Stephen M. Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 I am a novice Spotlight user (3 months) and I am trying to find a nice way to uplight scrims and draperies for renderings. When I turn on my lights even though I have the drapes set to "opaque" the light is always showing through to whatever is behind the drapes. Is this normal or is there a setting that needs to be made to the texture or instrument? I have a screen shot attached showing an ACL hitting a drape with a wall behind. I also have a second issue trying to make shutters work. I adjust shutters on an fixture like a leko and there is no resulting affect but I can see it in the beam. Is that supposed to work? Quote Link to comment
markdd Posted March 15, 2018 Share Posted March 15, 2018 Looks like you are using OpenGL. To stop light going through textures you will need to enable shadows in the OpenGL settings. However, that will have a knock-on with lighting fixtures etc. which is a whole other issue. If you want to see everything clearly and relatively quickly then use fast renderworks or a custom render setting with all settings set to low. Come back with more questions. Quote Link to comment
Stephen M. Posted March 15, 2018 Author Share Posted March 15, 2018 Thanks Rob, I tried that but don't seem to be getting it to work yet. I'm attaching a simplified version of the file I was working with and a another screen capture of a "final rendering". I set up a number of drape lines and a wall to see the effect. If you can take a look, I'd be interested to see know what I'm doing wrong. Steve M. drape lighting issue.vwx Quote Link to comment
markdd Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 There are a couple of things: Firstly, the file you are working on has somehow become corrupted and I have a feeling that this is an issue with Renderworks. I pasted all your objects into a clean file and all worked as expected. However it only worked properly once I had applied the default instrument texture to the 3d portion of the symbol. This was missing from your 3d symbol geometry. This texture is set to "not cast shadows". When I tried to render your objects initially in the new file, no light appeared at all. Once this texture was applied then all worked as normal. Vectorworks applies a light object to the body part of a symbol when it converts it from a symbol to a Spotlight Lighting Device. In order for the light to pass out of the solid body of the symbol, a texture is applied that allows light to pass through it or "not cast shadows". This strategy is in place in part to keep symbol geometry to a minimum in order to speed up render times etc. This is the reason why when you turn on shadows in OpenGL that no light comes out of the instrument and you don't see shutters etc. Open GL in Vectorworks cannot read the "do not cast shadows" part of the instrument texture so just blocks the light. A simple and major improvement to Vectorworks would be the implementation of the "do not cast shadows" element of textures in OpenGL. Until that time you have to invent your own strategies to circumvent this. What I do in order to see beams of light in open GL with shadows is to put all the 3d portions of my symbols in to a specific class (Lights-3d). Then you can toggle the fill properties of that class to fill/no fill and as long as you refresh the instruments the change will take place and you will see shadows from your lights in OpenGL. I have attached the amended file along with a fixture of my own so you can see what I'm talking about. I hope that helps. Mark MD Drape Lighting Issue.vwx Quote Link to comment
Stephen M. Posted March 16, 2018 Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 thanks Mark, I'll take a look at your file and go back to my original drawing to check the settings. I appreciate the feedback. Quote Link to comment
markdd Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 25 minutes ago, Rob Books said: I am confused with how you have two 3D loci in the light symbol and it does not cause the usual error where everything rotates and emits from the insertion point. lucky I guess The extra locus has a record attached to it. The wrong record but a record nonetheless..... I knew that a parts record with the base checked would be OK but it has the Light Info Record M attached to it. Who knew! Quote Link to comment
Stephen M. Posted March 16, 2018 Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 Thanks Rob, I'll be getting back to my original file soon and try these different parameters. The program is pretty deep with all the functions for each element. Good thing to have this forum. I see that Markdd got the shutter to work, which was another issue I had. I'm also trying to figure out a nice way to uplight a drape line or cyc, which fixture is best to use without having to place a large amount of fixtures on the ground. I was trying a Colorforce 72 but couldn't make the beam spread the width of the instrument, just a single point. Not sure if that's the way it's supposed to work. It's also a little frustrating with a file becoming "corrupt". Quote Link to comment
Stephen M. Posted March 16, 2018 Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 that thing about the Light Info Record - could it be that I copied a fixture from another file? and that messed up the file? I am just doing the scenic layout and another person -the lighting designer- built the file for the lighting and I copied one of his fixtures into mine. Quote Link to comment
Stephen M. Posted March 16, 2018 Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 A colleague of mine works in 3DS Max and sometimes he builds an object and makes it glow. Do we think we could do the same thing here? -build a fake instrument from an object and somehow shutter it to give the effect of a wide cyc light? Quote Link to comment
markdd Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 27 minutes ago, Rob Books said: the new parts record has a point type in it that is for the locus, if applied and checked it will use that locus point @Rob BooksThanks Rob. What does it use that locus for? Quote Link to comment
markdd Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 Thanks, I understand what the locus is used for, it's what the Point part of the record is used for. Mark Quote Link to comment
Stephen M. Posted March 16, 2018 Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 All good tips guys, thanks. Steve M. Quote Link to comment
markdd Posted March 16, 2018 Share Posted March 16, 2018 5 minutes ago, Rob Books said: sorry, the point part of the record is checked by the code to ensure that the correct locus is used. we were working on some potential stuff for Vision and Vectorworks that was going to add more loci to the geometry, and needed a way to ensure it did not break the existing working. Right now the vision stuff is tabled indefinitely, but that part of the code had already been changed, so it stayed in. Interesting - Many thanks Mark Quote Link to comment
mjm Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 20 hours ago, Rob Books said: Here is the topic where they were discussing line light to do what you want. Rob beat me to sharing this post. Very useful in dealing with the Strip light situation Quote Link to comment
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