Hi,

I´m quite happy with the workflow between Revit 2010 and MAX 2010, although i´m just experincing a problem that truly bothers me. Everything works fine except the artificial lights (photometric lights) on max. The lights are on , but when i´m rendering (lights on, final gathering on) they just are not rendered and they seem off somehow. I´ve been struggling with this issue for a few days.
(i should mention that i´m a beginner / intermediate max user.)
Do you´ve have any idea what could it be?

Thank you very much.
Miguel

Hi Miguel,

I do not want to oversimplify this, but just to make sure: Are you making adjustments to the Exposure Control?  By default, in 3ds Max Design, after importing a scene, mr Photographic Exposure control is applied to the scene.  However, in the FBX workflow between Revit and 3ds Max, exposure control settings are not exported from Revit.  Therefore, the default exposure control settings that are used in 3ds Max Design are most likely not ideal for any Revit scene; you need to make manual adjustments for it to work for you.

To open exposure control, press 8 on your keyboard and, ensuring that mr Photographic Exposure Control is active, navigate to the mr Photographic Exposure Control rollout.  Here, you’ll find all the values you’ll need to use in order to match the lighting of your scene.  For instance, for a scene with indoor artificial lighting and windows exposing sunlight from outdoors, you could choose the Physically Based Lighting, Indoor Daylight preset in the Exposure area.  You can have a finer control over the settings using the rest of the options in that rollout.

So, yeah ... that might be something you’ve already looked into.  If this is the case, let me know and we’ll take a deeper look.

Thanks!

Trevor Adams
Autodesk FBX

Thanks a lot for the replay.
In fact, i already have checked those settings, but didn’t get those artificial lights working in a proper. They seem turned off in the rendering, although they=re all on and with extremely higher lx to ensure i will get some light.. The only source of light that i get is from the outside. I even have tried with different types of artificial lights in Revit and then exporting once again into max.
Is there anything that perhaps i’m missing?

Thanks again!
Cheers,
Miguel

Hm.  Seems like you’re not missing anything so far.

I’m assuming that this scene renders fine in Revit 2010, right?

Just out of curiosity, can you set the File Menu>Customize>Units Setup>System Unit Setup>System Unit Scale to: 1 Unit = 1.0 Feet (instead of the default Inches), and then re-import your FBX scene from Revit?  It’s a longshot, but there might be a unit conversion issue here (doing this will match Revit’s native default Feet unit and avoid conversion upon import).

Are you using FBX version 2010.0 from http://www.autodesk.com, as opposed to the 2009.4 version that installs with 3ds Max 2010?  If not, try with the new plug-in and let me know if you get the same result.  We fixed a few small defects in the Revit to 3ds Max workflow, and this seems to ring a small bell.

Are the Photometric values of the lights accurate?  Are the light WEB distributions pointing in the proper directions, when comparing between Revit and 3ds Max?

How many light bounces are there in your rendering settings?  You might have it set to 0 and this needs to match Revit’s setting.  2 or more light bounces is usually ideal.

Let me know ... and we’ll keep digging deeper if none of those questions/answers lead to a solution.

Thanks,
Trevor