We are trying to do a daylight analysis that includes some frosted glass or “kalwall” style skylights which diffuse the light into the space.  We can get the VLT (Visible Light Transmittance) values easy enough.  However, is there some way to accurately (or semi-accurately) account for the rays being dispersed and spread through the frosted glass? 

Simulating frosted glazing in 3ds Max Design for lighting analysis is doable.  You however need to know how to do it properly.  Here is how:

Some useful background information:

First, as opposed to Radiance, the A&D Material has a few internal “things” going on that you need to be aware.  The most important one is that the A&D Material performs internal energy conservation as follow:

Transmissivity wins over Specular Reflectivity which wins over Diffuse Reflectance.  On top of that, the Transmissivity is weighted against a Specular / Diffuse factor.  This factor is ruled by the Translucent color / weight controls in the interface.

In contrast, in Radiance, one can specify a material that is reflecting 100% diffuse and 100% specular while transmitting 100% of the light, leading to “creating” energy.  This is why the parameters of the Radiance materials cannot be plugged “as-is” in the A&D Material.

Translucent Panels:

We compared translucent glazing simulation in mental ray against radiance and measured data and got convincing results (see image) with the following settings:

Desired Diffuse Transmittance:  0.1621  (16.21% Diffuse – Diffuse Transmittance)

• Treat surface as a single polygon in the model
• A&D Diffuse Level:  0.0
• A&D Diffuse Color:  pitch black  (so no weighting is given to the diffuse reflectance)
• A&D Reflection | Reflectivity Level:  1.0
• A&D Reflection | Reflectivity Color:  pure white (the color is a multiplier, we need it to be 1.0 1.0 1.0)
• A&D Refraction |  Transparency Level:  1.0
• A&D Refraction | Transparency Color:  pure white (the color is a multiplier, we need it to be 1.0 1.0 1.0)
•  A&D Refraction | Translucency Checkbox : ON
• A&D Refraction | Translucency Weight: 1.0  (we want it fully translucent)
• A&D Refraction | Translucency Color:  0.1621 0.1621 0.1621 (the color is a multiplier, we need it to be set to the desied transmissivity level “as-is”, equally for all RGB components)
• BRDF | Custom Reflectivity Function: ON
• BRDF | 0 Deg Refl:  0.0
• BRDF | 90 Deg Refl:  1.0
• BRDF | Curve:  ~5  (we need to approximate a typical Fresnel curve)
• Advanced Rendering Options | Thin-Walled : ON

Some important notes: 

• While the illuminances will carry through properly on light meters, the glazing appearance may not look “natural” in “pretty picture renderings”.   It seems that there is currently a limitation with the appearance of the surface when it is hit by light:  its resulting luminance won’t be correct (AFAIK) so glare analysis based on luminance measurements won’t be convincing.
• The following image shows a graph comparing 3ds max, radiance and measured data.  Ignore the “3ds max 2009 SP1 Initial Submission” curve, this is representing a case where our material settings in 3ds Max where wrong, which we corrected later on – in fact, we forgot to turn off a layer so we had 2 panes of glass on top of each other…).  The green curve is what we need to look at….

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

This group maintains a database and publishes this data via a program called Optics 5. From Optics 5 you can then export a Radiance Material (*.rad file), which can be interpreted
as mental ray A&D Material parameters.

To convert Optics 5 data into A&D Material suitable for lighting analysis, export a glazing or glass definition as Radiance (*.rad) from Optics 5. You will find this command under File | Export to Radiance File.

Once the file is exported on disk, open it in Notepad and search for a section that looks like this:

void BRTDfunc B530_front
10
0.245 0.281 0.340
0.169 0.197 0.187
0 0 0

The color coefficients (RGB) for the ideal specular reflection corresponds to 0.245 0.281 0.340. The color coefficients for the ideal specular transmission corresponds to 0.169 0.197 0.187. Those values will need to be used as a basis for the mental ray A&D Material.

How to use the provided Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to convert to the mr A&D Material.

