Jeff Mottle

With the release of Autodesk’s new 3ds Max Design 2009, the era of Autodesk Viz officially comes to a close. Positioned to take over the market that Viz filled, Max Design 2009 essentially replaces AutoDesk Viz for the Architectural Visualization market, while the original Max 2009 is still geared towards the traditional visual effects and entertainment industries.

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brightlight

This says it all in my humble view. The reason for the amalgamation is so that
Autodesk can charge more.
The marketing department won out I would say whatever the spin.
Well maybe people will vote with their feet and choose Cinema 4d and the Vray
plugin.
Am I cynical or what?

crazy homeless guy

We tried to do a quick study with the lighting analysis a couple of weeks ago.

We wanted to see how the heat of the sun through a skylight was effected if we applied a frit material to the glass vs not applying a frit material to the glass. We sent the results to our lighting consultant to get feedback. The lighting consultant said that the numbers were way to high.

We haven't touched it since then to see where things went wrong.

The question I have... Does this only work with Pro-Materials? We are using Arch & Design. I thought Pro-Materials were simply stripped down Arch & Design materials with some customization, but I may be wrong.

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travis schmiesing

SandmanNinja

I used it in a classroom environment, well, just the light meter.
We used it to see the light levels as they fell across a floor. It was a quick-n-dirty way to 'see' how strong the light would be without actually having to sit through a render.

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Chad Warner

It should work with the A+D materials as well. Basically anything that has "real world" values.

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Chad Warner
www.bluelimestudio.com

pfbreton

I was involved in the creation of this feature set and also the validation of it. We basically conducted a field study and compared the results against Radiance and the Benchmark (the physical measurements).

The results will be published soon, be we can say that we are as good as any other lighting analysis benchmarks that where validated out there.

The trick is to get the right settings... so to help with this, we are currently writing a white paper on the topic to help you "get the numbers right".

Regards,

Pierre-Felix Breton
Product Designer | Autodesk M&E

crazy homeless guy

Thanks. I should clarify that the model we were working has been passed through several hands, the materials are a wreck, and it is basically a mess. So it is no surprise that the numbers came out wrong because I did not have quality control on that project.

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travis schmiesing

Justin Hunt

If you watch one of Brian Bradley video's where he covers the light analysis tools , he clearly demonstrates discrepancies in what is read out and what is known. As such I would not rely on its accuracy.

jhv

pfbreton

COuld you point me to those videos, I never seen them.

Brian Bradley

Hey Guys,

To be fair to the discussion, the quick usage we made of the
'Light Meter' tool in our 'MR Toolbox' module that looked in depth
at the MR Sun 'light type', couldn't really be described as anything
like serious light analysis work!

If I am on the same wave length as Justin (jump in and correct me
if I am wrong my friend) the discrepancy in numbers was seen using
an IES sun type, but is corrected by setting the Sun colour to 'White',
and as colour info needs to be kept out of such a sensitive process
as 'Light Analysis' (this is why the MR Sky now has more than one atmospheric model to choose from), that result is not surprising.

A clearer approach to an 'analysis' workflow would be very useful
to Max users so a 'white paper' would be very welcome. I have
etched out some rough procedures and ideas for a module, but some
definitive info from the tools creators will help everyone use this tool
to full advantage.

One potential source of confusion though is the differing intensities
between an IES sun and a MR Sun (80000 Lx & 92000 Lx) Which is
something that is seen in our module!!

Regards
Bri

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