First Impressions of PureLight
by Haru Ruben · 09/05/2009 (3:26 am) · 19 comments
"yeaaaah.. go, Teapot!...it's ya birthday...go teapot!":
Hooora! I am a PureLight virgin no longer! First impression: We all saw the amazingly cool, MassEffect-ish goodness, and that's why I bought a license. I had done lightmaps like in Max of course which made me,at first, I thought really inside the box about how PureLight worked.. "this is some kinda cool renderBaker or something"... but the iterative approach is really something revolutionary.
PureLight's iterative method really has helped me make better images - faster. Doing things in an iterative way helped me to make changes early, and see where problems or creative improvements were possible. Truth is it's actually a lot faster than anythign I've tried - truth is you can spend all night rendering your totally awesome lighting solution... but getting to that solution is faster, more fun and I ended up with great results.
Two things that tripped me up -
1. the folder structure is extrememly important, if you don't place everyhting in the right folders when preparing your scene for the Lighting Oven ... PureLight will crash. For some reason this just didn't click with me at first, and I put my meshes in the project root like some kinda fool..so just be aware of that and save yourself 6 hours wathcing the same tutorial vid over and over again wondering "Am I stupid?" (Don't answer that)
2. For some reason... your scene needs to be in inches, at least for me otherwise my lights would appear in exotic far off places far from where I wanted em to be. Maybe it's just me, I couldn't get it to position the lights just right unless it was inches.. maybe I'm stupid
as illustrated here:
"hi, mr. Spotlight, I know the scene is in centimeters... are you sure you don't want to come inside and light this frikkin room?" that blue line in the upper right is my spotlight... out in left field for some reason...
was it worth the money? yeah. truth is I'm having a lot of fun putting scenes together and making really exciting ighting scenarios and it's a lot more wholesome than the fun I'd usually spend 350$ on.
so, in conclusion: pure light chews bubble gum and kicks a$$, and it's all outta bubble gum.
Hooora! I am a PureLight virgin no longer! First impression: We all saw the amazingly cool, MassEffect-ish goodness, and that's why I bought a license. I had done lightmaps like in Max of course which made me,at first, I thought really inside the box about how PureLight worked.. "this is some kinda cool renderBaker or something"... but the iterative approach is really something revolutionary.
PureLight's iterative method really has helped me make better images - faster. Doing things in an iterative way helped me to make changes early, and see where problems or creative improvements were possible. Truth is it's actually a lot faster than anythign I've tried - truth is you can spend all night rendering your totally awesome lighting solution... but getting to that solution is faster, more fun and I ended up with great results.
Two things that tripped me up -
1. the folder structure is extrememly important, if you don't place everyhting in the right folders when preparing your scene for the Lighting Oven ... PureLight will crash. For some reason this just didn't click with me at first, and I put my meshes in the project root like some kinda fool..so just be aware of that and save yourself 6 hours wathcing the same tutorial vid over and over again wondering "Am I stupid?" (Don't answer that)
2. For some reason... your scene needs to be in inches, at least for me otherwise my lights would appear in exotic far off places far from where I wanted em to be. Maybe it's just me, I couldn't get it to position the lights just right unless it was inches.. maybe I'm stupid
as illustrated here:
"hi, mr. Spotlight, I know the scene is in centimeters... are you sure you don't want to come inside and light this frikkin room?" that blue line in the upper right is my spotlight... out in left field for some reason...
was it worth the money? yeah. truth is I'm having a lot of fun putting scenes together and making really exciting ighting scenarios and it's a lot more wholesome than the fun I'd usually spend 350$ on.
so, in conclusion: pure light chews bubble gum and kicks a$$, and it's all outta bubble gum.
#2
09/05/2009 (9:53 am)
Haru, I want some of whatever you're on. :D 
#4
09/05/2009 (2:19 pm)
Wow, thanks for the kudos Haru :) The folder and naming structure are key to how pureLIGHT works. Then again, a little organization never hurt anyone ;) Tom is working on the issues you've been having. As for the inches issue, we actually have the T3D version of pureLIGHT set to meters, but it might have something to do with your locale settings as Tom found when he was looking into the other problems for you.
#5
09/05/2009 (3:02 pm)
that's the other good thing I've experienced so far I forgot to mention, support has been really good, David and his associates really went out of their way to get up and running.
#6
09/05/2009 (3:38 pm)
Aww shucks, you're making me blush. 
#7
I found the LMM feature very useful adjusting the UVWMapping by myself in max! Great!
09/05/2009 (4:23 pm)
I have to say that using the trial version so far I am very impressed and will definitely buy this product in a few days.I found the LMM feature very useful adjusting the UVWMapping by myself in max! Great!
