#33 Automate lights rendering

This plug-in was created to meet a demand.
It automates the rendering of the lights in the house to visualize the plan of a home automation application.
Images are automatically saved in PNG format using the software's built-in rendering engine.

[Anonymous]

Example of use.

[Michael Wesner]

fyi, I have an issue reported below.

[Michael Wesner]

I am able to run this plugin once for a given model. On the second attempt I get I have tried closing down the entire program, even copy paste into a new project. Is there anything I can do to help debug this further? Is this plugin supported?

[Anonymous]

When the photos are computed, the plug-in checks if all the visible lights are on, otherwise it stops the creation of the photos and displays an error message.
As the plug-in directly modifies the state of the lights, it does not use a clone of the 3D scene.

Try with version 1.1.

[Anonymous]

version 1.1

• Create button enabled if the selection is not empty
• best management of home lights search

[Michael Wesner]

Thanks. I think that is working better. When you say "on" do you mean visible? In the plugin UI I am not able to toggle any of the checkboxes. (running microsoft store paid version on windows 10).

[Anonymous]

When I say "all the visible lights are on", it means that all visible lights must have their light power greater than 0%.

The plug-in Create photos for home lights panel is based on SH3D's Create photos at points of view panel, but the check boxes are not enabled.
Do you prefer for the next version that the panel only display the visible lights selected in the plan or furniture list?

[Michael Wesner]

I think the tool works and is probably ok to leave, but I just found the user experience confusing because you have check boxes that can't be manipulated on the dialog and it is unclear what they are for. I'd either remove the check boxes and have some type of help text somewhere explaining how to control what lights are used in the computation, or leave the checkboxes and allow the user to hide/unhide, or change light power % in the dialog. Thanks for your quick response and assistance with this plugin. This is a great thing to have for this use case.

[Anonymous]

version 1.2

• display without check boxes
• lights selected in the plan or furniture list
• display of lights status

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Lights taken into account: visible in the plan or 3D view with light power > 0%.

[N.gon]

Thanks for this awesome plugin! It saves a lot of times with my 70+ lights.

Is it possible to get the source code for this? I think that I have searched everywhere, but i cant find anything.

[Emmanuel Puybaret]

Source code is included in the .sh3p zipped file.

[Grayson]

Hi @puybaret, this is fabulous! I am having the exact same use case of this plugin and was about to make one - you just made my day.

[Emmanuel Puybaret]

Great you like it, but thanks should go to EnkoNyito who programmed this plug-in.

@EnkoNyito: looking at source code, I wonder what prevented you from cloning the home to render it. Among other things, cloning would avoid to keep the powerOn properties in the saved home.

[Anonymous]

@N.gon, @Grayson,
Glad to see that this plug-in interests other users!

@Emmanuel Puybaret,
When a home clone is used, the photo renderer ignores the change in state of the lights as they all stay on in renderings.
Is there a way to remove the powerOn properties after renderings are complete?

[Emmanuel Puybaret]

I'm not sure to understand the problem because you create a new PhotoRendererinstance, but I guess you tried the other solution first.
Use setProperty method with a null value to remove powerOn property (I changed the Javadoc of this method to explain it).

[Anonymous]

I actually tested both solutions before retaining the one that works.
With the home clone, the light power change is well done in the furniture list but this is not taken into account when the photo renderer is initialized. (step by step debugging)

[Anonymous]

version 1.2a

• removed lights property at the end of rendering

[Anonymous]

version 1.3

• plug-in action available if 3D supported

[Andres Garcia]

Is there a way to configure it to group multiple lights together? I tried creating a furniture group for all the light I want to group, but it didn't work.
Thanks

[Anonymous]

SweetHome3D does not allow to differentiate a group from another group, nor to change the light power of a group of lights.

[Mike Lee]

Hi, i'm using the MacOS App Store version of SH3D and when I click "Create" all the folders on the browse window are grayed out and it won't let me save. I double checked that the SH3D application has full disc access in my settings.

[Anonymous]

Hi,
This plug-in uses Sweet Home 3D's multiple image creation method.
If there is a difference in access with the standard version, it is probably due to a restriction for plug-ins.
Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac to compare.

[Anonymous]

version 1.4

• compatibility with SH3D-7.0 and higher

[Lord Ugly]

For my requirement, I needed multiple lights grouped together. All my light sources are grouped in a HomeFurnitureGroup, and individual lights are not grouped.

I've changed the code for the plugin, so that it follows what you've selected. If you've selected a group (with one or more HomeLight instances inside it), it will see it as a single light source. If you open the group, and select all the individual lights, it will see it as individual light sources.

I think this change was also requested earlier: https://sourceforge.net/p/sweethome3d/plug-ins/33/#f1f2.

I hope you don't mind that I've updated the source code for this. My Java is a bit rusty, so any error I made, I'll blame it on that. I've compiled this against version 7.1, and attached my custom version below. It's almost time for source control :)

Thanks for the amazing work already done in this library. It's an absolute timesaver!

[Anonymous]

Thank you for your contribution!
I put the correct extension (.sh3p) for the plugin and added your name (Lord Ugly) to the code changes.

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version 1.5

• patch for group of lights by Lord Ugly