#area lights

The light that protects parking lots from mishappening LED POLE LIGHTS.

Adding  security  lighting  is  the  number  one  step  homeowners  

can  take  to  protect  their  property  from  

unwanted  intruders.  Statistics  show  that  burglars  bypass  t

argets  that  are  difficult  to  access  without  

being  noticed.  A  well-designed  security  lighting  system  can  mak

e  would-be  robbers  think  again  before  

approaching  your  property.  This  guide  will  show  you  h

ow  to  create  an  effective,  low-cost  LED  security  

lighting  system  for  your  home  or  business.

Purchase  LED  Security  Lights  Here!

Use  many  smaller  lights  rather  than  fewer,  more  powerful  lights

Big,  powerful  flood  lights  are  good  for  open  spaces,  but  

can  sometimes  leave  shadows  if  there  are  

obstacles  on  your  property  like  buildings  and  trees.  Using  

a  combination  of  LED  flood  lights,  area  lights  

and  wall  packs  will  reduce  shadows  and  blind  spots  that  int

ruders  can  use  to  hide.

Keep  lights  high  and  out  of  reach

It

’

s  important  to  make  it  difficult  for  burglars  to  tamper  wit

h  your  security  system.  Many  thieves  will  

plan  heists  for  several  weeks  and  finding  a  way  to  disable  s

ecurity  lights  is  often  a  top  priority.  Even  

the  best  security  lighting  can  be  rendered  useless  if  an  intru

der  is  able  to  incapacitate  the  system.  

Keeping  lights  high  and  out  of  reach  will  make  it  diffic

ult  for  your  system  to  be  tampered  with.  Placing  

lights  high  will  also  soften  the  light  for  a  pleasant  l

ook  and  increased  coverage.

Use  Motion  Detector  Lights

Motion  detector  lights  are  an  effective  way  to  scare  off  intrud

ers.  Burglars  will  be  on  edge  during  a  

robbery  and  having  a  light  flick  on  as  they  walk  by  is  

often  times  enough  to  scare  them  away.  A  good  

combination  of  LED  spotlights  and  motion  detector  lights  wi

ll  work  to  keep  intruders  off  of  your  

property  and  scare  away  those  who  choose  to  enter.  

Focus  on  Entrances  and  Exits  

Most  criminals  seek  out  targets  that  can  be  accessed  at  night

 without  being  seen.  Ensuring  excellent  

light  coverage  at  all  entrances  and  exits  will  deter  criminals  f

rom  planning  a  robbery  at  your  property.

Why  LED?  

Efficiency:  LED  lights  offer  exceptional  efficiency  and  are  

more  cost-effective  in  the  long  run.  An  LED  

light  fixture  will  use  90%  less  electricity  than  an  equivalent

 incandescent.  This  is  also  important  if  your  

security  lights  are  forced  to  run  on  a  backup  generator.  Less  en

ergy  draw  means  your  lights  will  last  

longer  on  a  limited  supply  of  power.  

Longevity:  A  quality  LED  bulb  can  have  a  useful  life  of  25,0

00  hours  or  more.  This  is  more  than  25  

times  long  than  traditional  light  bulbs.    

Safety:  LEDs  run  cooler  than  conventional  light  sources  and  

are  therefore  less  of  a  fire  hazard.    

Durability:  LEDs  lack  filaments  or  glass  enclosures,  making  t

hem  more  durable  than  traditional  

alternatives.  

Same  colors  as  traditional  bulbs:  

LEDs  can  achieve  the  same  colors  

as  traditional  bulbs.  Use  the  Kelvin  

temperature  color  scale  below  to  

help  identify  the  hue  a  bulb  will  

produce.    

Browse  more  LED  lighting  options  

The Alpha Omicron Phi sorority is haunted by the ghost of a former slave referred to as Nicodemous. The building where the sorority resides was when a personal house that worked as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Legend says that people of Athens hurried your house when they found it was being used to hide slaves, and pledged that their families and house would not be put in danger. Regrettably Nicodemus was the only servant there, when he aimed to run, a next-door neighbor shot him in the back. The building has housed a handful of sororities and fraternities through the years, and each group declares to have actually experienced odd, and uncommon occasions there.

This post is a step by step on how to unlock the power of Mental Ray in Maya 2012.

This post shows how to set up a Unified Sampling workflow using Mental Ray and Maya 2012. 

This is nothing new there is a lot of stuff around the web about it. I'm just trying to condense it as much as possible as I have been using this workflow for one of my projects and it has become THE workflow to use for any project I use Mental Ray. 

Unified Sampling

For those of you who have heard about Unified Sampling you might think it's kind of a mythical creature, something that parents tell their kids that they once saw. Well it's is indeed real and it works like a charm! :D

I'm not going to go into any technical details on what it is or why it is beneficial to you. I will say that if you don't know what a mia material is or you still use spotlights to light EVERY-SINGLE-THING in the world, even if your are trying to do some physically accurate lighting... then stay away from this.

The advantages it has when using mia materials with this workflow is that you do not have to worry any more about samples. Not even with lights.... In fact when you set up unified sampling the Anti-Aliasing controls from the render settings no longer work! So that means no more people setting up Fixed Sampling of min 4 and max 6 without knowing what they're doing!!! Thank god for that...

Anyway let's get to the chase. To unlock the power of unified sampling you should use this handy code:

UnifiedSampling.mel

(I think i got this code from here, although I'm not sure because I've read a million things about unified sampling in these last months...)

This will create a few String options in the Mental Ray defaults. Once you've done that make sure to change your primary renderer to Raytracing:

Here you can see the options (panel on the right). Basically using unified sampling is like turning a quality knob. The more you increase the samples quality number the less grain you'll have but the more time it'll take. (It'll never take as much time as setting fixed sampling to ridiculous samples...). This approach to managing the quality of your renders this way is very similar to using Adaptice DMC in Vray, so those who are used to that, this should be fairly quickly to pick up.

And that is basically it! You have it set up! Go try it! It is truly awesome in my view and the results it has given me are amazing.

So how do I take Full advantage of this!?!?!

Well... in terms of shaders: USE MENTAL RAY MATERIALS!!!... Because they are easier to use, and now even easier because you don't even have to worry about glossy samples! Leave them at 1 always! Unified sampling will take care of the rest.

In terms of lights? USE AREA LIGHTS! But not normal crappy expensive area lights... Cool  "more physically accurate" Mental Ray Area lights.

Set up Decay to Quadratic

Mental Ray shadows with everything to 1 (unified sampling will take care of it!)

And Enable the Use Light Shape check box in the Mental Ray>Area Light tab.

And thaaaaat is how you do that! :D

Well I hope this helps... it definitely took some time to figure out the fool-proof approach for all of this but I hope this helps people get a little love back for mental ray if you have no other option left...

To read all about Unified Sampling check out http://elementalray.wordpress.com/ These guys are awesome and have a tone of stuff on this topic. That is why I'm not going to copy all of their info in this post! Go take a look at it!

Also I recommend creating a couple of buttons in your shelf for setting up this workflow easily. And use the command:

select miDefaultOptions;