Reflected lighting?

[anthonylongman]

I want to know if it is possible to deliver light to an object via a 100% reflective geometric surface (curved, basically conical). I have tried this and it seems not to work, though Matt Hoffman thought it should. Maybe there is some setting I don't have enabled properly?

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Anthony,

Do you mean, use a spot light or area light with a mirror to light another surface?

Thanks

Tom

[anthonylongman]

Basically, yes - although I had planned on using a parallel light...

[Tomas Egger]

Ola,

Anthony, I tested with a Area Light, didnt work, I really dont remember to see a sample like this, good question yours.

Dave, Ian? Any thought?

Thanks

Tom

[Arketype]

Anthony- make sure you have Global illumination enabled, and that "reverse illumination" checkbox is ON.

[anthonylongman]

I am still learning about GI. Where is the Reverse illumination checkbox? Thanks...

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And I guess this will not work with a parallel light, right?

[bwcc]

[anthonylongman]

This is exactly what I need to be able to do, so I am encouraged. Now all I need is to learn where the checkboxes etc. are (see my previous post)

[Arketype]

Render Menu--> Global Illumination...

Enable Global Illumination box must be checked.

Bottom right area "Reverse Illumination" "enabled" box should be checked.

This should get you started.

:)

Dave

[anthonylongman]

That was the missing information, thank you so much... now I know what I am looking for (the ON switch) I was able to locate it in the documentation - eleven pages into the GI chapter and half way through the topic list... I need to spend more time with this program.

Thanks again,

Anthony

[anthonylongman]

Update: I had one successful rendering of the setup which delivered light to the surfaces. Now I am getting nothing again.

I think I may need to restart my machine, it has been running for a week and something may be out of whack. I have been running a long render on a slave machine via renderama on this machine. The slave has one more section still rendering - will quitting and restarting renderama compromise stitching of the slave render output in renderama after restart?

[meester smeeth]

Quitting renderama wont affect the stitching, you'll just have to render the unfinished strips again. Just press GO and it will resume.

[anthonylongman]

Quitting renderama wont affect the stitching, you'll just have to render the unfinished strips again. Just press GO and it will resume.

Thanks for the tip... One more question about Renderama. I am trying to render a rather ambitious still frame that is very heavy on calculation. I am using Renderama on 16 processors. I find sometimes I need to force the rendering to stop, without waiting, because it's just taking too long.

What is the best procedure? I have started by quitting Renderama, then quitting each camera in turn, then deleting the camera temp file for each camera, then deleting Renderama jobs folder.

Is there a less laborious way to do this?

[anthonylongman]

Thanks for the tip... One more question about Renderama. I am trying to render a rather ambitious still frame that is very heavy on calculation. I am using Renderama on 16 processors. I find sometimes I need to force the rendering to stop, without waiting, because it's just taking too long.

What is the best procedure? I have started by quitting Renderama, then quitting each camera in turn, then deleting the camera temp file for each camera, then deleting Renderama jobs folder.

Is there a less laborious way to do this?

Actually I figured this out, just quit Renderama, then quit each camera in turn, then clicking on the "Camera" menu of each one in turn to get their attention so to speak, which hastens the quitting process, then relaunch Renderama, then delete the job from the render window.

[Tomas Egger]

Ola Anthony,

Sorry for my delayed answer, you are correct, this is the actual way to work with several Slaves (in your case, 16) and Rama using EIAS 8.

This will be one of the amazing changes on EIAS 9, you will need only one Rama and one Camera in your 16 cores machine. :)

Thanks

Tom

[meester smeeth]

Anthony, looks like you sorted yourself out there. One thing though in general, it's not usually best to delete your Renderama jobs folder, this is where the textures/models etc are saved (in their own re-named format),for use in the following renders of that project. I only really get rid of them when it's an old job and space may be needed etc.