This must have been discussed many times before, and I'll be happy with a ref. to an old discussion, but since the search option is no longer available I have to bother you cracks with this. I try to make a scene with a model in a doorway holding a candle. So, a single point light source lighting a number of objects (body, door, doorpost, adjacent wall) arranged around the light in various directions. So I need a smooth all-around light. Poser Pointlights only allow 160 degrees of opening, so 2 spots back to back do not work. I tried a set of three under 120 degs to try to get it right in at least one plane, but even if I set min angle to 80 and max angle to 160 (smoothing out around the 120 as far as I can) I keep getting areas where beams overlap etc. Is there a way to solve this? B.

Bagoas you are on the right track, the way to simulate an omni-directional light is to use a number of spotlights pointing out in diffrent diractions. These can be parented to a prop (which can be hidden) so that you can move the lights as a group. The number of lights used will depend on how even the ilumination has to be, I find that 12 lights give a reasonably even ilumination, in many situations you can probably get away with fiewer. A usefull inovation is to use ERC to controle the paramiters of all the lights at once, whilst this works well in P4, however there are some problems using ERC on lights in P5 (don't know about P6). I have some pre-made omni lights in the Free Stuff, the "OmniLight with ERC control" and the "Omni_12(P4)" were designed for Poser 4, if you have Poser 5 you should only use the "P5-Omni-12" which was specially designed to work with Poser 5. I have not tested any of these in Poser 6. It is offten usefull to set the 'Dist End' dial when trying to simulate candle light.

I used the Omnilight in P5 and can say that are incredibly useful - an extraordinary freebie!

if you like to add more than one point light to poser 5, try the python script "ashara's light ball" from ockham. it created a ball with spots around it - with all the right direction and settings. you can position the point light by position the ball - the lights are parented to it. you just have to make the ball invisible before rendering.

And both solutions work like a breeze! Thank you all. B.

You can actually get away with just 2 spotlights in P5. The 160 End Angle can have its limit increased to 180 and then set to that value. Aim the spots in opposite directions (one up and one down or whatever) and parent them to the candle flame or intended light source. Works well without any apparent overlap or bright spots.

Heyhey gwhicks, you are right!. I assumed these rather arbitrary limits had to do something with the internals of Poser, such as the shadow mapping process. I rendered a similar scene and, again, it works like a breeze. Thanks a lot. B.