I have some lights in a scene that I like.
Depending on the camera view they only require minor adjustments.

I now create new files with the Figures for that scene I work on that figure till I'm satisfied. I also add & adjust the lights to my liking.
Now after adding the figure to the other scene I want to add those lights also to my other scene without deleting the ones that are in it.
Does any of that make sense? :)

Is it Possible?

Thanks.

Scott

It can be done. Download lesbentley's MinFig figure from freestuff. MinFig is a "minimal figure", a CR2 without geometry, joints and so on. Load a MinFig into the scene that includes the lights you want to save/copy. Parent all lights to the MinFig BODY. Parenting infinite lights: switch them to spotlight, parent, switch back to infinite. Save the MinFig to the figure library. The lights will be saved with it. Load your other scene and load the saved MinFig. The lights should load with it without wiping out the existing lights.

A word of caution here. The method described by svdl works fine as long as the lights (and shadow cameras) you saved with MinFig have diffrent internal names to the lights in the scene you are going to load them into. Unfortunatly this is rarely the case. So most of the time an extra step of editing the cr2 is necessary. After parenting the lights and saving MinFig with a new name, open the resulting cr2 in a text editor. Do a case sensitive Search and Replace these strings: "spotLight" with "MyspotLight" "SHADOW_CAM_LITE" with "MySHADOW_CAM_LITE" "LIGHT" with "MyLIGHT" Actually the new names can be anything you like. The important point is that no two lights or shadow cameras in the scene should have the same internal name/number.

I was going to reply to this yesterday but decided I needed to do a few more tests first.

I spend more time adjusting lights then any other single thing. So I had a good set why mess about trying to recreate them?
Some day maybe I'll understand better what I'm doing and then create new light sets on the fly.
Till then... This was just what I needed, it helped alot.

As lesbentley stated internal names need to be changed.
Originaly the new set removed some of my old lights & eventualy Poser crashed. No biggie I've been through much worse.

In the long run it worked great!
I'm now curious what else I can use this for.

Anyway Thanks to SVDL for the link & lesbentley for the assurance I wasn't crazy.")
A great addition to my library.

Scott

Message edited on: 03/14/2006 22:22

Message edited on: 03/14/2006 22:24

I have used min fig for quite a few diffrent things, you will find some of them in the MinFig.txt included in the zip.

In P4, if you understand ERC, it's relitivly easy to add ERC control to your light set so that all the lights can be controled from master dials in the BODY. In P5 the following will NOT work, the situation in P5 is much more complicated because of the nodes P5 adds to lights. ERC for lights is posible in P5, but I don't have time to explain it at the moment.

P4 Example. Parent 3 white spotlights to MinFig, and save it to a pallet as "3 Spots"

Open "3 Spots.cr2" in a text editor. Add this channel to the BODY:

             valueParm RED<br></br>                       {<br></br>                   name RED<br></br>                    initValue 0<br></br>                 hidden 0<br></br>                    forceLimits 0<br></br>                       min -100000<br></br>                 max 100000<br></br>                  trackingScale 0.004<br></br>                 keys<br></br>                                {<br></br>                           static  0<br></br>                           k  0  0<br></br>                             }<br></br>                   interpStyleLocked 0<br></br>                 }

Add this slaving code to the "kdRed" channel in each light, under the "interpStyleLocked" line:

                 valueOpDeltaAdd<br></br>                             Figure 1<br></br>                            BODY:1<br></br>                              RED<br></br>                 deltaAddDelta 1.000000

Test the file in Poser 4, positive values for the RED channel will not show untill you render, but negative values will show in preview. Values below -1.000 will result in solerization type effects, for this reason you may want to force the limits of the master channel to between 1 and -1.

You can repeat the above process for green, blue, and intensity. In fact any of the channels in the lights can be slaved, so you can slave things like Angle Start, Dist End, Map Size, etc.

Perhaps I will write a tutorial on ERC and lights in P5 some day, for now this is just for P4.

You can even use MinFig as a basis for building a figure out of props. In some circumstances this can have great advantages over using "Create New Figure" in Posers Hierachy editor. The "Create New Figure" option will change a lot of things that you might not want changing, eg origins (joint centers). There are many diffrent ways you can proceed, the simplest is to parent the props to MinFig (or to each other, with the base element parented to MinFig), save MinFig. Then in a text editor Search and Replace the string "prop " (note the blank space) with "actor ". For more info on this see this thread at Poser Pros.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1170352&Start=1&Artist=blizzard&ByArtist=Yes

Thanks. :)

WOW!
Text editing. Yikes.
I'll need some time to digest all this.

See link.
Other then parenting some of these props structures together, I gave up trying to parent it all together.
My hopes were to parent everything to the floor but when I do I get a "same root name error" or something to that effect & then certain items get thrown out of place.

I previously changed all the scale names in a text editor so nothing resizes but still I can not parent it all into one.
I haven't tryed yet parenting them to your minfig.
I imagine I will get the same root name error.

I'll work more on this folowing your notes & I'll get over to PoserPros and take a look at that thread to.

Many Thanks!

Scott

Quote: "...I get a "same root name error" That's an error that I have never seen! Just a thought, did you use the GROUND plain as one of your primitives? If so, that might be the cause of the error, I think Poser only allows one prop named "GROUND" in the scene.