How to render an oval beam

[richardmhs]

I am using a PAR lamp to light a wall and really want to render the oval beam in Renderworks. The beam lines show up correctly but the lamp only renders a round beam. Seems like only one beam and field angle are used.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

[michaelk]

For rendering PARs you have to cheat.

Create your own generic light object in Custom Light Mode and use the ies file from the manufacturer.

The attached picture shows a light beam from a spotlight Altman PAR64 (round) and a custom light object using the ies data from a PAR64 lamp.

The custom light object has some pros and cons: It allows for easy lamp axis rotation, but (as far as I can tell) has no access to the gel color library. You have to eyeball the color.

N.B. The ies files for ETC Pars are really bad. The look very jagged on the edges.

hth

michaelk

Edited June 24, 2010 by michaelk

[richardmhs]

Thanks. we will give it a try.