pan and tilt, draw beam are grayed out

[William McLachlan]

I'm assuming I've done something stupid, but when I right click on a lighting device and select "properties", the Draw Beam and Draw Beam as 3d Solid are grayed out. When I right click on a lighting device and select "edit light", the auto update checkbox, beam size controls, pan and tilt controls are grayed out. It seems that no matter where I search and what I change, I can't wake up those options.

screen shot of the window attached.

what the *(&() have I done wrong?!?

TIA,

wm

[William McLachlan]

...and before anyone tells me to "use the focus instruments tool", I've already assigned some of the lights to focus points and aside from un-graying "draw beam" and "draw beam as 3d solid" nothing else changes. I can't:

1) turn off auto update

2) use the update button

3) change beam information with the handles on the beam lines

4) use the Spread or Beam numeric entry fields

5) use the X, Y, Z entry fields or the plane buttons

6) use Look To Height entry (as if I knew what that means)

7) use any part of the pan / tilt section (seriously?!?)

8) use "set light to view" or "set view to light".

Sooooooo....now what? I have 50 lights in a drawing that are emitting their beam straight up, and I need them to emit straight out. Focus points won't help, I need to just set a numeric pan and tilt value for the light within the symbol to make the rendering look right.

ARGH!

wm

[klinzey]

This is correct.

All these parameters are controlled by the lighting device.

The focus point controls the Pan, Tilt, and Look to Height.

Spread and Beam are the beam and field angle of the lighting device.

X,Y,Z are controlled by the location of the lighting device.

You should not have a light within the symbol. The lighting device will create it's own light source.

As long as draw beam is enabled and it draws the the correct place the light should go there too.

You can post a sample file and we can take a look at it.

Also are you using 2010 or 2011?

[William McLachlan]

Okay, I understand. It makes no sense to me that a lighting device is indellibly linked to a focus point, and can't be panned and tilted at will, and I'd guess I'm the zillionth spotlight user to say that. In my case, with 50 lighting devices that I want to focus straight out from their vertical hanging positions, I'll have to create 50 focus points, then go thru each unit 1 by 1 and assign them to their matching focus points 1 by 1. It's painstakingly slow and wrought with problems like which editing window lets me use a pull down menu the contextual "edit" dialog box) vs. having to remember and type out the name of each focus point (like in the object info palette).

So my "problem" has evolved into a "suggestion". I'm using 2010, waiting for our friends at ESPvision to give the green light to update and not have their tools choke.

1) unify any and all palettes, modal dialogs, windows, other places you specify a focus point for a lighting device to both a text field and a pull down menu of existing focus points to select. Right-clicking a lighting device and choosing Edit in the Visualization palette produces a modal dialog box that does not include either the field or the pull-down for focus points.

2) in palettes and modal dialogs that contain the focus point pull-down selection menu and the manual focus buttons and sliders, allow the user a pull-down selection of "manual" to break the reference to any focus point and enable pan and tilt slider use. The application can create a "private focus point" that's bound to the device(s) selected and manually focused, and updated whenever changes are made with the sliders.

3) allow the user to create focus points numerically a) in relation to the light to allow "artistic" look creation rather than 1-for-1 focus point creation for every unit to create graphic lighting looks. Example: Focus point "all up", relative to the unit = 0 deg. pan, +60 deg tilt.

4) add "show/hide beam" to the contextual menu for a lighting device.

5) add "focus light" to the contextual menu for a lighting device, pop up dialog with unified text field + pull down menu + numeric entry field + sliders as discussed above.

6) (and in my mind most important) unify single/multiple editing across all selections/dialogs/palettes/etc.

When I'm done beating this file to death I'll put it up for you to look at. I'm having a myriad of problems with it anyway.

Thanks for reading

Edited October 15, 2010 by William McLachlan

[klinzey]

In 2011 the default position for the rendered light and the lighting device is straight down.

Access to the Focus instruments command is available in the right click context menu for the lighting device. (You can edit your workspace and add it manually in 2010.)

Turning a rendered light on/off is also available in the context menu for a lighting device for 2011.