#8
I actually have one of the real Utah teapots sitting on my desk :) Its always been a popular test mesh. (The one in 3D Max is a bit squashed compared to the real thing)
09/05/2009 (11:18 pm)
In preLight you can set the scale of your scene to whatever units you want. So if you want centimeters, set the units per meter settings to 100.I actually have one of the real Utah teapots sitting on my desk :) Its always been a popular test mesh. (The one in 3D Max is a bit squashed compared to the real thing)
#9
here's another test, this has a spotlight with a projection texture map on it.....mmmmmm, prjection....gurgle....(read that last bit out loud in a Homer Simpson voice for effect)
Next thing I'm trying to figure out is how to get my light to change color as it passes through a translucent color object...
still getting a little light bleed...d'oh!
09/06/2009 (12:56 am)
cool, though I think in the near future the Gideon-a-hedron will replace the teaPot-A-hedron as the standard in CG testing.here's another test, this has a spotlight with a projection texture map on it.....mmmmmm, prjection....gurgle....(read that last bit out loud in a Homer Simpson voice for effect)
Next thing I'm trying to figure out is how to get my light to change color as it passes through a translucent color object...
still getting a little light bleed...d'oh!
#10
-Pete
09/06/2009 (3:24 am)
I can't wait until I have a reason to buy PureLight.... Once I get further along in my project PureLight is a must for my environment.-Pete
#11
You can solve light bleed by making sure the edges of the meshes are aligned and they don't cut through each other. pureLIGHT kind of makes you use proper 3D technique, but that's not a bad thing right :) Another solution if you have an external light source like a sun shining into a room and you have some light bleed is surrounding the area where the bleed is with a black box.
09/06/2009 (4:24 am)
@HaruYou can solve light bleed by making sure the edges of the meshes are aligned and they don't cut through each other. pureLIGHT kind of makes you use proper 3D technique, but that's not a bad thing right :) Another solution if you have an external light source like a sun shining into a room and you have some light bleed is surrounding the area where the bleed is with a black box.
#12
workflow has taken me about 4 hours total of experiemnting to get to a place where I'm feeling very comfortable.
For me, doing stuff like shadow blockers and updating geometry and lights takes a little getting used to - conceptually.
putting blocking geometry works very well, here's a more test on a in progress level gometry.
I left a tiny opening in the geometry, like 1cm and the outside directional light shot through a nice beam of light, pretty neat
even on very complex geometry, like this cute tank model I'm working on, it has like a couple hundred thousand polys, I'm getting immediate results the second I start lighting, even on the treads:
The treads use a "Vertex Lit" object - depending on the geometry you can use a different prefix to ask PL to handle it in a special way.
That has taken a bit of getting used to. I needed to sort of analyze the mesh and think about which would work best
There's a temptation to use the LMM object, which lets you use predefined UVW on 2 for the lightmaps, which is fine I suppose for some things, but you can miss out on a lot of cool interactive tweaking of map size, coordintes, packing that PureLight seems to do quite well
09/06/2009 (11:32 pm)
3 Day Weekend of PureLight - Continues...workflow has taken me about 4 hours total of experiemnting to get to a place where I'm feeling very comfortable.
For me, doing stuff like shadow blockers and updating geometry and lights takes a little getting used to - conceptually.
putting blocking geometry works very well, here's a more test on a in progress level gometry.
I left a tiny opening in the geometry, like 1cm and the outside directional light shot through a nice beam of light, pretty neat
even on very complex geometry, like this cute tank model I'm working on, it has like a couple hundred thousand polys, I'm getting immediate results the second I start lighting, even on the treads:
The treads use a "Vertex Lit" object - depending on the geometry you can use a different prefix to ask PL to handle it in a special way.
That has taken a bit of getting used to. I needed to sort of analyze the mesh and think about which would work best
There's a temptation to use the LMM object, which lets you use predefined UVW on 2 for the lightmaps, which is fine I suppose for some things, but you can miss out on a lot of cool interactive tweaking of map size, coordintes, packing that PureLight seems to do quite well
#14
09/08/2009 (1:19 pm)
Wow, good looking stuff Haru. Can't wait to see the final products. 
#15
09/09/2009 (5:53 am)
LOL, Totally loved the Duke Nukem Reference there at the end, hehe... Good looking scenes
#16
09/09/2009 (12:59 pm)
Actually, it's a "They Live" reference that they stole for Duke :)
#17
gotta represent for the original! watch it and the first thing you will think of is bada$$ is bada$$ baked in shadow and light
09/09/2009 (3:13 pm)
gotta represent for the original! watch it and the first thing you will think of is bada$$ is bada$$ baked in shadow and light
#18
09/09/2009 (3:36 pm)
Lol, Thanks for the correction, I never knew, Just heard in Duke myself, lol.
#19
09/09/2009 (6:54 pm)
Nonsense, Duke is so awesome, that they still stole it from him. Always bet on Duke!
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