#LW Help: Visible Lights
10 messages in this thread
I'm having a bit of trouble and I hope someone here can help me. (I'm
still using LW 2.0…)
I would like to setup a light that is visible in the rendering. Every
time I place a light in view, the objects it illuminates are fine but
the light itself is invisible. I've tried using all of the ray trace
options and it still doesn't get it. I'm using a point light. Any
clues?
I would also like to make a surface completely mirrored. What are the
diffuse, refraction, reflection (100% obviously) and other settings
to do this? What about a glass cube?
An ideal thing here would be to create a light bulb. I've seen these
before but can't seem to create one. Placing a light source inside
the transparent globe doesn't cut it. Any help would be
appreciated… Thanks, Mark.
>I would like to setup a light that is visible in the rendering. (I'm
>still using LW 2.0…)
As far as I know, to make the light visible you need to have a
surface like a sphere around the light and apply the necesary surface
features to make it look like a light. No need to ray-trace.
Try adding a shpere in modeler and exporting it into the Layout then
change the surface color to 255,255,255 and set smoothing ON and set
edge transparency to transparent. Make sure you place the light
inside the sphere. This will give you a simple glowing white light.
LW 3.0 makes this VERY easy as you can just set the Lens Flare feature
to do what you want.
Mark,
With 2.0 you need to 'model' any light sources you wish to see..
For a lightbulb, try these settings…
Make the surface Luminous, give it a nice lightbulb like color and put a
point light inside of it. The point light will not actually light up the
bulb, that's why it should be luminous. The point light will however light
up objects around the bulb.
For mirrored surfaces, use 100% reflection and make sure you turn on
'Trace Reflections'. Also, It is very important to not use high diffuse
levels with reflective objects as they will appear washed out.
A perfect mirror is 100% reflective and 0% diffuse.
Hope this helps.
JG
P.S. Mind if I use this question in a Dear John column?
I'll try that and I really appreciate the speedy response. BTW, of
course you can use the question in your column. That would even be
kind of cool.
For the light bulb, model the shape with the glass part having a
unique name and make it so that it only has outward facing polygons
(I don't know if that is necessary, but it may be required to let the
light pass out from within – at least that is the way I did it and it
worked).
Then, in surfaces menuy, give the bulb's glass surface the color you
desire, set it to luminous, difuse 100% and then, in layout, colocate
with and parent the light source to the light bulb. Now it looks like
a bulb and radiates like one. You may want to adjust the light color
to kinda agree with the bulb color.
Basically, in 2.0, to make a light "visible" just co-locate an object
of the approriate shape with the light and make the object luminous.
Ligt beams can be made by using luminous, with a high transparency
setting (not 100%).
wmc – via Autopilot!
I tried the lightbeam like you said and can't quite get what is in my
head. When You have time, could you take a peek at your Surface and
note the particulars, Edge transperency etc? You meant use a pipe
object for the actual beam right? Single sided polys?
Paul,
Tapered cylinder with 16 longitudinal segments, single sided polys (facing
out, of course).
Color 255 255 160, Luminous (100% in 3.0) diffuse 7%, spec 0, reflection 0
transparency 65% (and I like it a little higher too couldn't make up my
mind and gave up trying to decide at 65%) edge transparency on with
threshold 7.
Note that this is a fairly well defined spot light beam for a movie
program intro, but with these settings and higher transparency it looks
close to the real thing.
wmc – via Autopilot!
Thanks Wayne, it does look good.
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
Paul and all,
The key here is that if the light source is placed inside the bulb,
and all the surfaces face out, that NONE of them will have the light
illuminate them, as they're facing away from it. That's why you need
luminosity. Essentially, you have to make the bulb look right, light
source or not.
Can 3.0 map luminosity? I need a light fixture that's a large opaque
rectangle with several bulbs in it, and need the luminosity to vary
over the length of it, brighter around the bulbs. In 2.0, I end up
putting a 'shell' around the glass, and vary it's transparency with a
map.
… Nate.
3.0 will do a luminosity map.
-GT