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.

Shading Rate
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.

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.
Direct Illumination Multiplier
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.

Indirect 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 Saturation

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 Type

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.

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.

Receive Shadows
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.

Visible To Eye
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 Indirect Rays

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 Reflection 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 Refraction 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.

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-memoryconservation.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.