REALIESReal IES 3
User Manual
latest update Real IES 3.1 - 10/07/2019

Real IES 3 User Manual

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Contents
System Requirements			

3

Display Mode				18

Inspector toggle

Getting Started				3

About Real IES
Download Real IES
How to purchase a license
Install Real IES on Windows
Install Real IES on MacOS
Activate your license
Migrate from Real IES 2 to Real IES

Snapshots					Open/Save photometric files

User Interface				8

Save your light
Open previous project

Options Panel				9

Keyboard shortcuts		

Tutorials					

12Photometric lights in 3DS Max 2017/Art Renderer
Photometric lights in V-Ray 3.20Photometric lights in Maxwell Render
Photometric lights in Corona Renderer
Photometric lights in Unreal EngineLightCone
LightGraph
Granular Light Spikes
LightListSliders Panel				

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How to use Real IES Mobile

Preview Area				20

FunctionsUser Interface

HiDPI mode
millicandela precision

Real IES Mobile				19

To make a snapshot
To restore the snapshot parameters inside yourworking space
To export the snapshot

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14

Create a light
Surprise me button
Reset button

Parameters Panel			16

Lighting fixture parameters

Intensity range				17Engineering range
Rendering range

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System Requirements
Real IES 3 runs on MacOS (from 10.12) and Windows 7 SP1+, Graphics card with DX10 (SM 4.0)
capabilities and a CPU with SSE2 instruction set support.

Getting Started
About Real IES
Since the first release in 2015 Real IES allows to create and edit photometric files easily and in afew seconds. Real IES generates type-C .ies files compatible with a wide range of 3D rendering
software, both offline and realtime.
Real IES has been developed by CGI artists for CGI artists, in fact, we do use this application
primarily for our pre-viz necessities. Therefore, although it may be possible to use Real IES for
lighting design, this is not the primarily scope of the software, while computer graphics is.

Download Real IES
You can download the latest release of Real HDR directly fromwww.real-ies.com/download/Real_IES_latest.zip. and www.real-ies.com/download/Real_IES_latest_mac.zip
We strongly suggest not to download installers of Real IES online elsewhere.
If you encounter a crack, serial, regkey or keygen version of Real HDR please report these URL’s
and/or download link to support@renderacademy.com

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How to purchase a license
You can purchase Real IES directly from our e-store and insert during the checkout your datanecessary for the invoice and license activation.

All transactions for Real IES are managed directly by PayPal on their secure servers. You can buy
your license with your PayPal found, use a credit card or associate a bank account to it. Please
note that Real IES never obtains nor stores sensible data about your payments, credit card orprivate information.
If you don’t have a PayPal account and you
don’t want to create it or if you simply preferto pay with credit card you can do so.
At the moment of writing this manual, PayPal
also accepts Visa, MasterCard, Maestro,
American Express, Discover and Carte Aurore
in their secure payment system.
Also, in this case, no information will be sent
to us.

Install Real IES on Windows
Once you download the archive from our website you have to decompress it in a temporary
location, such as your desktop, to access the Install Real IES.exe
Real IES software and Real IES Installer are
digitally signed with a valid certificate. If you
want to check it to verify the authenticity ofthe downloaded program you need to rightclick on the Install Real IES.exe icon and open
the Properties window.
Once opened, navigate to the Digital
Signatures tab, select the signature from thelist and click on Details. You can inspect further
the certificate in the new windows.

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Double click on Install Real IES to start the usual process that will take care of copying the proper
files in your computer's Hard Drive and create a desktop icon.

Our installer is made possible thanks to Inno Setup developed and maintained by Jordan Russelland Martijn Laan.

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Install Real IES on MacOS
Once you download the archive from our website, double click on Install Real IES.pkg to start
the usual process that will take care of placing the proper files in your computer’s Hard Drive andcreate an icon in your Applications folder.

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Activate your license
After your successful transaction on PayPal secure server, we’ll receive a notification. Please give
us some time to confirm it and activate your account. Real IES uses a remote activation systemthat requires a final approval by our support team.
Get your personal request code that will be sent to you via the email address you used to process
the payment.

We have our own licensing system that takes care of your purchase. With one license you can use
your copy of Real IES everywhere and activate it on one machine per calendar day.

Migrate from Real IES 2 to Real IES 3
Those who own a copy for Real IES 2 are eligible to free upgrade of their license to Real IES 3. The
codes and all necessary instructions will be sent out to the email address used for the purchaseand first activation.
If you did not receive your new activation code, please, first check your spam folder and contact
us on support@renderacademy.com .

