Luxology Rendering Update Version 18A

Installing this update These release notes cover changes made since version 09A. This update is for the 08.11.05 build of MicroStation V8i.

In this version we have improved the installer to allow you to choose which MicroStation copy to install to, and give you the option of selecting an alternate workspace location. To install this version, simply run ftp.bentley.com/visualization/Luxology-18a.exe. Preset Materials If you do not already have the Luxology Presets, you can download and extract these materials from ftp.bentley.com/visualization/Presets.zip to your workspace folder. To determine where your workspace folder is located, start MicroStation and then from the file open dialog note the path name and location of the workspace folder.

Documentation The latest documentation is available at ftp.bentley.com/visualization/LuxologyRenderTechnologyPreview.pdf

Changes since version 16A

Material previews now use all lighting from the model of the example. Bentley_Materials.dgnlib has been updated with better light settings.

New shader options have been added for materials The Luxology Render Setups has been improved to work better with the Quality slider Updated Luxology View Settings Brightness settings stored/retrieved from light setups Improved zoom capabilities for rendered images Correctly disable 'indirect illumination' when toggled off Improved range of sun size in Sky environment Correctly allow refraction for a variety of solids (including solid meshes). Correctly use material color for open elements Correct translucency when used with caustics Improve memory utilization when displaying images Improve element instancing Improve performance by not updating material preview when minimized Procedural textures now correctly render with current user settings Render area lights with correct orientation Associative patterns now render correctly Improved display of animated off-screen elements, camera cones and shadows Improved support for OpenEXR & Jpeg2000 Improve pattern mapping for shapes with projections attached. Apply alpha to ambient occlusion output.

Version 18a Enhancement Details

Improved Image Zoom A new combo box has been added to allow you to instantly zoom to any level, including a drop-down with the most common values (50%, 100%, 200%, etc.). Zooming with the mouse wheel is now more continuous, and you can also now zoom out beyond 100%.

Materials In the material editor there is now a Material Shader Effects popup dialog which contains the existing Cast Shadows and Visible To Eye check boxes, along with some new material options.

The popup dialog appears as:

These new material items are explained below.

This is a per-material antialiasing value. The value represents the subdivision of a pixel in X & Y for extra sampling values. A value of 1 means one sample per pixel. A value of 0.5 means divide the pixel in half in both X & Y, and take a sample for each new area. Thus, 4 total samples would be taken for a Shading Rate of 0.5. A typical use of shading rate is to reduce high frequency noise as in the examples below.

Shading Rate

The image on the left above has a bump map which is producing noise on the handle of the teapot. This was rendered with a shade rate of 1.0. The image on the right eliminates this by setting the shade rate for the teapot material to 0.5.

This setting and the following two settings, Indirect Illumination Multiplier and Indirect Illumination Saturation are used for balancing the effect of direct and indirect illumination in the scene. Here the image on the left has the environment lit with only a solar light, and the teapot material has Direct Illumination Multiplier set to 100% (the default). In the image on the right, the multiplier is 0%, i.e. no direct light is affecting the teapot; it is only lit by the light reflected from the walls and floor.

Direct Illumination Multiplier

This setting reduces or increases the effect of indirect lighting in the scene. Again the environment is lit with only a solar light. The image on the left has the teapot material with the Indirect Illumination Multiplier value set to 100%. The image on the right has it set to 0%. Since the teapot has areas which are shadowed by the solar light, these areas are not receiving any indirect light, and are therefore dark in the image on the right.

Indirect Illumination Multiplier

This setting controls of the saturation of a materials color from the color of indirect light sources. The image on the left uses a default setting of 100%, and the color of the indirect light is clearly affecting the teapot material. In the image on the right, the saturation is set to 0%, and shows the color of the teapot is not affected.

Indirect Illumination Saturation

This setting allows the choice of which algorithm is used for indirect illumination when rendering an element with this material. The three different types shown below are, from left to right: None, Monte Carlo, Irradiance Caching.

Indirect Illumination Type

In the left image, the teapot is not illuminated from the light probe at all; and the Monte Carlo algorithm results in more grain in the material. This graininess can be reduced by increasing the number of indirect illumination rays. In the two images below, the one on the left uses 128 indirect samples per pixel, and the one on the right uses 1024 samples.

