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Arnold and the sun positioner

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Message 1 of 20
donied
7147 Views, 19 Replies

Arnold and the sun positioner

I thought that the sun positioner was supported by Arnold. I am doing a sun study animation and animating the date on the sun positioner. But I'm getting sun positioner errors from Arnold. If Arnold can't support this daylight system it's not much use.

 

I really hope they have a better implementation of Arnold in 2019. AD aren't making the change over easy.

 

Thanks

19 REPLIES 19
Message 2 of 20
KarlAkimor
in reply to: donied

Apparently it works, but Arnold has also his own system for the sun

https://www.linkedin.com/learning/3ds-max-rendering-with-arnold/daylighting-with-arnold-physical-sky

 

Message 3 of 20
donied
in reply to: KarlAkimor

Thanks for your response. The problem with the Arnold Physical sky you can't animate the sun position over time.

Message 4 of 20
aon.914858227
in reply to: donied


@doniedwrote:

I thought that the sun positioner was supported by Arnold. I am doing a sun study animation and animating the date on the sun positioner. But I'm getting sun positioner errors from Arnold. If Arnold can't support this daylight system it's not much use.

 

I really hope they have a better implementation of Arnold in 2019. AD aren't making the change over easy.

 

Thanks


SunPositioner and Physical Sun+Sky Environment works just fine under Arnold.

Are you on the latest MaxtoA version? 1.2.926

 

https://www.solidangle.com/arnold/download/

 

 

Message 5 of 20
-niels-
in reply to: aon.914858227


@aon.914858227 wrote:

SunPositioner and Physical Sun+Sky Environment works just fine under Arnold.

Are you on the latest MaxtoA version? 1.2.926

 

https://www.solidangle.com/arnold/download/

 

 


Hah, apparently it does... Daylight system on the other hand does not as it is a MentalRay remnant...

Was wondering why the sun positioner (and the physical sun & sky environment) didn't light my scene, but once i plugged that into an Arnold skydome light all was good...

 

Nice to learn these little things. Smiley Happy


Niels van der Veer
Inventor professional user & 3DS Max enthusiast
Vault professional user/manager
The Netherlands

Message 6 of 20
antikarin
in reply to: -niels-

Niels, can you tell me how you plugged the Arnold skydome and sun positioner together to make it work?
I am a new and frustrated user who has tried for hours to make an arnold or Vray light to be geograpically correct positioned in max 2018.

Message 7 of 20
-niels-
in reply to: antikarin

@antikarin, not that hard... it actually worked without setting up an Arnold skydome but if you need that extra control:

2018-04-12_1645.png

Added the scene as well, see attachment.

 

Hope it helps. Smiley Wink


Niels van der Veer
Inventor professional user & 3DS Max enthusiast
Vault professional user/manager
The Netherlands

Message 8 of 20
donied
in reply to: antikarin

Thanks but the problem is you cant animate it over time.

Message 9 of 20
-niels-
in reply to: donied

@donied:

Sunpos.gif

A bit rough and jittery because it's just a quick animation, but i was perfectly able to animate the sunpositioner's time property using autokey.

Now i will add that the Activeshade window did not properly update the light, even though the background changed, but on the production render everything works properly.


Niels van der Veer
Inventor professional user & 3DS Max enthusiast
Vault professional user/manager
The Netherlands

Message 10 of 20
nano_langenheim
in reply to: -niels-

Hi niels,

thanks for the tip on linking the skydome light to the physical sun texture. I notice though - that you have set the skydome light exposure to 0 rather than the default 8 (I noticed because I tried it and had an over exposed scene). Now I have set it to 0 also - but I am struggling to work out which aspects of the sun and shadows are being driven then by the positioner and which are being driven by the skydome.....do you have any thoughts on this?

N-particle
Message 11 of 20
-niels-
in reply to: nano_langenheim

Hmm... been a while since i set that up... but judging by my own screenshot:
On the left you can see i've set the global exposure to 16 EV
The skydome i've set to Intensity = 1 and exposure = 0, which has a resulting intensity of 1
All the intensity settings within the Physical sun & sky are also set to 1

To my own logic this means 1x the global EV (of 16), but don't hold me to that...
I'd probably control the exposure from that global value or, if you're using a camera, from the camera's exposure value.
You can always tweak any of those settings to get the result you're after, but i guess this would be a reasonable baseline to start from.

