A Daylight Portal is a special transparent face placed over an exterior opening or window which causes exterior light to be processed better. In IRender nXt, Daylight is a set using the Material Wizard

Sky only

This image was rendered for just 1 pass with ordinary openings on the left and Daylight Portals used on the right. You can see that the light coming in through the daylight portal is effective starting with the first pass.

This is the same drawing after just 63 rendering pass. (The improved lighting after the first pass is also a result of Indirect Lighting which adds the effect of light reflecting off of other surfaces during multiple passes.

It would take hundreds of passes for the ordinary opening to process the light from the sky properly.

Sunlight

The images above were made with no sun shining into the window. This image had sunlight, as well as sky and cloudiness.

After 5 passes, the Daylight Portal(on the right) is working fairly well)

Here is the result after 2900 passes. (After lots of passes, the non-daylight-portal opening on the left converges to match the daylight-portal openings on the right.

The Daylight Portal on the right has improved as well, but mostly because of the Indirect Lighting effect.

Setting up a Daylight Portal

1. Place a transparent Material in, or behind the opening.
2. Load the Material Wizard
3. Click Plus to load the IRender Plus settings.
4. Check Daylight from the Transparency section.

The IRender nXt Material Wizard makes it easy to create and edit materials.

By applying your material settings to a sample model, and rendering the model immediately, you can see just how your settings will be applied when the material is later rendered using IRender.

The Material Wizard is invoked by right clicking on a SketchUp entity which can have a material, and selecting: IRender: Edit Material. (If it does not have a material yet, a new one will be created.)

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New Features

nXt Materials

The buttons allow you to Load and Save nXt .ArMaterial files for sharing materials between drawings.

The Edit button and the image above it loads the nXt Material Editor (see below)

Auto Bump

Auto Bump automatically treats the texture in the SketchUp material as a Bump Map as well as a texture.

• See: Auto Bump

Glow Type

You can treat the Glow as either Glow - which makes a material brighter, or Light which treats the surface containing the material as a light - which illuminates other objects.

• See: Glow Type

nXt Material Editor

The nXt Material Editor allows you to place additional, advanced settings on your material.

Main Tab

The Main tab sets reflection properties.

Transparency Tab

The Transparency tab sets transparency properties.

Texture Tab

The third tab, Textures, provides some powerful additional features for creation of materials.

And the Procedures section on the right allows you to create complex materials, such as wood.

• 4 Images - you can place up to 4 texture images on your material.

• Bumps There are 5 procedural bumps which can be used to give your material (with or without textures) a different appearance.

Marbled, reflective texture added to items in drawing.

This article explains some of the rendering differences for transparent faces between SketchUp and IRender nXt and some

of the Transparency Adjustments made by IRender nXt to compensate for it. 

White Transparent Materials

These are 11 transparent faces in SketchUp - moving from 100% transparency to 0%.

The underlying face color is white.

This is the same model rendered with nXt with no transparency adjustments.

(30% transparent in SketchUp (70% Opaque) becomes 30% transparent in nXt).

This matches SketchUp pretty well.

Black Transparent Material

These are 11 transparent faces in SketchUp - moving from 100% transparency to 0%.

The underlying face color is Black.

When rendered by nXt with no modifications, all faces appear as black, because nXt transparency

does not let any color through which is not present in the underlying material.

IRender nXt automatically adjusts the base color towards white based on the amount of transparency.

This allows some light to come through.

But they still aren't as transparent as the faces in SkethcUp.

 

However, the faces were not as transparent as they are in SketchUp,

so we also adjust the transparency a bit more to make it make SketchUp better.

Adjusting the White image

However, applying the same adjustments to the white image, makes it too transparent.

 

Original SketchUp rendering.

 The next version of IRender nXt will add 6 more HDRI skies for you to easily select. 

Indirect Light refers to the IRender nXt feature of processing light reflected from mirrors and other surfaces.

This is a SketchUp model of a room with a spotlight shining on the far wall. The partition in the middle of the room prevents direct light from the spot light from reaching the right hand wall.

 

 

IRender nXt rendering with direct light only. All ambient light is turned off to highlight the effect of the single spot light.

IRender nXt rendering with just 3 lighting passes. This starts to show the effect of indirect lighting, but still has harsh shadows.

 

 

IRender nXt rendering after 20 lighting passes. Light is starting to blend and create realistic lighting.

IRender nXt rendering after 20 lighting passes. Rendering is fairly smooth.

 Two tabs on the Setup dialog let you select lighting defaults and HDRI Skies.

nXt Setup tab

The nXt tab lets you choose predefined settings more the most common lighting situations.

The Studio default provides HDRI lighting which is very effective for many renderings without using the sun or any exterior lights.

Presets

• Exterior - turns on the sun and the sky, and high ambient lighting.
• Interior w/sun - turn on the sun and the sky, and lowers the ambient light so interior lights will be effective as well.
• Interior no sun - turns off the sun and shy, with lowered ambient lighting.
• Studio - Uses the sky for reflection and illumination. This provides a nice lighting effect for viewing individual items.

The Presets set items on the bottom of this tab, and other items, such as Ambient Light, Indirect Light, and Soft Shadows, which are on other tabs.

Sun and Sky Settings

These override the presets.

• Sun On' - turns on the sun
• Sky Visible' - turns on the sky
• Sky reflected if off - produces reflections from the sky even if it is not visible.
• Sky illuminates if off - produces lighting effects from the sky even if it is not visible.

These last two settings are useful for studio illumination effects.

Sky Types

• Use SketchUp color - no Illumination - a SketchUp like sky is visible, but not reflected or used for illumination.
• Generate Illumination from Sun Position -a realistic sky is produced based on the sun position.
• Use HDRI files for Sky and Illumination - an HDRI file is used to define the Sky.

See also

• HDRI Skies

IRender Nxt Sky Settings

Sky HDRI Image

Select an image to use for an HDRI Sky - either as an actual sky, or for illumination and reflrections.

Rotation - enter the degrees of rotation for the sky.

Intensity - enter the intensity for the sky. (0.0 to 1.0)