This toggle controls whether or not a material will receive a shadow from another object. In the left image the floor material has Receive Shadows on, and in the right image it is off.

Receive Shadows

This setting controls whether an element with this material is directly visible to the eye. In other words, if the element is in the direct line of sight, it is rendered as visible in the scene. In the left image, Visible To Eye is on, and it is off in the right image. Notice that in the right image the element is still visible in reflections & refractions.

Visible To Eye

This toggle controls whether an element with the material is visible during the indirect illumination pass, i.e. whether those elements contribute to the indirect illumination of the scene. In the left image below, Visible To Indirect Rays is on, and a shadow can be seen under the teapot (Light Probes are considered indirect lights). This is set to off in the image on the right, and the shadow is not present.

Visible To Indirect Rays

This toggle controls whether an element with the material can be seen in reflections. The image on the left below has Visible To Reflection Rays turned on, and the image on the right has it turned off. The teapot is not visible in the reflection on the right.

Visible To Reflection Rays

This setting controls whether an element with the material is visible in refractions. In the scene below, there is a block of glass in front of the right half of the teapot. In the left image, the teapot material has Visible To Refraction Rays turned on, and it is off on the right.

Visible To Refraction Rays

Material Preview Material previews now use all lighting from the model of the example, including solar, sky, flashbulb and ambient.

If you are creating your own material examples and are adjusting the lighting for those models, you may need to use the key-in LUXOLOGY RESETMATERIALADAPTATION (or lux reset for short) after modifying the lights. This will reset the brightness levels for the material previews. If you dont do this, all new previews rendered with that example could display with the wrong brightness, until you restart MicroStation.

Render Setups / Render Quality Slider The render quality slider has been consolidated into render setups and now controls keyed values inside the selected render setup. This is a change from previous versions where either a render setup or the render quality slider was used to the exclusion of the other. When making this enhancement, the goal was to reduce confusion and redundancy while still keeping the old render quality sliders ease of use.

The image above shows the two major changes of this enhancement:

1) Each render setup now has its own render quality slider that is in synch with the render quality slider on the Luxology Rendering dialog if the same setup is selected in both dialogs. The Interior/Exterior toggle has been removed and the slider can now be thought of as moving from Exterior to Interior left to right. This slider value is saved as a property of the render setup.

2) Weve added the concept of keyed values for determining which render setup values change when the slider moves. If the key icon next to a value is active, then that value is automatically set based on the position of the render quality slider. If the key icon is not active, then the value manually entered will be used regardless of the position of the render quality slider. Values without key icons next to them cannot be modified with the render quality slider. If no key values are specified for a setup, moving the render quality slider will have no effect.

The render setups delivered with MicroStation have been updated to have appropriate key values, i.e. Occlusion Rays are keyed for the Ambient Occlusion setup, but Irradiance Rays arent. We also determine whether or not to use keyed values based on whether a value falls outside the standard range. For instance, the Interior Extreme setup does not use a keyed value for Indirect Bounces because it is set to 10, far higher than what should be used for 99% of renderings and thus outside the range of the slider.

Its a good idea to take this workflow into consideration for your own render setups: key values that youre happy to use reasonable defaults for and do not key values that you want custom settings for.

The render setup values that can be keyed are: Antialias Samples, Occlusion Rays, Indirect Bounces, Irradiance Rays, Total Photons and Local Photons.

View Settings

The Luxology View Settings dialog now has the option to save and apply view settings as templates in the same manner as Luxology environments. Additionally, the drop-down menu next to the View Settings icon will now list these view settings instead of environments.

The view settings that are saved through this dialog contain all the items in the view settings dialog, meaning these are a super-set of environments.

The current state of the dialog is still saved in the selected view and can still be saved or recalled using saved views.

