Where can I find documentation on the behaviour of solid lights in Bryce 5?

I see that they somehow depend on the overall lighting, but haven't completely figured out how the mechanisms are - tried some tut's, but the just won't look right.

Also, the spherical lighting objects don't behave as I'd expect them to - made solid, they're far from becoming a glowing sphere...

Thank you for your support.

Message edited on: 01/27/2005 15:29

I'm not sure, but the manual might talk about it.

You mean, volumetric lights? To really create a visible volumetric light, your scene has to be dark. Or at least has to have sun turned off. On the pic is a simple spherical light with strength of 125, set to squared and Infinite light. The same result can be achieved by using the default strength and linear. Or do you possibly want something like on my _Death Metal_? (My gallery.) I did play with ranges on that one. but the most important thing is to turn off the sunlight.

what I'd like to be able to do is get that 'arc-welding' glare..never seemed to be able to do that..;) ('ceptin' postwork..;)

If you want a glowing sphere, take a normal sphere, go into the material and turn the ambience all the way to 100. To get it to cast light place a spherical light inside the sphere.

Hey! Aldaron stole what I was going to say :^( It's great fun playing around with lights and materials. In the attached image I've done more or less what Aldaron is suggesting, but placed a plane behind to reflect back the light, and give sunburst rays. This was rendered with AA off, so very fast.

hmm...gelflings..;) ok, have to try this out..;)

I don't exaclt understand what you're talking about, Eisenhorn... Solid lights? If you meant volumetrics, they are elegant and simple, but I still have never seen a decent Bryce tutorial on solid lights... Do you mean neon tubes? Do you mean glow bulbs? Not sure...

I wonder if you mean....taking a solid object, putting a material on it, then converting it to a light? This is much the same as I did above, just slightly different. i did this by creating a sphere, placing a material on it, converting it to a light (you do that with the little arrows up in the top left of the Edit window), then tweaking the material and strength of the light until I got the effect I wanted. Sun turned off, atmosphere turned off, sky colour black. I placed plane behind the light so that it would show. You can have the light object either visible or invisible. This anything like the info you're searching for?

Eisenhorn;

I could be wrong, but I think what you're getting at is objects used as a volumetric mass (solid), giving off "ambient" light.

If you are, type "PJF" into the Bryce forum search, he's posted about this, it'll give you an insight as to how it's done.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1918892

A thread I did on lights

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=107&Form.ShowMessage=1949052

Here's another thread you might find useful

Thank you all for the great answers and really good advice (and great images). I'll try to get this all in my head. And, yes lordstormdragon, I guess I mean 'volumetric' - I've got a localized version of B5 and just translated. Thanks again, to all, and have a great time.