Non rectangular light meter?

[jamie_norrisgreen]

Is it in theory possible to convert a non rectangular planar surface into a light meter perhaps with a well written script?

[jamie_norrisgreen]

Can no one advise? This would be a game changer for me as a lighting designer.

[vlado]

Internally the V-Ray light meter just performs texture baking with the Illuminance/luminance render elements so in theory it is possible to use a non-rectangular shape. If we added the ability to select a custom geometry instead of the built-in plane, would that be enough?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jamie_norrisgreen]

Hi Vlado,

Thank you for you reply. I really appreciate it. That's great news its possible, I would love to be able to use V-ray for lighting calculations & visualisation at the same time. I'm sure there are lots of other lighting designers that would be interested in this workflow. Especially since lighting designs are often working with Revit models. Linking in the Revit model to 3ds max and visualising the lighting with v-ray photometric lights works very well, the LightMix element is super useful, to be able to also extract light levels in the same way something like 'Dialux' does but get great images out too, all while co-ordinating with an architects Revit model would be amazing.

A few things that I imagine would be very easy to add in to the light meter that would make them more useful to lighting designers would be a few other metrics from the light meter:

Eav [lx] (average of all the points on the light meter)
Emin [lx] (lowest point on the light meter)
Emax [lx] (highest point on the light meter)
u0 (Uniformity - lowest point divided by average of all points on the light meter)
Emin / Emax (lowest point on the light meter divided by highest point on the light meter)

Lastly If there was a way to output these specific metrics (instead of all the data for each point) for all light meters in the scene, into a table it would then be viable to use V-ray for lighting calculations.

If there is anyway I can be helpful on this please let me know. Id be happy to test anything out or input form a professional lighting design perspective.

Kind Regards,

Jamie

[jamie_norrisgreen]

Hi vlado, I realised I didn't directly answer your question, yes it would be enough if you add the ability to select a custom geometry instead of the built-in plane, it would also be great if you could add the following data to come out of the light meter:

Eav [lx] (average of all the points on the light meter)
Emin [lx] (lowest point on the light meter)
Emax [lx] (highest point on the light meter)
u0 (Uniformity - lowest point divided by average of all points on the light meter)
Emin / Emax (lowest point on the light meter divided by highest point on the light meter)

Lastly a way to output these specific metrics (instead of all the data for each point) for all light meters in the scene.

Is there much chance of this being implemented?

Kind Regards,

Jamie