Rectangular Plane Lights

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    Hi palitoloco


    rectangular area lights will be included in the v2.1 release of Enscape, which will arrive in the next couple of weeks! However if you'd like to have a look at the upcoming features of 2.1 already, you're welcome to try our preview version. This already contains all of the upcoming features, including area lights. You can find a link to the preview version at the bottom of the download page. ;)

    Yes, we're aware of the shadowing issue with high intensity lights. It's actually not completely gone, but the bias (which is required to reduce artifacts in real-time graphics) is too big at the moment, which leads to shadows "hovering" a few centimeters from the shadow caster. We'll definitely improve that in future versions. In the meantime one workaround would be to reduce the intensity until the shadows look ok again.

    Quote from Clemens Musterle

    Yes, we're aware of the shadowing issue with high intensity lights. It's actually not completely gone, but the bias (which is required to reduce artifacts in real-time graphics) is too big at the moment, which leads to shadows "hovering" a few centimeters from the shadow caster. We'll definitely improve that in future versions. In the meantime one workaround would be to reduce the intensity until the shadows look ok again.

    Just to tag on to this: we were hoping to use large Revit families with planar lights to quickly and evenly light up small closed spaces that don't have there real lighting (yet) ). Bathrooms are a great example. It's a trick we used to do in Vray a LOT.


    Right now the really large planes in Enscape cast shadows from one spot (as if it were a spotlight). I understand that corners have to be cut to get this rendering in real time so perhaps what we're hoping for is not possible with todays hardware.

    Actually, the new build that was released today opens up a new workaround for the planar light issue.


    We can now darken the diffuse maps by using the 'brightness' slider in Revit. That means that we can give the ceiling a 'self illumination' value and then compensate by making the texture darker!


    Quick and easy!

    Quote from Pieter

    Just to tag on to this: we were hoping to use large Revit families with planar lights to quickly and evenly light up small closed spaces that don't have there real lighting (yet) ). Bathrooms are a great example. It's a trick we used to do in Vray a LOT.

    I rendered a large space and needed to fill it with light, same situation like at your bath, only large. For Enscape it works finde to use place point/spot light arrays. You get quite soft shadows. Also you can try to place the light a little bit in the ceiling geometry for some extra effects.

    Micha What light settings do you use in that case? Just simple point lights or spots/ies? Do you switch the daylight time to night when you do this?

    I use simple spots and point lights. Right, I set a night time because the sun added unwanted light at the closed interior.


    I remember me now that finally I wasn't complete happy, the space wasn't right filled with light and I found it helps to set the render quality at "medium". So, I got some subtle light from the skybox HDRI into the closed space. I'm not sure the current rendering quality slider is a good tool. I wished I had more detailed control over different aspects of quality - GI quality, bounces, reflections, noise, ... . But with the "medium" trick I got a good basic lighting and the spot/point lights added some brilliance to specific areas.

    Thomas Willberger At some threads cfg file parameters are explained. Could it be possible to get a collection of this available parameters? Or is it planed to keep the knowledge not so much in the focus of the users? I think, this parameters are very important for advanced users to get the best quality output.


    For example the far clipping plane parameter.

    View distance limits


    A further wish - could it be possible that all user set parameters are collected in one file instead in Pre/Post/UserPost? And could the parameter be kept during a new version install?


    Clemens Musterle Do you mean the shadow bug will be fixed soon? The current area lights can't be used, turn the intensity down doesn't work, since the light is needed.

    Please don't oversee the last post. ;)


    Clemens Musterle Additional I tested the area light of Rhino today - still no shadows also at lowest visible intensity. (I set the skybox at lowest value and the camera brightness at strongest high - see attached image, no shadow.)

    As mentioned above, we're aware of the shadow bias issue for high intensities and have it on our development agenda.


    However I just had another look at a similar scene and noticed we seem to have a Rhino specific bug regarding the exported area light's dimensions, which may result in the shading issues you've reported. We'll look into this asap.

    Clemens Musterle I found a trace for the missing area light shadows issue - I changed the scene units from centimeters to meters and Rhino scaled the scene numerical down -> the shadow is working! :) I hope it can be fixed now. :)


    Attached the same scene in centimeters and meters.


    Could it be possible to get softer shadows? The size of the area light is approx. 1qm.

    Yes, we've found out that there's a missing unit conversion for the lights depending on the project's settings. We've already fixed that (so it'll be released with the next preview version and possibly in a hotfix for 2.1) ;) But thanks anyway for your ongoing testing efforts! :)


    Smoother shadows are difficult with regular realtime techniques (which only evaluate visibility from a single point) - because it will inevitably result in more bias/leaking issues. One workaround if you really want to polish a certain scene could be to "patch" multiple smaller area lights closely together - this will then result in e.g. 4...n overlapping shadows and should therefore simulate the area light effect better for shadows. That's of couse nothing I'd recommend for larger scenes, as the performance impact of lots of overlapping lights is significant!