Should you want to update your email address, drop us a line at
support@renderacademy.com

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User Interface
Since the first releases Real IES offers pretty much intuitive user interface that allows to generate
an .ies file in less than 30 seconds.
For Real IES 3 with some new features added, we opted for a slight redesign of UI and a generalusability improvements.
You can find the preview area on the left and the settings panels on the right side of the screen.

Since Real IES 3.1 update the initial login screen has been moved to the main UI and is accessible
in any time should you need to check the user manual or a development blog.

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Options Panel
From the upper part of the screen, you can access the Options Panel by clicking the icon in theright corner to customize the software settings.

HiDPI modeThis option is available only for Retina and other HiDPI displays. By enabling it you can increase
the resolution of the Real IES user interface and save it as your user preferences.

millicandela precision
By default the manual input of the slider values is rounded off to one decimal digit, althoughshould you require to work with the more precise intensity parameters you can activate the mcd
precision option and input the numbers with three decimal digits.

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Real IES Mobile
Real IES Mobile companion application is released as a public beta for android smartphones.
This mobile version of Real IES allows to overlay
a simplified .ies light above the mobile’s camera
image.
This way you can imitate a real light that you
want to transpose in 3D (or you can use thetool to see how a certain light may fit in yourinterior) and then fine tune it in the desktop
version or Real IES.

How to use Real IES Mobile•

start the app and use the integrated (auto-focusing) camera to frame your walls•

craft a beautiful and simplified photometric light using the sliders (or find inspiration throughmy usual surprise me button)

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export the file in .rim; this proprietary file format of Real IES is ultra optimized for mobiledevices•

connect your mobile device to your desktop computer and click the IMPORT .RIM FILE button•

navigate to the folder where the device saves the files (at the moment of writing is thefollowing: Android/Data/com.playsys.realIESmobile/files)•

select the .rim files you like; for your convenience, there are two files per each light: a .rim anda .png with a visual preview.

•open the .rim file with Real IES 3 both on PC or Mac•

edit and improve your light, export the .ies file and proceed in your favorite rendering software

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Preview Area
LightCone
The LightCone tab represents the approximated, yet realistic shape and intensity of thephotometric light in question.
It is directly connected to the C-plane that is being edited, therefore for asymmetric light cones
with different intensity values for C0 and C90 planes you will see two LightCone previews.

LightGraphThe LightGraph tab offers a proportional photometric polar diagram of the photometric light inquestion. The yellow color of the line corresponds to C0-180 plane, while the blue one represents
the C90-270 plane.

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Granular Light Spikes
The LightSpikes slider on the top of the LightGraph tab allows you to manipulate the intensity
values of the angles “between the sliders”. This way you can create more creative photometriclights with sharper borders inside the light cone.
The bigger is the position of the slider, the stronger is the random interpolation of the angles. In
the most cases we recommend to work in the first third of the slider (as you see on the markedrange), although greater values can bring unexpected artistic results.

LightList
In the LightList tab you can see the exact intensity values for all the angles both for C0-180 andC90-270 photometric planes.

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Sliders Panel
Create a light
Manipulate the sliders on the right panel to adjust the luminous intensity for every angle.
Parameters of each slider are affecting the intensity of a certain light cone, that provides you
immediate visual feedback on your actions in the viewport on the left. The light cone corresponding
to the selected slider is highlighted in orange color for C0 plane and in blue for C90.
With Real IES 3 you can now create asymetric lights by adjusting separately the intensities forC0-180 and C90-270 planes.

Each slider has a dark grey triangle mark indicating the maximum range we consider
recommended for general CGI purposes. Of course if you wish to imitate a particular lighting
fixture or situation, you can work in all the range possible from the point of view of physics.

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Above each slider you can find the data about corresponding angle: the illumimace (lux),
luminous intensity (cd) and the percentage of the slider value.
Starting from Real IES 3 you can not just manipulate the selected slider but also input manually
the percentage and the intensity values.

Surprise me button
For creative experiments Real IES can generate practically unlimited amount of random
photometric files. Use them for your inspiration.

Reset button
The Reset button allows to create a clean scene bringing all the sliders’ values for both planes tozero. If you have inserted the custom parameters for your lighting fixture, such as power, heightor luminous flux, these will remain untouched.

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Parameters Panel
Lighting fixture parameters
On the top of the parameters section you can input the data for the lighting fixture.
By default the luminous flux in Real IES is set to 1000 lumen (lm), but you can input manually atotal amount of visible light emitted by you lighting fixture. You can get this information in thetechnical sheets provided by the manufacturer of your light emitter.
You can also manually adjust the power and the vertical position of your light source (by default
set to 75 Watt (W) and 350 cm) and get the feedback on your light source efficacy that could beparticularly important for energy saving in the lightning design projects.