To correctly convert specular reflection and transmission from a Radiance material to a mr A&D Material, we need to take into account internal energy conservation methods that are built in the mr A&D Material that are not factored by the Radiance material. In other words, numbers can’t be “plugged-in” as is.

To help you with this task, we developed a Microsoft® Excel® software spreadsheet that will let you do this precisely. The spreadsheet can be downloaded here.

Limitations:

• The Radiance Materials exported from the Optics 5 database does not take into account angular dependency: A Fresnel falloff curve is assumed so metallic-coated glazing systems may be less precisely simulated.
• The Optics 5 database contains optical data measured spectrally. The exported Radiance materials and the A&D materials use RGB colors which are a crude approximation of the visible light spectrum. Therefore, lighting simulations are done within limitations of RGB colors.

It will also control Text objects to display the current Time and Date of the Daylight System:

Here is a video demonstrating its usage:

You can download the tool here.

1. In Revit, go in the 3D view you will export to FBX
2. Edit the Graphic Display Options
3. Specify a Location and Time that matches your project settings, for a single day:
4. Export to FBX
5. Import in 3ds Max

Your Daylight System should now match the Revit model in Location and Time.

]]> http://www.pfbreton.com/2009/10/translating-project-location-from-revit-to-3ds-max-via-fbx/feed/ 0 http://www.pfbreton.com/2009/10/material-name-and-layername-columns-in-scene-explorer/ http://www.pfbreton.com/2009/10/material-name-and-layername-columns-in-scene-explorer/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:58:11 +0000 Pierre-Felix Breton http://www.pfbreton.com/?p=418 Have you ever wanted to display the material and layer names of objects in the 3ds Max Scene Explorer like this?

This can be done with a relatively simple MAXScript that you must install  under the \Scripts\Startup directory of your 3ds Max installation. 

By doing so, the script will execute each time 3ds Max is launched and will  instruct the Scene Explorer to fetch the Material and Layer names of your objects and create 2 new columns that you can drag and drop in place.

Click Here to Download the MAXScript

This video demonstrates how to do it:

This usually happens when you changed your Desktop Resolution and re-launched 3ds max.

What causes this problem?

The root of the  problem comes from the fact that last used dialog positions are stored in the 3dsmax.ini file.  Unfortunately,  none of theses dialog are coded in a way that they check if they are restored in a visible portion of the desktop, resulting in many cases as “out of reach” locations.

How to resolve the issue?

Until this bug get resolved in 3ds Max directly, there is a neat little utility that you can use to bring back “missing dialogs” in the visible portion of your screen:  SnapWindows.  Just run it while running 3ds Max to reset the  location of floating dialogs.

Click here to download the Wordfile.txt file for UltraEdit (Right Click | Save Target As…)

Install it in your UltraEdit installation folder:

When opening a mi file you should see something like this:

Always verify your data otherwise your project can go wrong – here are a couple advices on the topic:

IES file can contain wrong information: double check them!

I have once seen a manufacturer using the wrong values in their IES files.  I had to contact them and demonstrate that their data was wrong. It turned out that one of their engineer made a mistake with their database system where North American IES files where published using European measurements. That basically means that errors can come from anywhere in the process. Double check your work!

In the ideal scenario, you need to get a physical sample of the luminaire in your office, measure intensities with an illuminance meter and compare with the IES data provided to you in a simple test scene.

Do the numbers match up?  You are good to go. They don’t match up? Keep reading..

Check the 3ds Max scene units:

This is a typical trap: wrong units, wrong light intensities reported on light meters!

3ds Max and Revit has bugs too!

