I'm really just thinking out loud here. I was thinking of feature that might be cool: shaped lights. What does mean? Well, what if one could create a light with a spline? The spline would act as a light, much like how neon signs are made. A single straight spline for example would give the effect of a fluorescent bulb. Also, a rig could be set up so that multiple spines could 'mold' volumetric effects, much like the brush tool does to hair. I'm sure it'd all be a killer to render. Again this is all just a thought.

Grayson

I had such ideas. I thought about square lights, and cylindrical lights for things like florescent lights. The only problem I can see with the extra lights is trying to figure out how to control the Light properties. Thing like falloff should be different for different splines, and that could get tricky to program.

I don't recall if "light lists" (which limit a light to shine on only certain objects) work in radiosity; if they do you could bounce light off any shape you wanted to create the effect of shaped lights. But you'd have to put up with the render time of radiosity for the bounced light to illuminate its surroundings.

you know for a neon light you could make a tube,add glow,then have alot of little blue bulbs going long it.

You can also take one light to create a florecent light by compressing a movement action through the tube down into 1 frame and turn on Motion blur to get an effect. The only problem is that radiosity does not work with Light Lists. Rays that hit the inside of the bulb will create large amounts of visible anomolies.

Yeah, I think light properties could get tricky. I really posted this under radiosity, cause I couldn't think of anything else. Anyway, for the "rig" that I mentioned, it could looks something like the attachment.

Is a square klieg light possible and if not...can it be faked?

If you add a rotoscope with a square-shaped alpha channel to a klieg, then yes.

ok, thank you very much

Not exactly, I tried making a sphereical Globe Projection and it never worked correctly. I'd need to work a little bit more with the rotoscopes to see if were even possible. As Light reaches the incident angel of the Klieg, it start to expand on the Y axis and shrink on the X.

What could help you is a light-image...
You can apply a B/W-Image to a light(spot) and the light will only shine through the white parts (I hope it was white and not black... cant remember those things...)

It is a feature normally used to simulate window-shine-throughs...

*Fuchur*