optically accurate lightpipes in Vray. Is this possible?

[gustojunk]

I'm working on the design of some products that require lit buttons as part of the interfaces. Those fancy lit buttons you see on a power switch of a laptop or the volume control of a stereo system are made with translucent materials, usually molded parts of polycarbonat plastic. and somewhere inside the guts of the product, attached to a circuit board there is one or more LED lights. the light travels bouncing inside the polycarbonate piece until it reaches the top visible surface on the exterior of the product. So it's very important to shape this piece the right way to get the results you want as far of how even or focused you want the light to be, how high or low to setup the LED intensity to get just the right result. ETC.

So, if I model the geometry of all the parts in CAD, and I know the LED light specs I'll be using:

1. Can I get accurate results in Vray?

2. Do I need IES values? what about the kind of lighting out the environment?

3. does that has to be accurate somehow to daylight, indoors, etc?

4. So I can see how the lightpipe will look in each situation? and how do I get a phisically accutare environment? Can a HDRI hemp me here?


Any thoughts, comments or ramblings will be very appreciated,

Gustavo

[gafl]

Hi gustojunk !

Maybe, you can try with a simple selfilluminated button...
I think there is a self illuminated material in egz collection.
You can try to use it, I think it is in the tutorial topic

Bye !

Gael

[gustojunk]

thanks for the reply gafl, but that's exactly the opposite of a phisically accurate solution. The final outcome in my case is not just a rendering but how to explore different lightpipe solutions so we can engineer and build them in the real product, so I'm trying to find out if I can use Vray as a simulation of that. Soft of like a virtual prototyping tool.

[RErender]

It is easy enough to bounce photons through a pipe to create caustics at the end but I think it will be very expensive and nearly impossible to get a material to react correctly as the button.