Hi,

Several models (really sets constructed as models) have all the lighting built in (light fixtures were modeled so the lights were put in). For the purpose of light groups, light buffers, composite and perhaps even radiosity and other new AM features I'm beginning to think that this approach is not so good.

Does anyone know or, have any comments on this?

Thanks,
Rusty

Funny you should post this, I have created a building with lighting and was wanting to know the same questions. Also, is there a tutorial on the best ways to set up lights with in the model itself

Steve

The composite works with radiosity and ambience occlusion, and you can create seperate buffers for each light. The only problem I've seen with v13's composite feature, however, is that when ever you have a render that used a high number of passes it will show up as a black image in A:M, but when you save the composite, as an image or animation file type, the saved files are fine.

What i end up doing is once the model is done i then add all my lights inside the model, once that is done I delete the entire model and save just the lights so if you had a hall.mdl when I resaved the new one with just the lights it would be hall_lights.mdl. Then when I drop them both in the chor they line up the way they need to and if you need to move them just constrain one to the other. For some reason AM does not like lights in the model itself and this is the work around I use.

lights work in models just like they do in the choreography window Did you not switch the view mode to bones so that you could see your light objects while positioning and manipulating them in your model?

The annoyance I have with lights in the model is the fact that the model turns almost black in the modeling window after a light is added. So unless you are completely finished with modeling, putting in lights prematurely makes it just about impossible to edit your splines.

>_>? I've never had this problem. For my industrial hallway project, all of my lights were part of the model, and I never had anything like that happen to me.

I always put in 'work' lights so I can see to work on the model... a pose turns them off in actions and chors.

Rusty

So unless you put in "work" lights, your model turns dark too?

Once you add a light the default global lighting shuts off -- same in an action or even a chor. And, you want that to happen because... how can you properly adjust the light you've added if the global light (which is totally unrealistic because it is coming from whatever view you are currently working in) is adding light to the model? So... in for a penny, in for a pound; if you add a light the sw properly believes that you want to control the lighting. The other option would be a switch for the global lighting but no sw I've worked with offers this... to my knowledge anyway.

:-)

Rusty

There is a property under the Choreography called "Use Front Realtime Light" that does this.

Another cool hidden feature I didn't know about -- or not so hidden . Thanks, Martin.

Thanks for pointing this out. I looked in the help, searching for Front Realtime, and under Choreography propergies, and didn't find any help docs on this.

I'm wondering if this a similar problem to what I have?
I use lights in models to make a nice lens flare for rocket flames, but when they render I get very dark shadow casts when it should be a combined brighter light . This happens even with the cast shadow settings off .
One way I found around this, is to use Multipass on the renderer (3x3 does) or better still radiosity, but these are to time obese and a cast is usually still visible.
I also find that sometimes, when rendering an animation, the contrast of the whole scene changes by a noticable say 20% light/dark for a small fall off /change in light position. For some strange reason frame 00:00:00 might be fine whilst frame 00:00:01 will be dramaticaly different, almost as if a Kileg light with a large fall off and intensity had suddenly activated or moved into the scene.

On a similar note? when I render using radiosity (after its calculated) I see just the light (Sun and Flare) and the background camera color(Blue) showing, Is this an automatic composite? That is, after the animation render, do the models and lights recombine to form 1 image?
Is there a grid/table showing what light settings can be combined or unset to avoid the above results?

I should try this myself but , I was wondering if anyone else has similar render issues.

P.S. I can't do more than 1 frame using radiosity at the moment, I'll have to report it...