Hi all,

First off, thanks for your time.

I am trying to do a planatary scene that is basically a hangar (garage) with a big door on it. I want it to be dark outside and the hangar lighted on the inside. I am trying to get it where once I open the doors the props outside (from an inside perspective looking out) are illumintaed in blue (like its night outside) and the inside of the hangar lighted in soft white (like flourescent) bulbs. Above the garage door (because it is a very tall door) there are 2 lights. I have made spot lights point straight down. When I close the garage door the light shines through the door. Not funny. Or certainly not like a real light. I have another spot light outside the structure that is pointed to the props outside the structure. It is blue. When I turn it on everything inside the garege goes blue also.

Also is there a 10 light limit in poser? In this structure there are about 12 suspended lights, I figured that for the best result I should put a point light right under each light and turn the intensity down. Once I hit 10 they stopped working. I can get around that. I can just redistribute the lights I have and brighten them some. But if there is a 10 light limit it would be nice to know so I can plan for it next time.

I am a noob and I suspect there is probably something that I missed.

Thanks again.

Paul

Hi!

As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of lights you can have in a scene.  I've seen global light sets that use 30 or more lights in them.

You may want to check the materials on the door, make sure it isn't using any refraction or transparency that is allowing the lights to shine through it.

Also, if you're using the Firefly renderer, you may want to try using the P4 renderer just to see what it  looks like.  I've had times where light would shine through in odd places using Firefly, but it didn't with the P4 renderer.

Good luck!

More than a certain number of lights won't show up in preview, but they should (SHOULD) render normally; I've done one scene with 18 lights and it seemed correct, although honestly it's kind of hard to know for sure.

A limitation of Poser is that its lights do not behave like real world lights, period.  Light will not spread the way you expect it to under any circumstances.  The general phenomenon you're probably looking for is Radiosity (or Global Radiosity) and Poser simply does not do it, although it can simulate it in some ways by doing things to materials settings. 

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2699830

A scene with 17 lights (16 spots and 1 infinite as I recall)
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1400873&member
^^ nudity

Hummmm

I think my install must be hosed. I have been getting some other weirdness and I bet its related. Things like when I apply the MATs to a figure the figure turns all black until I go into the matrerials room and open each individule(sp)  body part, then they all change to the correct material.

Thanks all.

I guess I am reinstalling Poser tonight (for the umpteenth time)

P.S. Nice image pjx99. I wish it took me 17 light to see my caboose..  ;-)

"It is blue. When I turn it on everything inside the garage goes blue also."

It sounds as though you are referring to the Poser preview, not to what is rendered.   Poser's preview isn't very good at representing lighting.   The render often looks drastically different from the preview.   Is the hangar-door still transparent, when you do the render?   Lights outside the structure should not penetrate to the interior.

I generally think that fewer-is-better is a good policy for lights.   You don't need to have an actual Poser light for everything in the scene that looks illuminated.   Once you have the lighting required for the scene as rendered, there are all sorts of ways to make the other lights look as though they are contributing, when, actually, they aren't.

Thanks Morgano.

I havent tried rendering the scene after I turned on the blue light again. I was to flustered at that point. I had 11 lights and when I deleted #10 number 11 came back on (because for some reason I cannot get more than 10 lights to work).

BUT... I did render the scene with the blue light off to verify that the lights inside the building were actually shining through the walls, and tthey do shine through in the render.

So.. I will go try it but I am pretty sure that they will shine through. (that was where my problems started I kept adjusting the intensity of the inside lights and everything inside stayed blue (because of the outside light)