Should you prefer to leave the default physical parameters, both the power and luminous flux of
your photometric light can be adjusted or fine-tuned later, directly in your 3D software using as areference point the desired photorealistic result of your render.
While manipulating each slider you get an immediate feedback on the changes of the physicalparameters of your light. Both luminous intensity (cd) and illuminance (lux) values are displayedfor each angle over the corresponding slider.

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Intensity range
You can use Real IES for mathematical purposes or even for theoretical data extraction.
Since the luminous intensity in candela (cd) for uniform and isotropic light source is calculated as:Iv(cd) = Φv(lm) / Ω(sr)whereΩ(sr)= 2π(1 — cos(θ/2))
the highest possible value is defined for each angle individually.

Engineering range
The sliders do not have any restriction and the maximum values are corresponding to themaximum intensity theoretically possible for a certain angle.
When you enter in the range of values that are highly improbable for interior design andphotorealistic rendering, you get a warning sign.

Rendering range
The sliders are zoomed in and proportionally demonstrate intensity range for a particular anglethat can be distinguished by a human eye and can be visually displayed in a 3D render.
Therefore this workflow is recommended for photorealistic rendering.

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Display Mode
Inspector toggle
By activating Inspector toggle in the Display Mode section you can obtain additional information
as a separate layer in your preview panel.
In the LightCone tab Inspector option activates the orange angles overlay and allows you to see
your photometric lights as sharply devided by angles to evaluate intensities for each of them.

In the LightGraph tab Inspector activates the grey overlay with gamma angles over the photometricpolar diagram.

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Snapshots
In Real IES 2.1 we have introduced the Snapshot feature that had its evolution in Real IES 3.
In the Snapshots tab you can store in temporary memory up to three different snapshots,
capturing the light cone and the light parameters corresponding to it. Under each snapshot you
will see the extra information about the date and the time when it was taken and the C-plane ofthe photometric light it represents.

To make a snapshot
Open the Snapshot panel and Acquire button. If you use the slot with an existing snapshot, youwill override it by acquiring the new one.

To restore the snapshot parameters inside your working space
Press the Restore button next to the selected snapshots. This action restores the parameters of
the lightcone associated with the corresponding snapshot.

To export the snapshot
Press the Export button close to the snapshotof your choice. Starting from Real IES 3 you
can save your snapshot as 32-bit .exr file(2048x2048 pixel size).
The software will open the OS browser for you
to choose the file name and the saving path.
By saving .exr snapshot (instead of .png as in Real IES 2) users who are going to import“fake” photometric lights in Unity Engine as light cookies, will benefit of maximum exposure
editability in Photoshop.

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Open/Save photometric files
Save your light
By clicking the SAVE button you can save your photometric light in a IESNA .ies file format. RealIES saves type C photometric files compatible with both offline and realtime render engines.
The software will open the OS browser for you to choose the file name and the saving path.

Should you want to add your name into the Manufacturer line of your ies file, you can do soby writing it in the Sign IES File field.

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Open previous project
Should you need to edit your photometric light, you can click the OPEN button that will open theOS browser to choose the .ies file that you want to load into your scene.

Although Real IES can be used to view existing .ies files, it is not the main scope of thesoftware that is developed primarily for creation of artistic photometric lights for rendering
purposes.
The open/save function guarantees the continuity of the workflow and allows to edit
the files previously created with Real IES. Some particluar photometric lights provided bylighting fixtures’ manufactures (e.g. with asymmetry on many axes, etc) in some cases may
not be loaded correctly.

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Keyboard shortcuts

Functions
CTRL + S			save .ies
CTRL + O			open .ies
CTRL + N			
new project
CTRL + SPACEBAR		
“surprise me”User Interface
ALT + 1			vertical (polar) angles C0-180 plane
ALT + 2			horizontal (azimuth) angles C90-270 plane
ALT + C			LightCone
ALT + L			LightList
ALT + G			LightGraph
ALT + P			Parameters
ALT + S			Snapshots
ALT + S + 1			acquire snapshot state 1
ALT + S + 2			acquire snapshot state 2
ALT + S + 3			acquire snapshot state 3
Suggest new shortcuts to us at support@renderacademy.com

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Tutorials
Photometric lights in 3DS Max 2017 and Art Renderer

Photometric lights in V-Ray 3.20

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Photometric lights in Maxwell Render

Photometric lights in Corona Renderer24

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Photometric lights in Unreal Engine25