I am a French lighting designer, have been in the industry for 30 years and I would like to share with you my thoughts about increasingly urgent improvements I feel needed in the rendering options of Spotlight.
Vectorworks Spotlight is a great tool for all lighting professionals to organize their work and design plans with all the necessary information for the technical departments in charge of the installation. The latter can very easily take up the plan realized by the designer and add their specific information, allowing the whole chain to work within a single document.
The interconnectivity with Lightwright or the addition of a program such as Vision has provided us with the most advanced tools on the market and provides designers as well as technical services with a complete and powerful platform.
Nevertheless, I noticed that if the technical tools offered by Vectorworks Spotlight are extremely powerful and relevant, it is not the same for the design tools which for many of them are simply unusable.
Until now, the need to create luminous renderings was very limited simply because theatres and set designers did not provide 3D drawings. The entire work was done exclusively in 2D and Vectorworks Spotlight fulfilled its mission.
Today, almost all theatres provide a 3D model of their stage and a growing number of set designers are providing a 3D model of their project. These two recent changes have opened up new possibilities that have prompted me to use rendering functions of Vectorworks Spotlight and Renderworks. I then very quickly faced many inconsistencies that cumulatively made the function of light of the projectors simply unusable.
I resolved today to use simple lights and not the fixtures that I hang to illuminate my scenes and make my renderings.
This circumvention of the difficulties encountered is doubly penalizing. First of all, it requires a significant and time-consuming additional effort while the tool is there to facilitate our work. Secondly, lighting equipment are extremely sophisticated devices with adjustments that are not available in simple lights (shutters and gobos are a good simple examples). With this technique, the renderings are therefore not as precise and textured as they should be.
It seems to me today urgent, while the presentation of rendering of lights is more and more required, that Vectorworks Spotlight improves not from a technical but an artistic approach, In order to offer designers a relevant tool, allowing them to faithfully represent their work.
Here are the difficulties I have encountered on a standard production that can includes several hundred fixtures:
1- Focus Points:
Adjusting a light according to the impact of a centre point is only the first step in the adjustment process. We start by positioning the light in relation to what Spotlight calls point focus (the position of an actor or a chair in the decoration for example), but once the projector is positioned in the desired position, it is then adjusted depending on its impact on the ground and the manner in which the designer wishes to treat the surrounding light.
In Spotlight, only this first step is possible, then it is impossible to adjust the position without moving the focus point and therefore all the projectors associated with it. It is therefore necessary to create a focal point per projector to correctly adjust the lights this way, which makes this function very cumbersome and unnecessary since there already exists a "function" field in the information window of the unit which makes it possible to insert a focus note.
In addition, the trial and error process imposed by not seeing where the light is taken makes the process incredibly tedious. The movement of the beam does not occur in real time when the focus point is moved and there is no possibility of moving this focus point or the adjustment of the light by its Horiz / Vert coordinates as is done with a none theatrical light. Moreover, this method is the only one that truly corresponds to the way things are done. In reality, we have a technician who goes up focusing the light and we observe the beam that moves to guide it and give our instructions.
Finally, knowing that some moving lights can have ten different focus points, one can easily end up with several thousand focus points which makes the plan totally unreadable and the function unusable.
2-Shutters:
The adjustment of the shutters requires careful adjustment which can only be done by visualizing the manipulation. Again, the trial and error method that Spotlight imposes by not show real-time movement makes setting virtually impossible. Focusing a shutter should take only a few seconds, in fact it takes several minutes to do it accurately in Spotlight. Knowing that there are 4 shutters per lamp and that there are several hundred lights that themselves can have a number of focuses, it is clear that this part quickly becomes a nightmare. Adding to this that the shutters do not appear in OpenGL and that it is necessary to render after each attempt, and it becomes clear how one quickly abandons the function.
3- The Gobos:
In Spotlight, it is impossible to adjust the focal length on the gobo. The result is that all gobos appear as a sharp image. In reality, very few gobos are set sharp and not having access to this function makes the image rendered totally absurd.
The angle option of the gobo also requires working by trial and error, which once again increases the time needed to adjust.
Finally, the gobos are not visible in OpenGL, which imposes as for the shutters to render with each setting.
Again, the constraints make the function totally unusable.
4-Fixture names in the light window:
In the light window, each of the fixture is assigned a strange name such as 1000.1.1.0.0 that one cannot modify as it is for a simple light in the property window.
Once our 300 projectors are hung, needless to say that it is simply impossible to find oneself and one loses patience when one has to turn on 30 fixtures before finding the right one. The light can be selected by clicking on it, but that requires changing the view to comfortably access it. Again, it becomes very tedious.
5-Projection:
Many shows today uses projection which, in opera, theatre, musical or dance, is in the vast majority of cases made by very large scale video projector. Vectorworks Spotlight offers only the possibility to project on a screen which makes it impossible to project on the set. Moreover, the screens option have predefined or limited sizes, which again make it impossible to illustrate a rear-projection on a large cyclorama.
