dslodki

I'm using VW2010 and I have inconsistent behavior with the Right Reading and Non-Rotate functions of the label legend manager. Some of my heads rotate and orient labels correctly but most of them don't and my plot with 400+ lighting units looks like a 14 year old did it. Not to mention the endless tweaking that occurs and the unreadability of the numbers at all angles. What is up? I'm linking fixtures with ESP Vision and so am using their symbols as they orient correctly when the scene is exported. Also, many, many, many times I get the "light info record already exists" alert discussed here http://techboard.nemetschek.net/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=135756#Post135756 and I wonder if THAT might be the issue. I also have unit, channel, dimmer and universe numbers entered for all the fixtures, but I'm only trying to show unit numbers in the label legend. Suggestions? Dave

And I apologize for being yet another photometer/dead horse beater, I've read the other photometer posts and thoroughly understand the concept, but I hope you agree that the idea of using it with a diffuse fluorescent fixture/line light is a different approach than using a lamp that emits a beam. Also, the photometer, if I can get it to work, would be a huge win, because if I have 120 4' tubes and I try to render it for even a ballpark "look", it's about 40 minutes to an hour on my quadcore 2.66G Mac Pro. My only other option is to export to ESP Vision for a somewhat hamfisted render and then I lose the ability to quickly and easily edit the lighting setup. Thanks again for your help, Dave

Thanks to your earlier posts, Kevin, that's exactly what I did, I've created a lighting instrument in Spotlight, and attached a light info record. And although one would hope that the symbol I've used, the T8 fluorescent tube from the accurate electrical library, which lights up just fine as a symbol, would attach the data to the light info record, it doesn't seem to be the case. So, I've gone and added a wattage of 100 to the light info record and a candlepower of 2700 (a rough lumen to candlepower ballpark...just for good measure but really just to enter a value) in the L.I.R. and still no output to the photometer. I can draw a beam and everything (although this beam is a directional light instead of line light). I've even laid in a photogrid, and then added a nook light just to make sure I've not completely lost my mind and that all works fine. However, I don't seem to get any measurable output from the fluorescent fixture. (A somewhat annoying thing about the photometer is that it seems it will read a light any time it has a focus point REGARDLESS if it's turned on or not in the visualizer. I suppose this can be handy, but it seems counterintuitive to have to delete focus position data from the OIP (or the focus positions themselves!!) when it's much easier to "turn off" the light in the visualizer.) But I stray from the problem at hand. I'm trying to read the photometric data from some lighting fixures which contain 40 4' fluorescent tubes each. There are 3 of them, so we're dealing with 120 individual tubes. The data must be accurate, not just "to eye" in a render. Any help would be ideal... In fact the photogrid would be even more ideal than the photometer, however, that's not responding to my focused Spotlight lighting instrument either. Thanks for your help, I look forward to your reply, Dave

Hi all...I'm working in VW2010 and Spotlight with Renderworks and trying to calculate photometric data from lamps in the "electrical accurate lamps" library. I've converted a 4' fluorescent tube into a lighting instrument, it turns on and off just fine, and renders nicely. However, I can't seem to get the photometer to work on this light, which is rendering light just fine. What give? I've even made a focus point for this light, and "focused" it on it and the photometer still reads a big goose egg. It's sort of important for me to figure this out, as we are building some lighting units to be used in filming. I've messed around with line lights, with grouping the line light with the fluorescent tube symbol and then converting them, nothing seems to work. Any help would be ideal... Dave VW2010 Spotlight with Renderworks

just saw this, will do.

By update do you mean select "replace format in the current document"? Whenever I do anything else, I get prompted 4 times BEFORE I can place the fixture and then 4 times MORE after I place it and then it shows up in the OIP with the wrong name. I'm exporting to Vision and I need the fixtures to be correct (for example I get Stage Zoom 1.2k for both the Clay paky alpha 1200 hpe and the 1200 wash). These are VW symbols and I'm using VW2010 for Mac. thanks for any help at all... this is making me crazy. Dave

Thanks for the reply, Kevin. So, in the old symbols that are asking this, they don't have a channel count and I need to look that up and input that manually for each type of light that is missing so the patch list is correct? Is that information contained in the fixture somewhere or do I need consult an external reference for it?

A few times in the past few weeks, I've been working on a lighting plot and when I select an instrument with the 2D insertion tool and it is selected (handles around it, etc.), but the object info pallette is blank. Saving and restarting VW2010 makes the instrument show up again in the OIP. Is this a known bug? Dave

Ok....so it seems that it works with only some types of fixtures, the Martin lamps are placed with channel counts whereas it doesn't seem like the High End or Varilite fixtures are. And yes, I'm using the instrument insertion tool. Any idears? Dave

I'm getting that same message, however I don't have any of my own symbols, I'm just using the VW2010 libraries. (And no matter what I choose, when the lights finally get placed in the drawing what is missing is the most crucial part of the light info, the channel count.) I get that notice when I even just select a lamp in, say, the Varilite resource folder in a new document with NOTHING in it. It's driving me crazy because I get 4 prompts each time I try to change the option. And there's no "cancel" button to click. I'm sure this is something simple that I've done to the light info record along the way....

This was posted in another place but I thought I'd repost to publicize it a bit more. Is it true you can't point an instrument up or to the side? I'm doing a rig where we cannot hang any lights overhead, ALL the lighting coming up from the floor and when it comes time to "draw beam" and "lamp on" I'm getting an error saying the vertical angle must be greater than "x,"-basically the focus point can't be above the instrument. That doesn't sound right. In fact that sound so very, very wrong. Can anyone help me out?

thanks I'll look for those threads, I did some searches, I'll try again with some different keywords. Not to discourage anyone from checking in here, of course...

I'm very new to VW and will be working in VW in 3D. I already know that my two year old Powerbook will probably be a little light on processing power for this and I'm going to get a new machine. I'm considering all options, PC and Mac. (Sorry Mac users.) So, my question for the VW pros on this forum is what have they found to be sufficient/good/excellent for this work. I probably won't be gettting a pro-quality workstation (ok, I won't be) if that helps. Specificity would be appreciated although I know the answer is really only one word-More.