Hi,

I am really struggling with this, does anyone know how to create a light that doesnt start off from a cone?

Something like the old air raid lights, or the lights that light up the sky, the light source and light starts off large rather than coming from a cone? 

Any ideas?

Light In The Sky

Cheers
Jon

A better example :-

Searchlight

Jon

I guess for this you would need to create first an object that would have the shape you want, and make it an area light in Vue.

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for the reply, I tried that originaly, the light being emitted just seems to go everywhere, and there seems to be no control over it, and this is what I am having trouble with, plus if you turn the light intensity up the light scatters further, I cannot seem to control the light in anyway whatsover.

Jon

If you want a cylinder, like in the examples, I guess Bruno's way would be the easiest way to go, although in this case you'll likely to find problems of noise (area lights are very noisy, which is the reason I never use them - I have to boost up quality sliders everywhere and render times become impossible).

If you want to fake that, up to a certain degree, maybe you could do like this: you could have a volumetric spot light, with a very small angle, inside a hollow opaque cylinder, so that the cylinder hides the tip of the light cone.

Or... more difficult... you could simulate in Vue the geometry of the real world spot lights, with mirrors and so on, to recreate that light cylinder. That would be a fun exercise, to see how far can Vue reproduce that real world phenomenon.

oops, cross posted.
So you tried the area light and it didn't work. What about a luminous cylinder? Not an area light, but just luminosity effect?

Don't forget also, you can control what the light reacts with in the light property menu!!
This is very useful if you don't want the light reacting to various elements in your scene!

Luminous effect, negative, couldn't control the light and thanks thefixer, I had already tried that, its impossible to create a beam of light as the light scatters immediately :(

I tried putting a spotlight in an empty cylinder, the effect was ok, but I would need a long cylinder to create the desired effect.

I haven't done one of these lights before and assumed it would be an easy effect, but was I ever wrong lol

Jon

you cna boost luminosity over 100% you know :)

pity vue doesn't have a parallel circular light like Bryce! :(

That is one of the rare things I don't like in Vue, the lack of parallel lights, one should be at least able to use lights with a tapered cone! sigh
And Bryce has it! double sigh ^_-

Maybe next year?!

I want vray for vue.

I probably wouldn't use an area light, as they take serious render time. I'd try using a cylinder, or modified cone with a boolean subtraction at it's apex. Then set the luminosity to 100 or higher and add a bit of glow. That should render much faster. HTH.

Thanks for the info, I will give it a try and see what happens :) 

Jon

The torus is 900 meters tall, 6 meters in diameter. The point light is 890 meters buried inside the torus. Maybe not very practical to include in a scene but I think it's doable, with some tricks. Is this close enough to what you want?

Hey Rutra,

The effect is what I am looking for, however its to go in a lighthouse, and there lies my problem, the light in a lighthouse is not very wide at all. Hence my problem :) 

Cheers
Jon

I see...
Well, in this case I would make two renders, one with the big torus and the light and one without any of those and then stitch them together in some image editing tool. That works very well for a static scene but if you want to do an animation, then it's a problem...

Hi,

No its not an animation and I might have to do what you suggested, just thought it was such a basic thing to do and a basic feature, hopefully next version of Vue will have some way to do it.

Jon

Is this what you're looking to do?

Searchlight in Vue

If it is I'll post an explanation.

Hey Mark,

Yep thats about it mate :)

So explain your magic lol

Jon

Here you go:  http://impworks.blogspot.com/2008/09/making-searchlight-in-vue.html

My tutorial on volumetric light also shows how to edit light curves.

_jc  'Art Head Start' e-book: Learn digital art skills $19.95
'Art Head Start.com Free chapter, Vue tutorials, models.

Thanks for the help guys, I am away from home at the moment, will try it out as soon as I get in :)

Jon