All the points mentioned above are related (a projector must be adjusted, can have shutters and gobos, and must be easily accessible in the middle of hundreds of others). It is therefore at each step that the user is confronted to the incoherence fo the software making all functions unusable.
When I see the features and viewing options available, I feel that Spotlight was designed for people installing stands at trade shows or for small presentations that require a few projectors to light a speaker, project the company logo, and a screen to show a power point presentation. We are far from the very advanced and complex functions specific to large scale productions that Vectorworks offers in the other aspect of the design and planning process. There is a glaring discrepancy between the engineering functions and the visualization.
Here are some suggestions I can would make to help:
1-Focus points:
A focus point could be identical to a palette on lighting board. That is, the setting of one or more fixtures at a given point but not necessarily all centred on that point. To do this, it would require to offer the Horiz / Vert setting for the lighting fixtures that are available on the traditional lights. Assigning a focus point to a light would focus that light on the focus point as it does today, but then the designer would manually position it precisely where he wishes to focus it.
The light can ultimately be very far from its focus point, it does not matter. For example, if I created a Focus Point « DS Back Light », I could put 20 lamps on it and make a straight back light from SL to SR. It does not matter that their beams are not concentric because they have a general function that together forms this « DS Back Light ». I would then have 1 focus point instead of 20 and that would exactly match the way I work in real-life.
2-Shutters + 3-Gobos:
Shutters and gobos can only exist if they can be adjusted visually. The gobos and shutters must also appear in OpenGL and be adjusted by a cursor with visualization in real time. This is the only way to make the function usable.
4-Fixture name in the light window:
Fixture should automatically be assigned their circuit numbers by name, simply because that is how we name them. The possibility of classifying them by position would help to find them better. If this automatic allocation is not possible, they should at least be able to be named manually.
5-Projection:
The design of a specific tool to project an image, allowing to choose its lens and then to visualize the scene from the lens in order to create masks which can then be assigned to the projected object becomes urgent.
Finally, I would add that because of the specificity of our business, the limit of 8 lights lit in OpenGL very quickly reaches its limits again requiring time consuming rendering.
Working only in Renderworks is unthinkable, yet it is what we are forced to do to use the functions of Spotlight. If OpenGL does not allow certain renderings, it is necessary to develop a similar viewing mode, fast, allowing to visualize everything and sufficiently realistic to be able to light a scene without any bad surprise during rendering.
I hope you find this topic interesting, and useful, and I am looking forward to your insight.
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FabK
Hi everyone,
I am a French lighting designer, have been in the industry for 30 years and I would like to share with you my thoughts about increasingly urgent improvements I feel needed in the rendering options of Spotlight.
Vectorworks Spotlight is a great tool for all lighting professionals to organize their work and design plans with all the necessary information for the technical departments in charge of the installation. The latter can very easily take up the plan realized by the designer and add their specific information, allowing the whole chain to work within a single document.
The interconnectivity with Lightwright or the addition of a program such as Vision has provided us with the most advanced tools on the market and provides designers as well as technical services with a complete and powerful platform.
Nevertheless, I noticed that if the technical tools offered by Vectorworks Spotlight are extremely powerful and relevant, it is not the same for the design tools which for many of them are simply unusable.
Until now, the need to create luminous renderings was very limited simply because theatres and set designers did not provide 3D drawings. The entire work was done exclusively in 2D and Vectorworks Spotlight fulfilled its mission.
Today, almost all theatres provide a 3D model of their stage and a growing number of set designers are providing a 3D model of their project. These two recent changes have opened up new possibilities that have prompted me to use rendering functions of Vectorworks Spotlight and Renderworks. I then very quickly faced many inconsistencies that cumulatively made the function of light of the projectors simply unusable.
I resolved today to use simple lights and not the fixtures that I hang to illuminate my scenes and make my renderings.
This circumvention of the difficulties encountered is doubly penalizing. First of all, it requires a significant and time-consuming additional effort while the tool is there to facilitate our work. Secondly, lighting equipment are extremely sophisticated devices with adjustments that are not available in simple lights (shutters and gobos are a good simple examples). With this technique, the renderings are therefore not as precise and textured as they should be.
It seems to me today urgent, while the presentation of rendering of lights is more and more required, that Vectorworks Spotlight improves not from a technical but an artistic approach, In order to offer designers a relevant tool, allowing them to faithfully represent their work.
Here are the difficulties I have encountered on a standard production that can includes several hundred fixtures:
1- Focus Points:
Adjusting a light according to the impact of a centre point is only the first step in the adjustment process. We start by positioning the light in relation to what Spotlight calls point focus (the position of an actor or a chair in the decoration for example), but once the projector is positioned in the desired position, it is then adjusted depending on its impact on the ground and the manner in which the designer wishes to treat the surrounding light.
In Spotlight, only this first step is possible, then it is impossible to adjust the position without moving the focus point and therefore all the projectors associated with it. It is therefore necessary to create a focal point per projector to correctly adjust the lights this way, which makes this function very cumbersome and unnecessary since there already exists a "function" field in the information window of the unit which makes it possible to insert a focus note.