Niels van der Veer
Inventor professional user & 3DS Max enthusiast
Vault professional user/manager
The Netherlands

Message 12 of 20
hagen.deloss
in reply to: donied

Hi everyone,

 

Some great discussion going on here! Hey @-niels- thats a really cool gif, did you animate the sun and sky material? or the light itself? I think that knowledge could help @donied ... and I am curious too, I haven't worked with sun and sky settings since Maya 2013 😄

 

 



Hagen Deloss
Community Manager | Media & Entertainment
Installation & Licensing forums | Contact product support | Autodesk AREA


 

Message 13 of 20
nano_langenheim
in reply to: -niels-

Thanks Niels,

I am definitely able to control some things through the skydome light - like the intensity and colour of shadows while driving the date, time location with the sun positioner which is most gratifying (thank you again). - This is quite nice and looks like active shade now works fine. What I was actually wanting to do - and how I cam across this thread - is something that used to be simple with Max's MR Sun. I used to set up several suns, lets say 4 and adjust the intensity of each to .25 (so they in total equaled 1). I would set each sun to a different time and be able to render out a composite of the 4 shadows (equivalent to your render I guess but as a still image). So far I haven't been able to do this using sun positioners and Arnold lights. You can see in the Active view - only the first sun positioner and light are showing up - the second positioner and skydome make no difference. I'm thinking this might be just impossible with a physical sun and sky system (I know - I could do several renders and composite them which is fine) - but I though I would just run it by you. all the best.

2018-07-17_120038.jpg

N-particle
Message 14 of 20
-niels-
in reply to: nano_langenheim

@nano_langenheim, did you remember to make copies of the sun&sky and link them to their respective positioners and skydomes?

Is this the result you are looking for?

afbeelding.png

(attached Max 2018 file)

 

@hagen.deloss, i animated the "time" parameter in the sun positioner... that's all there was to it...


Niels van der Veer
Inventor professional user & 3DS Max enthusiast
Vault professional user/manager
The Netherlands

Message 15 of 20
nano_langenheim
in reply to: -niels-

Thanks again Neils,

 

I did the linking but didn't think to make copies of the sky - love it.

N-particle
Message 16 of 20
hagen.deloss
in reply to: donied

Hi @donied @-niels- and @nano_langenheim

 

This is great info Niels, thanks for walking through all that! I'm sure I will be using those features sometime in the future as well 😄 

 

@donied looks like the sun and sky in Arnold can be animated, not sure on the regular sun and sky being compatible with Arnold though, i hope this helps you out. I can look into this further if you still have any questions!

 

 



Hagen Deloss
Community Manager | Media & Entertainment
Installation & Licensing forums | Contact product support | Autodesk AREA


 

Message 17 of 20
donied
in reply to: hagen.deloss

Yes you can animate the arnold sun but you can't animate based on the time and date. I went back to an earlier version of Max and used the MR.

Message 18 of 20
-niels-
in reply to: hagen.deloss

@hagen.deloss


@hagen.deloss wrote:

@donied looks like the sun and sky Sun positioner in Arnold can be animated,...



@hagen.deloss wrote:
..., not sure on the regular sun and sky being compatible with Arnold though,...

Kinda skipping over all the previously given evidence that it is... aren't you. Smiley Wink

(or do you mean something else?)

 

@donied, I can understand if you're already done with this and just want to move one, but now i'm curious how you need to animate it and if it's possible with Arnold.

As I stated, I could animate the time property (tried with hours and days) in the file i posted in post #7

Attaching a new test to this post, so you can check if this is what you were after.

 


Niels van der Veer
Inventor professional user & 3DS Max enthusiast
Vault professional user/manager
The Netherlands

Message 19 of 20
jamestomk
in reply to: -niels-

I am trying to follow your solution to link an Arnold Skydome light to my existing SunPositioner (used for ART).  

not tracking.png

 

I used a Link Constraint in motion parameters:

link.png

but the Skydome light doesn't track my animated Sun movement (Time Of Day):

animation.png

Is this not the correct way to do this?

Message 20 of 20
nano_langenheim
in reply to: jamestomk

Hi James,

actually I don't use this system any more. 

Instead I link a legacy MR daylight system to an Arnold distant light 

Here  is a couple of videos of the process - 

Part 01  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4wzG9lf_IY

Part 02 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2S-m9gOHK0&t=135s

I like this better as I can turn off the sky controls in the daylight system and then just use Arnold controls instead. 

Let me know if that solves your problem - as I think there is something funny about animating the legacy daylight system. 

N-particle

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