Image Settings

There are two major changes to the Luxology Image Settings dialog:

1) It is now possible to push and pull brightness, contrast and brightness mode (Adapt to Brightness or Brightness Multiplier) values from the active light setup. This has several benefits. First, the brightness, contrast, and brightness mode defaults used when beginning a new rendering are always pulled from the active light setup, meaning that each image will have a predictable starting point and Luxology images created from other dialogs (Save Multiple, etc.) will have the same appearance. Because its now possible to push brightness, contrast, and brightness mode values back to the active light setup, its easy to render an image in the Luxology render dialog, tweak your image settings with visual feedback, then push them back to the active light setup and save it for later use in either the Luxology render dialog or other rendering dialogs. Clicking the icon marked by 1 in the image above will push the current brightness, contrast and brightness mode values back to the active light setup.

2) Clicking the icon marked by 2 in the image above will toggle between Adapt to Brightness and Brightness Multiplier mode. Also, as long as an image is displayed in the Luxology render dialog, the adaptation and multiplier levels will be kept in sync with each other.

Changes since version 14A

Luxology Engine Updated, latest version of underlying engine installed with this update. Improved support and performance for instancing of all cells. Added support for blurry refractions. Animator now allows you to animate displacement distance over time. Allow selection set when creating displacement map from elements. Also, the tool will now use a top

view as defined by the ACS provided ACS Plane Lock is on (see page 2 for more info). Raster references now render correctly, so photo-match will work as expected. Added double-click on a Luxology Render Setup to make active. Added new contrast operator for improved photographic tone mapping for images with extremely

bright regions.

Corrected brightness of light probes when not overriding lights and the physical sky is used, meaning you should now see reflections of light probes in reflective areas of your scene.

RPC now render correctly when using Image Save dialog. Correctly display name for first material thumbnail, partial material previews are no longer saved. Additional examples files for blurry refraction and animated displacement. Higher quality material previews are now stored with the palettes.

Version 16a Enhancement Details

Animation The Animator now supports the ability to animate displacement offset. There is now a displacement entry in the list of attributes that may be animated for a material.

To script the displacement select the Animate Materials tool:

Next, select the material to be displaced and the setting of Displacement, then enter a displacement value and the time for the displacement to reach that value. Then add another script entry for the end displacement. You will end up entries similar to:

You can now record this animation using the animation record dialog, resulting in start and end images similar to these for the start and end frames respectively:

Materials Entries to create materials with blurry refraction have been added to the material editor. These are highlighted below.

The blurry refraction roughness is linked to the finish value. The lower the finish, the rougher the surface is and the more blurred the refractions will be. Here is an example with a finish of 80:

Here is an example with a finish of 95:

Instancing The Luxology rendering engine is optimized to efficiently handle large numbers identical pieces of geometry using a technique known as replication. This makes it ideally suited for handling AEC data sets which typically contain vast numbers of identical components. For example a typical plant file may contain thousands of identical valves or pipe elbows.

When MicroStation renders with the Luxology engine, model it handles replication at two levels. At the lowest level, as geometry is meshed and sent to the rendering engine, it automatically detects that meshes have already been encountered at a different location and rather than sending the entire mesh, it sends only the location information. This type of instancing is very similar to the techniques that are used to compress standard imaging files.

In the latest version, MicroStation also supports a higher level instancing based on cells (both shared and unshared). This instancing works in a similar manner to the mesh instancing except that it detects duplicated cells and sends only their location rather than the entire cell contents. This can produce a higher level of optimization models with many cells as it avoids the meshing step for the instanced cells and it also allows instancing of some types of geometry that are not suitable for the mesh instancing.

Changes since version 12A Animator now works!!!

Removed nebula palette from Bentley_Materials.dgnlib, and updated Clearcoat_paints palette ( modified materials to look a little more like their names) Dark Slate Green is now at least greenish. Added 10 more clearcoat colors to palette, hopefully the names are okay, I just made them up. (JF).

Changed the Luxology_render.dgnlib so displacement mapping should now use much less memory and you should see much less Luxology Render Engine Failed messages. Please read this http://communities.bentley.com/blogs/luxology-blog/archive/2008/12/08/displacement-mapping-memory-conservation.aspx blog for details about the Displacement Rate and Displacement Ratio.

Changes to external palettes are now saved only if you agree to save changes. Save Previews for external palettes are now separate from saving the palette.

Version 14a Enhancement Details

New Material From Geometry tool Luxology Update Version 12A adds a new entry to the Material Editors Material menu: New Material From Geometry. This tool will create a material with displacement and opacity maps generated and sized from the top of your geometry, greatly simplifying the process of creating displacement maps.

