sun's rays

[mutilo]

Hi everyone,
perhaps a rather trivial question. A customer asked me if the render would make it possible to recreate the reflection of the sun's rays that hit a photocell system. this to understand if the beam can annoy passers-by or otherwise. use C4d and Corona 4.
Thank you

[houska]

Hi, I am afraid I don't understand... How is what you describe different from actual rendering? "Sun's rays hitting a photocell system" - that sounds pretty much like human vision to me. And to simulate human vision, we do what? - Rendering!

[mutilo]

Hi, I am afraid I don't understand... How is what you describe different from actual rendering? "Sun's rays hitting a photocell system" - that sounds pretty much like human vision to me. And to simulate human vision, we do what? - Rendering!

Hi, I'm sorry but maybe I didn't explain myself well. How can I render the solar rays that are bounced off the photovoltaic panel and fired in various directions?

[romullus]

If you want to visualize sun rays hitting and bouncing off surface, then just draw some arrows in photoshop and you're done ;] If you need more photorealistic result, then maybe you can add volumetric effects in the scene.

[rojharris]

This sounds more like an After Effects exercise than something you'd do at render time

[houska]

Hi, I'm sorry but maybe I didn't explain myself well. How can I render the solar rays that are bounced off the photovoltaic panel and fired in various directions?

Aha, I understand now. Thanks for the clarification :-)

This touches the field of predictive rendering and so it can be tricky depending on what you need. Basically, you want to recreate the reflectance function of the photovoltaic panels, so you'll need a custom BRDF. That is currently impossible to do. Of course, if you just want to do it by hand, then it's possible using layered material and careful tweaking. But it all depends on what you need and what the real BRDF of the solar panels looks like.

[mutilo]

Thank you all for the advice.
This I needed because the client had to make photovoltaic fields and wanted to know if the rays that bounced could bother homes or vehicles near the field.

Making spokes by hand would not be truthful and I could be wrong in the directions going to give wrong information.

In my opinion, more than renderings, it is a matter of electrical designers, perhaps their calculation programs are able to do this.

Always a pleasure to compare myself with you, thank you
Good day.

[TomG]

Now, I don't understand all the technical stuff, so no idea if this is helpful - if you wanted to treat the panel as a pure mirror, then the new caustics may be able to help. Here's a test I did where the light is reflected off the windows of a building. But could be that just treating it as a regular mirror/glass would not be what is required.

EDIT - PS, this is rendered in Max, but the caustics are the same in Max and C4D.

[houska]

Well, rendering could help to confirm whatever the engineers calculate "on paper", but you'd need to recreate the exact reflectance function, which they'd have to provide you with. And they'd have to either measure it or somehow predict it with their own calculations.

EDIT: And still, once you have the function, it's impossible to input to Corona

[mutilo]

Thank you guys,
I try to see what comes out.