on the file content.

Run this script on freshly imported Revit models via FBX.  It will move all objects on a Layer that corresponds to the Category and Family as illustrated:

It will also restore original Meta data into Parts which are imported without Categories Names, Family Names and Family Types Names.

This script is not a plugin and does not save data in the scene.  You only need to run it on demand.  Note that some entities imported via FBX do not contain meta data from Revit (this is a bug on the Revit side).  Those entities, typically railing posts, lights and parts will remain untouched and left on their original layer.

Note: this assumes that the meta data is available after the FBX import or link. In other words, using Combine by Material will get rid of the Meta information about families (because objects get combined togheter).

Click here to download the script

1. Fine-Tune Your Autodesk® Revit® Models for Autodesk 3ds Max®

• • Class handout here

1. Stump the Autodesk® 3ds Max® Champions

Autodesk University 2010: Color Management and Linear Color Workflow

My goal was to create a document where the main features of 3ds Max are grouped togheter to create daytime / night time renderings of buildings without overloading it with cumbersome step-by-step “click here/ click there” instructions.  It gives some tips and tricks around NPR (Non-PhotoRealistic) rendering as well.

Here it is:

mentalray.for.aec.renderings

HDRI and Photography

With today’s typical hardware, it is not possible to capture a lighting design project in a single shot and get it represented accurately on screen “as-is”.  Accurately meaning “how the eye perceived the project at the time the photo was taken”.  Typical digital display devices cannot display the entire range of luminance that a human eye can perceive. Cameras can’t capture that range of luminance at a same time either.  In technical terms, that is the complex (and how interesting) world of Tone Reproduction or Exposure.

For example, your eye adapts rapidly to a variety of contrasts and your brain condenses all this into a unique image, as if you would apply different brightness and contrasts ratios to individual parts of the image.  By opposition, exposure functions of cameras are applied to entire image at once – so the two worlds don’t match very well.

 The future is in what is called “High Dynamic Range” in computer language, where all luminance levels can be captured, stored and displayed into (expensive) devices.

The lecture describes methods to photograph lighting design projects in such a way that results are as close as possible to the human eye perception. Workflows involving image manipulation programs are discussed and demonstrated. 

The attendee learned how to digitally capture the full range of luminance of any given scene (in our case, lighting design projects) with affordable hardware.  He also learned how to manipulate this data with affordable software to create a digital picture that is closer to his perception of the scene.

HDRI and Qualitative Lighting Simulation

HDR Imaging does not only improve our ability to photograph design projects.  It also allows us to improve our efficiency in lighting simulation workflows.  One can use a 3D rendering software to create one image per light source and combine them together in a compositing application.  The advantage of doing this is that the designer can interactively change the intensity of each layer in real time without re-rendering the model each time.

Typical techniques for achieving this workflow are demonstrated as well.

HDRI and Quantitative Lighting Analysis

HDR Imaging also gives us the possibility to perform advanced Daylighting studies of architectural and urban spaces.  We can use this technology to understand glare issues, yearly or monthly cumulative irradiances and more.

Application examples are shown in this lecture.

I have participated in the process and contributed to the authoring of the following paper: 3ds Max Design Exposure Validation (pdf – 5835Kb) – which describes the process and results.