Light Beam Origin Point

[Gaius]

Does anyone know, can the origin point of a light beam be edited or modified?

 

You can see in the attached photo, that I scaled down the geometry for a second symbol which is smaller, but the light beam remained in its' original position.

 

I have never found any editable feature for the light beams origin point. But if you could, it would also be advantageous to set the focal point back in wide faced wash fixtures to get a wider beam around the lens plane.

[klinzey]

This is currently not possible. Light always starts from the emitting from the point source of the light.
It is something we are looking to add as a future enhancement.

[Jesse Cogswell]

If you are using the Lighting Device object, which I suspect you are, the origin point of the beam is determined by a 3D Locus object located in the 3D component of the symbol.  So if you scale the geometry of the symbol, you have to also move the 3D locus point upward.  This locus point also determines the rotation point of body and yolk geometry based on pan and tilt.

[JustinVH]

To add to Jesse's response, that 3D loci must be at (0,0,Z) or there is a risk that the parts of the light will explode in all different directions from the origin when trying to focus. This is why there are some lights where the yoke is a a wonky angle because we had to keep the loci centered but the yoke geometry was offset before turning vertical. That loci should also have the Parts record attached and be assigned Point.

[Scott C. Parker]

On 2/16/2024 at 3:31 PM, JustinVH said:

the light will explode

My favorite response, ever. 🙂