There is a issue  with the IES file reader that can affect you in rare occasions.  The bug has to do with a certain “feature” of the IES file format that some manufacturers rely on. Let me explain:

The IES file format is divided in two main sections: a header section and a data section:

In the header section, there is a special ”bit” that instruct the software to either use the “raw” data or apply a multiplier to it. For example, a manufacturer might have measured a luminaire only once with a 100W lamp in it. Knowing that the same luminaire with a 200W lamp** would emit twice as much light, the manufacturer could publish a different IES file based on the same measurements and simply state that the “raw” data should be multiplied by a factor of 2.0 by changing this special “bit” in the file as illustrated:

For some reason, 3ds Max and Revit are ignoring this multiplier and always read the “raw” data from the IES files, resulting in incorrect simulations. The work around is to use the built-in multiplier (dimmer) feature of the photometric lights:

Note about linear and area lights:

In many occurences, I am asked to perform lighting analysis reports in spaces designed with cove lights.  Unfortunately, this is still not possible to do precisely - and this problem has not been solved by the industry yet!

  There are currently two major problems with linear and area lights in lighting simulation softwares:

1. First, the IESNA standards for photometric measurements assumes that luminaires are measured from a certain distance, making any calculated points inside this distance mathematically inaccurate. If you search for “Near Field Photometry” or “Far Field Photometry”, you will find plently of information on the subject.
2. Second, 3ds max (and Revit btw, as both share the same code for rendering) still has issues to deal with linear and area lights calculation making them unreliable photometric-wise.

As I write these lines, cove lighting situations cannot be mathematically correct with photometric files in 3ds Max: you will have to do some guess work when working with theses scenarios.

**I know, a 200W lamp does not emit twice as much light than a 100W lamp that was only for keeping the example simple.

To get rid of those edges, you can hide them from the editable mesh panel:

Or better, use a Maxscript tool that will let you hide them all at once.

Click here to download the MaxScript

Usage: Select all your EditableMesh objects and execute the script. The script will only affect selected EditableMesh objects so the selection can contain lights, lines, cameras: they won’t be affected by the script.

The result:

Special Thanks to Chris P. Johnson who helped improving the speed and stability of the script on large models containing several instances.

The size of the FBX files exported by Revit is influenced by the following aspects:

Model size:

Obviously, the more details in your 3D view, the larger it will be.  There is not much you can do about it besides controlling the way your families are drawn (fine, medium, coarse display settings).

Texture Maps used by the Render Appearances:

All textures used by the Revit materials are embedded in the exported FBX for portability reasons. On one hand, this is useful because you don’t have to bother about file paths issues (”texture not found” errors) but it has a cost in terms of file size. If you don’t render in Revit, you might want to think about editing your materials in a way that textures are not used at all.  This way, the exported FBX file will not contain additionnal image files.

Environment Maps:

Revit defaults to a rendering setting that uses a texture map for clouds.  This texture map on itself weights about 20Mb and cannot be compressed more. Since it is also zipped up with the exported FBX models, you take a 20Mb hit right away. To resolve this issue, switch the render settings of Revit to use a clear sky (no clouds). Doing so will remove the large clouds image file and reduce the size of the exported FBX file.

The measured color palettes can be exported from the Color Munki software as *.CxF files and read back in 3ds Max with the help of a script that I have developped.

The 3ds Max script can be downloaded here.  Simply run it from within 3ds Max using the Maxscript | Run command, browse to a CxF file and drag and drop colors in your materials from the color swatch of your choice.

More details here.

MacroScript files for 3ds Max Design 2009 created to improve the workflow of lighting analysis projects.

The first one will be on the topic of Daylight Simulation  with 3ds Max Design 2010. The second one will be about strategies to estimate optical characteristics of surface finishes for accurate renderings.

Daylight and Lighting Analysis with Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2010:

• How to predict lighting levels in a scene lit with daylight or electric light
• Finding correct values of reflectance and transmittance for the building materials you create and using these values in a lighting render of an existing building
• Importing and using the correct photometric information for a particular manufacturer’s light fitting
• Creating animated daylight simulation studies and experiencing your building in a dynamic way
• Limitations of lighting analysis programs
• Using MAXScript to perform advanced lighting analysis tasks

Capture and Acquire Appearances of Real World Materials for Improved Accuracy in Renderings:

• Rendering engines and color
• Gamma Correction and Linear Workflow
• Color acquisition devices comparison
• Measuring optical characteristics of materials in an affordable way
• Using this data correctly in Physically Based rendering engines

 
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