Is there a way to combine and use 2 separate light sets at the same time in Poser 5? I've found just the lights I need.. just not together

myst

Hmmm. i don't know. If I remember correctly trying to add a second set of lights ends up replacing the first set.

You could try adding just the lights to a scene and saving it as a .pz3 file.  Create another new scene and do the same thing.

Then use "File"and "Import" to bring in the first scene with lights so that they combine with the second scene and it's lights.

Don't know if it will work, but it's worth a try.

In poser 5 the old light-set wasn't replaced, I think that feature came with Poser 7. Before that you had  to remove all the old lights before importing a new lightset. I don't know if combining two lightsets will give the required results, perhaps you have to dimm the lights a little.

best regards,

Bopperthijs

Hmmm, what happened to lesbentley's post? It went into detail about editing a file to change the name of lights and was quite helpful.

Les Bently screwed up ang got it wrong! :sad:

Here is the corrected version.

If any lights or shadow cams in the two sets share the same internal name and number (which is quite likely), then I don't  think Acadia's method will work. Here is how to combine 2 sets, you will have to get your hands dirty hacking files in a text editor. The nub of the matter is that no two lights or associated shadow cams in a scene can share the same internal name and number, and all the lights must be added from one lt2 (light) file.

Make sure you have Poser set NOT to use compressed files in your General Preferences. Delete the 3 default infinite lights. Load the first light set, save a light set to the Lights pallet as "A". Open a new scene, delete the infinite lights, load your second light set, save it as "B".

Open the light file you saved "A.lt2" in a text editor. You should find it under the path:

.Poser #RuntimeLibrarieslight[some folder]A.lt2

Use your editors search and replace function to do a case sensitive search and replace of all instances of these text strings:

"camera " (note the trailing space) with "camera A" (there is a space before the "A").
"Camera " (note the trailing space) with "Camera A" (there is a space before the "A").
"light " (note the trailing space) with "light A" (there is a space before the "A").

Open B.lt2 in another text editor window, process it the same as the last file, except use "B" in the replace strings, so replace:

"camera " (note the trailing space) with "camera B" (there is a space before the "B").
"Camera " (note the trailing space) with "Camera B" (there is a space before the "B").
"light " (note the trailing space) with "light B" (there is a space before the "B").

Delete the opening brace and version block from the start of the "B.lt2" file, this bit:

{

version
 {
 number #
 }

Then delete the very last brace in the file, the closing "}". Select all the text, and Copy it to the clipboard.

In "A.lt2", scroll to the end of the file, insert a new line just above the closing brace. Into the new line, paste the contents of the clipboard. Save the file back to disk with a new name. You can now delete the "A.lt2" and "B.lt2" files.

This seems to work for me in P4 and P6, I see no reason why it should not work in P5.
  

Thanks much! 

myst

ISTR that loading more light sets in P5 just caused the existing lights to be turned off.

The best thing to try is using ockham's LightPanel script to assist in turning them all on again or adjusting intensity values.
If the total number your ending up with isn't to large then going through them by hand might not be too difficult (nor would saving a combined set and editing the LT2 file).

OK, here's an idea.  Load the first light set.  Select the lights, one at a time, and choose Edit, Copy.  Open a notepad file and choose Edit, Paste.  That will record of the light properties.  Continue until you have all of your lights recorded into the notepad file.

Load the second light set and add enough lights to cover your first set.  Say there were three lights in your first set, add three lights to your second light set.  Carefully copy light information for the first light in your notepad file, select the fourth light in your scene and choose Edit, Paste.  That should change your second set, fourth light, to the first light of your first set ...

Continue until you've gone through your notepad file.

I tried this with the default lights in Poser, copied the first light into notepad, selected the text from notepad and pasted it to the second Poser light and now have two lights with the same properties ...

Best Wishes,
Rªnce

@ Rance01,

That sounds like a good method, especially when there are only a few lights in one set. I think there could be some special circumstances where it falls down. I have seen light sets that use Point At to piont one or more lights at a body part, the Point At target would not be captured in this method, so unless you where aware it existed it might get left out. Some shader node stuff, eg using a light to project an image, could be lost. But I'm playing devils advocate, I think it sounds like a very good method in most cases.

@ nruddock,

Turning the lights back on should be fine when each light has a diffrent internal name or number. There is a problem though when a light in the first set is named "spotLight 1" and a light in the second set in also named "spotLight 1", in that case applying the second set will just reset "spotLight 1", instead of adding a new light. It's very common for diffrent light sets to use the same internal names, the default Poser names "spotLight 1", "spotLight 2" etc, so this is a problem that's going to come up a lot. As you say the LightPanel could be usefull for turning down the intensity as more lights are added.

It has been a while since I fired up P5, so I'm probably too used to P6/P7 behaviour (which is probably a good thing).

sounds painfull