To activate the tool, select its menu entry in the Material Editor. Then, select any geometry that you want to be included as a source for displacement and opacity. When youve finished, click to accept your selection set. A new material will be created in the Generated Materials palette with its UV parameters sized to the length and width of your geometry. Displacement will be sized to the height of your geometry. The orientation used to create the material is the top view as defined by your active ACS provided ACS Plane Lock is on (see above image).

Animation Animator now supports Luxology as render option. This implementation is not yet optimized and renders each animation frame in its entirety. Future versions will optimize frame rendering to improve performance.

Material Editor Preview The material preview window can be separated from the material editor dialog by double-clicking on the preview image. Once separated the window can be resized allowing larger material preview. Closing the separate preview window will revert the preview back to the dialog. When the material is previewed in Luxology mode, the incremental solution is now displayed.

Lens Distortion A new option, Lens Distortion has been added to the Luxology View Settings. A positive value will create a barrel effect, while a negative value will produce pin cushioning.

Barrel Lens Positive Lens Distortion Pin Cushion Lens Negative Lens Distortion

Clearcoat Materials We have added to the Material Editor support for Clearcoat finishes, allowing you to create very realistic automotive paints and other finishes where a layer of clear coating is applied to a base coat material. The Clearcoat slider goes from 0 to 100%, with good results for most automotive paints at around 30 to 60%. You can key-in values above 100, which will produce even thicker clear coating.

Notice that Reflect is set to zero since the basecoat is essentially the pigment (color) layer. Adding clear coating will result in a reflective finish.

Using the BMW paint example, as the Clearcoat amounts are increased you can easily see the Clearcoat effects. In the following image we start out with a non reflective blue paint and add Clearcoat amounts starting with 0% - 250% as you can see the finish becomes more reflective as the amount of Clearcoat increases.

In the following image a single material is applied, the Color is set to Use Element Color while the Finish and Specular components are zero. The colors were derived from the element colors, which are then used as our base colors, by simply adding a clearcoat amount off 100% you can achieve some pretty nice paints (or gumballs).

New Clearcoat Palette A new Clearcoat_Paints palette with a selection of 40 colors has been added to the Bentley_Materials.DGNlib.

Changed the Clearcoat Palette Preview example to use car model (12A).

Material DGNLIBs In order to avoid mixing material DGNLIBs with the dgnlib files for other purposes, we have moved the system material DGNLIB files to the ..system\materials directory. As the material DGNLIBs are now in a separate location, saved views (and levels) used in the material preview models will not be displayed when editing other files. As part of this change, Material palettes are no longer found in MS_DGNLIBLIST path but should be placed in the MS_MATERIALS path as with other palette files.

Miscellaneous 1) Light setups are now available from the Luxology dialog.

2) Alpha channel (RGBA) is now supported when saving PNG files. 3) Number of Photons maximum has been increased to 4 billion.

4) In a scene with no lights rather than switch to default lighting, we now use the default light probe (preview.hdr) and only revert to default lighting if that cannot be found.

Fixes HDR and OpenEXR output is now functional.

Copying image to clipboard with background now works as expected.

The brightness of buckets being displayed, are now correct for Ambient Occlusion

External palettes are now properly saved with .pal extension.

Brightness of glow materials, are now considered when using light probes.

Installing this updatePreset MaterialsDocumentationChanges since version 16AVersion 18a Enhancement DetailsImproved Image ZoomMaterialsUShading RateUDirect Illumination MultiplierUIndirect Illumination MultiplierUIndirect Illumination SaturationUIndirect Illumination TypeUReceive ShadowsUVisible To EyeUVisible To Indirect RaysUVisible To Reflection RaysUVisible To Refraction Rays

Material PreviewRender Setups / Render Quality SliderView SettingsImage SettingsChanges since version 14A

Version 16a Enhancement DetailsAnimationMaterialsInstancingChanges since version 12A

Version 14a Enhancement DetailsNew Material From Geometry toolAnimationMaterial Editor PreviewLens DistortionClearcoat MaterialsNew Clearcoat PaletteMaterial DGNLIBsMiscellaneousFixes