#Lights Types?
8 messages in this thread
To ALL
OK I am trying to figure out the lights now?
I understand I am to make a point, then select a light but I can figure
out how to set the "Type" of light. I selected the "T" and added a point in the
channel, I can move it up and down, and even make a spline in the channel, but
I fon't see a light cone appear, nor can i understand how to set the number of
the light type eg….. 6=spot. I tried typing 6, sliding the point until it was
at 6 and space bar stuff but I see no indications of the light changing……
Any one want to tell me what I am missing?
Lee
Lee,
There is an icon in the menu bar of a bulb with 2 lines angling upward.
Click on that and then the light cones should appear on screen.
Michael S. Flynn
I found that,
But How do your set the numerical value that controles which kind of
light you will get?
lee
Lee,
First, click on the light that you want to channel, then chose "Light"
from the "Channel" menu. The box above the 9 letter selections is used to
display a default number for the function of each of the nine keys, ands
displays this number as soon as you select one. In the case of choosing a type
of light, click on "T" and the default of "8" will appear in the top box. You
can change this if you want, but for light tyoe, it is better left at 8 or 7.
The number represents the highest/lowest vertical posistion for a point in the
window. There are only 8 light types so typing a higher value for "type" would
be useless, and typing a lower value would limit you.
I haven't figured out what the "m" and "b" are that are above the 2 bottom
boxes, so I ignore them. As for the two bottom boxes, the upper one is where
you type in the frame number you want a point to be at, and the lower one is
where you type in a number from 0 to +/- the number in the top box, which for
"type" is set at "8".
So after clicking "T" for "type", press "A" on the keyboard to add a point
to the window. You can then position it with the mouse, and as you move it up
and down you will see the numbers in the bottom most box change to +/- values.
If you have only 1 point in the window, you can't drag it to the right, and in
most cases when selecting light type, you don't need more than 1 point anyway,
assuming that you want the type to be constant all the way through.
Now you have 1 point in the window, and you can go to the lower of the 2
bottom boxes and type in a number from 0-7. Now you have a light of the type
specified by the number in the lower of the 2 bottom boxes, at the frame
specified by the number in the upper of the 2 bottom boxes, in this case, 1.
That's all there is to it.
I haven't tried anything yet like having a bulb go from no shadows to
shadows, or a sun go to a spot, but they are on my list of things to do when I
feel like goofing off. I doubt if it will work since there isn't any
documentation that says you can have floats instead of integers in selecting a
light type, but I'm going to have to try anyway, just to see what happens.
Michael S. Flynn
Michael,
>>I haven't figured out what the "m" and "b" are that are above the 2 >>bottom
boxes, so I ignore them.
They stand for Magnitude and Bias. In other words they help you determine
how a spline will pass through a control point.
BTW, What was the rendering time for the A-wings (mins and seconds) ?
And where did you get the star field image in the background ?
Thanks,
Chris
Chris,
(ala Homer – DOH!) That should have been obvious.
The A-Wings rendered in 2 hours 43 min. That may seem excessive, but they
are so detailed that 16meg RAM wasn't enough to render two of them in one
scene, so I had to use 36000 in the Prefs memory. And that still wasn't enough
as you can see by looking at the lower A-wing; the image map on the hump behind
the cockpit did not fully render leaving an angled edge. Increasing the Prefs
memory setting past 36000 resulted in AM locking up 1/2-3/4 of the way through
rendering. It is becoming increasingly clear that if I am going to keep
producing models at this level of detail or higher, that I am going to need at
least 64-128meg of RAM.
The star field backgrounds I use are montages of graphics that come with
astronomy programs that have been converted to the .TGA format and then, in
most cases, heavily image edited. For instance, most nebula are almost always
in the colors red-orange, but I prefer greens, blues and magentas, so I break
images up into RGB componets and cut them paste them differently – like to
begin by changing the overall red to more of a blue-magenta, I copy the blue
channel to red, and vice versa. I have a number of graphics of nebula, about 20
different galaxies, and a dozen or so star fields, and I cut and paste pieces
of each to create my backgrounds.
Michael S. Flynn
Michael,
>> The A-Wings rendered in 2 hours 43 min. That may seem excessive, but >>they
are so detailed that 16meg RAM wasn't enough to render two of them >>in one
scene,
How about rendering the two separately and then compositing the two later,
provided one doesn't fall into the shadow of the other. As detailed as the
models are they don't look like they would bring 16megs to its knees all by
their lonesome. Are you using many memory hungry decals ?
I was also wondering what if any success you have had with creating a
convincing engine glow. I'm thinking of something along the lines of a bright
ball of light similar to what you would see on B5.
I look forward to your next image,
Chris
Chris,
There is one 300k decal used in about 3-4 places, and 11 different 10-30k
decals used in a number of places. So there are about 20-30 decals pasted on.
I think it would be pointless to try and create an engine glow with AM; it
would involve some creative mapping, and I don't it could be done with any
success in 3D. We'll either have to do it manually, or wait for Hash to add
"Glow" as an effect.
Michael S. Flynn