In addition, the trial and error process imposed by not seeing where the light is taken makes the process incredibly tedious. The movement of the beam does not occur in real time when the focus point is moved and there is no possibility of moving this focus point or the adjustment of the light by its Horiz / Vert coordinates as is done with a none theatrical light. Moreover, this method is the only one that truly corresponds to the way things are done. In reality, we have a technician who goes up focusing the light and we observe the beam that moves to guide it and give our instructions.
Finally, knowing that some moving lights can have ten different focus points, one can easily end up with several thousand focus points which makes the plan totally unreadable and the function unusable.
2-Shutters:
The adjustment of the shutters requires careful adjustment which can only be done by visualizing the manipulation. Again, the trial and error method that Spotlight imposes by not show real-time movement makes setting virtually impossible. Focusing a shutter should take only a few seconds, in fact it takes several minutes to do it accurately in Spotlight. Knowing that there are 4 shutters per lamp and that there are several hundred lights that themselves can have a number of focuses, it is clear that this part quickly becomes a nightmare. Adding to this that the shutters do not appear in OpenGL and that it is necessary to render after each attempt, and it becomes clear how one quickly abandons the function.
3- The Gobos:
In Spotlight, it is impossible to adjust the focal length on the gobo. The result is that all gobos appear as a sharp image. In reality, very few gobos are set sharp and not having access to this function makes the image rendered totally absurd.
The angle option of the gobo also requires working by trial and error, which once again increases the time needed to adjust.
Finally, the gobos are not visible in OpenGL, which imposes as for the shutters to render with each setting.
Again, the constraints make the function totally unusable.
4-Fixture names in the light window:
In the light window, each of the fixture is assigned a strange name such as 1000.1.1.0.0 that one cannot modify as it is for a simple light in the property window.
Once our 300 projectors are hung, needless to say that it is simply impossible to find oneself and one loses patience when one has to turn on 30 fixtures before finding the right one. The light can be selected by clicking on it, but that requires changing the view to comfortably access it. Again, it becomes very tedious.
5-Projection:
Many shows today uses projection which, in opera, theatre, musical or dance, is in the vast majority of cases made by very large scale video projector. Vectorworks Spotlight offers only the possibility to project on a screen which makes it impossible to project on the set. Moreover, the screens option have predefined or limited sizes, which again make it impossible to illustrate a rear-projection on a large cyclorama.
All the points mentioned above are related (a projector must be adjusted, can have shutters and gobos, and must be easily accessible in the middle of hundreds of others). It is therefore at each step that the user is confronted to the incoherence fo the software making all functions unusable.
When I see the features and viewing options available, I feel that Spotlight was designed for people installing stands at trade shows or for small presentations that require a few projectors to light a speaker, project the company logo, and a screen to show a power point presentation. We are far from the very advanced and complex functions specific to large scale productions that Vectorworks offers in the other aspect of the design and planning process. There is a glaring discrepancy between the engineering functions and the visualization.
Here are some suggestions I can would make to help:
1-Focus points:
A focus point could be identical to a palette on lighting board. That is, the setting of one or more fixtures at a given point but not necessarily all centred on that point. To do this, it would require to offer the Horiz / Vert setting for the lighting fixtures that are available on the traditional lights. Assigning a focus point to a light would focus that light on the focus point as it does today, but then the designer would manually position it precisely where he wishes to focus it.
The light can ultimately be very far from its focus point, it does not matter. For example, if I created a Focus Point « DS Back Light », I could put 20 lamps on it and make a straight back light from SL to SR. It does not matter that their beams are not concentric because they have a general function that together forms this « DS Back Light ». I would then have 1 focus point instead of 20 and that would exactly match the way I work in real-life.
2-Shutters + 3-Gobos:
Shutters and gobos can only exist if they can be adjusted visually. The gobos and shutters must also appear in OpenGL and be adjusted by a cursor with visualization in real time. This is the only way to make the function usable.
4-Fixture name in the light window:
Fixture should automatically be assigned their circuit numbers by name, simply because that is how we name them. The possibility of classifying them by position would help to find them better. If this automatic allocation is not possible, they should at least be able to be named manually.
5-Projection:
The design of a specific tool to project an image, allowing to choose its lens and then to visualize the scene from the lens in order to create masks which can then be assigned to the projected object becomes urgent.
Finally, I would add that because of the specificity of our business, the limit of 8 lights lit in OpenGL very quickly reaches its limits again requiring time consuming rendering.
Working only in Renderworks is unthinkable, yet it is what we are forced to do to use the functions of Spotlight. If OpenGL does not allow certain renderings, it is necessary to develop a similar viewing mode, fast, allowing to visualize everything and sufficiently realistic to be able to light a scene without any bad surprise during rendering.
I hope you find this topic interesting, and useful, and I am looking forward to your insight.
Fabrice
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