Somewhere on this forum I read that a great way to control several lights at once is to parent them to a dummy object, then use this object to control the whole set-up. However, when I try to do this, several of the lights move when I try to parent them. I also tried parenting them to a camera, with similar wonky behavior. Any idea why the lights won't stay put?

Thanks,
Mike

Are you parenting or pointing to?

I'm trying to parent them, though some of the lights are pointing to other objects. Not sure why that would cause them to move when they are being parented.

Mike

They should stay attached but rotate to face whatever they're pointing to. Are you attaching Spot lights, Point Lights or the infinate lights to your prop? I can only imagine Spot lights being affected much by the point at command since point lights and infinate lights shine in all directions already.

There are five lights in the scene. Four are infinite and one is a spot with the point-at option set. Three of the infinite lights move when I try to parent them. The other infinite light and the spot stay put. I'm using a Light Panel python script to do the parenting. In Poser 6, the parenting option is not available for infinite lights, though it is for spotlights. Maybe that is the problem... I am tryiing to parent infinite lights with a script which tries to do something Poser can't handle?

Mike

That would be the problem right there, Poser 6 defaultly put's all infinate lights at a certain range from the figure. I don't think they thought we'd want infinate lights in the center of the scene. Certainly not parented to items. That's what point and spot lights are made for though. I parent point lights to things like flames, fireballs and Wizard Staff tips.

Thanks Mizrael... I was hoping for a quick way to rotate my whole lighting set-up 180 degrees, including the infinite lights. Guess the parenting trick won't help in this case.

Mike

Well you can just turn the infinate lights into spot lights long enough to move em' around while they're parented to the prop, then just convertt hem back to infinate lights via the properties window once they're placed I suppose.

Sounds like a plan. I'll try it. Thanks again.

Mike

You could also parent the entire scene to a prop and rotate the prop (+scene) instead.

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On a related note I set up an elaborate 'point-at' rig for animating figures in P5 about a year ago. While doing that little project I experimented with applying 'point-at' to objects that were parented in various ways and some iterations created problems. It's been a while so I don't recall the details but it seemed to create a conflict of some kind, which I suppose might make sense.

Message edited on: 03/05/2006 00:19

You might also check to make sure those lights don't have limits set or are locked.

Infinite lights can't be parented in poser. The trick is to convert them to spots, parent them, then convert them back to infinites. Another way to do it is to use a Null figure as the parent. This has a few advantages. You may not want to see the parent prop, so instead of making it invisible, use a Null. Also, a Null will accept poses, so you can set up pose files and apply them to the lights, which can be quite useful for changing intensity, color, etc. Beware one thing with parented lights. When you resave them to the library, poser does NOT save the Shadow and MapSize channels correctly. This is a known bug since P4 which has never been fixed. It saves these 2 channels with the default settings - Shadow=1.00/MapSize=256. It's pretty annoying because you have to go into the cr2 and edit them. mac

baggettbear, I suspect the Python script is the culprit in moving the lights. Try the method sugested by maclean, convert the infinite lights to spots, parent them normaly without using the script, then convert them back to infinite. This has always seemed to work for me in P4 and p5, I suspect it will still work in P6.

Heh, les. I think I learned that trick from you. mac

Thanks everyone... I just tried the infinite-to-spot conversion trick, and it worked well. However, as this technique clearly demonstrates that infinite lights can be parented, it makes me wonder why Poser disables this feature.

Mike