IRender Presets Tab

The Presets tab is used to select redefined lighting settings and make adjustments to them.

nXt is designed to simulate real-world lighting. Use the following guidelines when lighting your model:

  • Provide accurate information whenever possible. Avoid using unrealistic intensity levels for light sources.
  • Adjust the overall brightness of your rendering by using the Brightness control on the rendering display. Do not attempt to adjust the overall scene brightness by changing the intensity of all of the light sources. nXt's automatic exposure adjustment will be working against you if you attempt to do this.

Contents

Lighting Presets

Lighting Presets

The Presets lets you choose predefined settings for the most common lighting situations.

There are a lot of settings to create special lighting effects. The presets make it easier to get a good rendering without having to make all the setting manually.

Standard Presets

  • High Dynamic for subtle shadows for exterior scenes.
  • Exterior - for exterior scenes with sun and sky.
  • Interior with Sun - Interior scenes with lighting through doors and windows.
  • Interior no Sun - Interior scenes with no external lighting.
  • HDRi Sky - Exterior scene with a sky full of clouds.
Presets tab on Setup Wizard

nXt provides four lighting presets which can help get you started when deciding how to light your model. There are many more lighting options available, but the presets are often sufficient for many different renderings. The Presets icons are available on the Presets Setup Tab. Choose the Preset which most closely resembles your scene:

High Dynamic

mimics the lighting which might be found in a photographer's studio. It is most useful for rendering small to medium sized objects in isolation.

The primary lighting is provided by an high dynamic range image file (HDRi). The light from the HDRi has been artificially dimmed, to resemble the interior lighting levels of the studio. You can modify the HDRi settings and file on the HDRi Setup Tab . You can add artificial lights to your scene using the Lights tab.

Exterior

is used for daylight simulations of architectural exteriors. A sun and natural sky are simulated.


The sun and sky settings can be modified on the Sky Setup Tab . You can specify sun angles directly or you can use geographical location and date and time. The default visible background for this preset is the simulated sky.

Interior with Sun

Interior Daylight allows you to simulate an architectural interior during the day, lit by natural light.

For an interior daylight simulation to work properly, you must use a transparent material to represent the glass in your windows. Sun and sky settings are similar to the Exterior preset. Interior Lighting.


Interior - no Sun

provides a simulation of an architectural interior at night, lit by artificial luminares.

For this simulation to work properly, you must add artificial lights to your model.

HDRi Sky

HDRi Sky Preset.jpg

The HDRi Sky preset loads a HDRi background and sky - Bear Mountain - and make other settings to make the sky visible.

After selecting this preset, you can easily use the HDRi tab to select other skies.

Additional Notes on Presets

Image by by Christopher Alan Krupp on the irendernxt.com forum. Lighting balanced with Lighting Channels. Click to view full size.
  • Indirect lighting, the lighting reflected off of surfaces, is on when one of the two interior presets are selected and off for studio and exterior. This type of lighting is a very significant component of an interior simulation. For exteriors and studio models the effects of indirect lighting is more subtle. You can turn on indirect lighting for exteriors and studio models if you want this additional realism (at a substantial performance cost.)
  • Interior daylight mode and exterior mode do not have artificial lights enabled. You can add artificial lights to these presets if you wish by following the procedure here.
  • Night time renderings can be a little tricky. The Brightness slider, and Lighting Channels can make it much easier to balance the lighting.


Presets tab

Interior 72.png

The Presets Tab lets you choose predefined settings more the most common lighting situations.

The Presets set items on the bottom of this tab which can also be altered directly.

Presets-tab.jpg



Lighting-Presets.jpg
Preset Description Usage
High Dynamic (default) Uses an HDRi sky for reflection and illumination which is very effective for many renderings without using the sun or any exterior lights. This provides a nice lighting effect for viewing individual items.

See: High Dynamic Lighting

- exterior scenes or isolated objects when you want to create an interesting, subtle, lighting effect, inst4ead of using the sun or interior lights.
Exterior turns on the sun and the sky, and high ambient lighting. - exterior scenes when the effects of sunlight are desired.
Interior w/sun turns on the sun and the sky, and lowers the ambient light so interior lights will be effective as well. - interior scenes with windows and interior lights. If you do not have interior artificial lights, then use Exterior instead.
Interior - no sun turns off the sun and sky, with lowered ambient lighting. - interior scenes with windows, or scenes with windows when the effect of light coming in through the windows is not desired.
HDRi sky Adds an HDRi sky with sky, clouds and background trees. - Exterior Scenes with window reflections, or which would benefit form a sky and trees background.


The settings below override the Presets: SketchUp on/off

  • Sun' - turns on the SketchUp sun
  • Sky - turns on the SketcnhUp sky
  • Ground Plane - turns on the SketchUp ground plane.
  • Synchronize changes with SketchUp - if this is checked then any changes made to Sun, or Ground visibility will also be made to SketchUp. If it is not checked you can suppress shadows in SketchUp to make it run faster, but still show the shadows in your rendering.

Sky Mode

  • SketchUp colors - make a background sky which emulates the coloring of the SketchUp sky.
The SketchUp colors sky does not reflect or illuminate the drawing,
  • Automatic - creates a realistic sky which illuminates the model.
  • HDRI - uses a HDRI image to define the sky.
  • Sky Illuminates if Off - check this to get illumination from the Automatic or HDRi shy evn if the sky is not on.
  • Sky Reflected if Off - check this to show reflections from the Automatic or HDRi shy evn if the sky is not on.

Ambient Light
Each setting provides a smaller amount of ambient light to better represent scene selected:

  • High
  • Medium
  • Low
  • None
  • Studio Brightness - makes ambient brightness 20 times lower. Typically used in studio or High Dynamic renderings where light is provided by an HDRi sky.

Other Settings

  • Enable Artificial Lighting - turn lamps and other artificial lighting on and off
  • Use Auto daylight Portals - Automatically treats windows as Daylight Portals.
  • Use Indirect Lighting - Incorporates the effects of indirect lighting. (Lights reflecting from mirrors and other surfaces.)





Other Setup Options