Migration of Lights and Lamp Settings

ArchiCAD 18 includes many new and updated Lamp objects (including light sources) for better illumination of your project and more realistic renderings.

The Lightworks Rendering engine is no longer available in ArchiCAD 18. Instead, the CineRender engine, which is based on Maxon Cinema 4D version 14 and incorporates most of the parameters of the Cinema4D renderer, is integrated in ArchiCAD 18.

When you open an older-version project in ArchiCAD 18, you will see that your general lights, interior and street lamps are compatible: their geometry and position, and their color and intensity parameters, remain unchanged.

•Lights that were configured for the Internal Rendering Engine have retained their parameters.

•Lights that were configured for the Lightworks Engine are, to the extent possible, compatible: their parameters are converted into their equivalents for the CineRender Engine.

•The Lightworks Sun Object is replaced by the new Sun Object in ArchiCAD 18.

•The Lightworks Window Light and Sky objects are not migrated to ArchiCAD 18. If your project contains these objects, they will be missing in ArchiCAD 18. The solution is to load the older-version Lightworks Library which contained these objects, or to replace them in ArchiCAD 18 using the Physical Sky (Environment setting, including a sun) and the new Window Light object.

Recommendations

•Due to the compatible migration noted above, a project migrated to ArchiCAD 18 will have lamp effects that closely approximate their appearance in the earlier version. However, since the CineRender engine is fundamentally different than Internal and Lightworks engines, you should do a quick test render of your scene before generating the full rendering output.

•Due to the Global Illumination capability of the CineRender engine, you may find that the project is better-lit than in the old version, and you can remove or change the parameters of some of your light/lamp objects.