So, I have been digging around trying to figure out the lighting in Rhino for Mac to setup a nice render. I feel like I am going a little crazy. I am not a noob with rhino or rendering or mac rhino. Sometimes I output a really nice rendering, then I don’t render for a few months, then I need a quick rendering again, setup up a quick scene, and I cannot get any control over the lighting of the scene. I found the Mac Rhino Wiki: http://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/mac/toucanmaterials , But it does not touch on lighting at all. I am using it for concept modeling architecture. I setup a nice directional light. to mimic sun angles, but then everything is completely washed out when I render. The confusing part is that if I select the light I can edit in two different places in the properties panel. Under ‘Light’ and also under ‘Toucan’. In either place there are sliders for ‘Intensity’ or ‘light intensity’ as well as shadow intensity. There is also a color picker. Seems like multiple layers of redundancy that oddly don’t actually seem to have much effect. Also, there is a color picker and light intensity in the occlusion setting, as well as a color picker for the skylight.
Anyone want to offer up a step by step to setup a nice outdoor sunlight study rendering? Or at least guide through some rudimentary lighting help? Or maybe a timeline for the ‘Sun’ command to hop on over to Mac land?
Mac Rhino is currently getting a facelift in regards to how all the rendering tools work and are accessed specifically. As it sits now, it can be confusing. Hold off on trying to learn to use this part now if you can. The Sun is part of a Windows Rhino project and may or may not be supported on OSX. Lighting with HDR textures in environments is the simplest way to light a model but this may or may not be supported by Toucan as well.
Let us know what you expect in Mac Rhino when it comes to rendering tools please. This is an active area of discussion and user feedback is great to hear. @marlin , please correct any misunderstandings on my part.
I appreciate the nature of the current tools within Rhino for Mac. But, I think it just needs a few tweaks as it stands to let it be more functional until the ultimate goals are figured out.
I have been using Rhino for Mac for about 6 years. I think. It has come so far its amazing. And exciting for me as a long time mac user. I even like the way the in-program renderer is setup. Simple, yet effective. I am not someone who needs Disney quality renderings. Nor do I want to go that route. I think that the way it should work is just that, simple but effective. Have controllable lights. Color, intensity, shadows. Have them able to mimic sunlight quickly and easily. I like the UI of Toucan materials. Also simple and easy. Drag and drop. Maybe even add the functionality of packing the materials into a file somehow. I know, issues, but I hate losing track of attached material images. Again, my opinion would be to setup the stock renderer to be quick and simple, but give warm simple renders with low fuss. Let the super high end stuff be handled by other renderers, even if it’s a McNeel renderer like Flamingo or such.
So finally, my last point, I am actually teaching a digital literacy class to 75 second year architecture students based around Rhino. Most of my students have Macs, the level we are getting into is fully possible on Rhino for Mac, so I would love if the render engine was tweaked just enough to be able to shoot out 30 second sunlight renders with the nice occlusion that I can get out of it sometimes, but not other times. My class is not an in-depth rendering class, so I don’t want to introduce the issues that come with using some of the higher end render softwares…
Simplifying the interface and making the existing rendering tools more discoverable is first and foremost on deck. Please let your students know about the forum if they have any comments or requests too.
Right now, our 4 person design team is mixed, 2 people work only on WinRhino, one person is learning Rhino on her Mac and I use both OSX & Windows (Though mostly on OSX). As far as rendering, we now have a shared computer running Flamingo, hence Windows. I have only started using Flamingo about 3 months ago and usually just once a week to do renders of my pieces. We do 99% silver 925 jewellery with Swarovski crystals and or enamel & Ferido® clay. All our colours are done to Pantone® colours.
The main Flamingo guy has a workflow we all use.
We set image size 5x5 inches highest quality (1500 pixels)
We enable ground plane and bring in a specific background.
We have a specific light & HDR we use for all shots.
Then we add our materials, We have a huge library of Swarovski gem colours & Enamels & clay
We then render for 10 minutes.
I would love to do this on OSX, but have never really tried, too confusing.
How would i start to do a work flow like this?
You won’t be able to match the Flamingo nXt renders using the renderer in Rhino for Mac. You could get close I’m sure but it won’t be the same look exactly or take the same time to calculate. I would hold off on trying to learn how to set up a render in Rhino for Mac right now. The organization of these tools as well as the workflow is an active discussion. Of course, if you want to try it, I’d like to know what you expected to be able to do, find etc. Right now, it is I agree confusing but it should get better before release. Plugins like Flamingo won’t be available in v1 so if you want to render in OSX, you’d need to use the default renderer (workflow TBD) or a standalone program like Maxwell or Keyshot.
I just wanted to say what we do now, and this is working for us. I am just wondering if in the future we could be using a McNeel render program on OSX. Right now we do have our Flamingo setup that anyone can use. I was also trying to explain a workflow, I am not sure how to setup any environment in Toucan at this point.
I will try something on my own time and then maybe send a Flamingo comparison and see if we can get close.