Hi,

I made some unattractive lumps in Wings, and then put rather nice textures on them, so I wanted to show them off, therefore I pulled them into Bryce and placed them carefully - then I added a couple of 'fake suns' I created in Bryce using a lot of evenly spaced radials a very long way away from the pointer.

So I used one of these for a frontal beam of light and one lesser one for a backlight.  Then I wanted more light on just one of the items - so I thought, hey, you can exclude things from lights in Bryce - I'll do that then.....

But it didn't work.  The models excluded from the new radial light - are not in fact excluded at all - light still falls on them. 

See image:

As you can see the light is falling onto the cut fruit (as I wanted) but it's also falling onto the back of the other fruit's skin - which I tried to exclude in the light lab for this radial.  Why is it not working? and can I get it to work?  If so, how?

Here the details of the light lab for this radial:

Can anyone help me with this?

Hmmm... maybe try playing with the range slider a bit lower it in incriments and see if that helps. If not, I'm really not sure, I myself haven't had any issues with excluding objects.

One hypothesis of mine is... The objects are touching and Bryce finds it  hard separating them...  Try placing each one way apart...  and clays' suggetion is good..

I'm wondering if the exclusion process is for light coming directly from a light source and perhaps the unwanted light is reflected light from the rear most fruit and is not effected by the setting in light lab.   ????????

I really don't understand the point of Exclude Objects or Include Objects - if it doesn't work at all.

I've ended up having to use 2 spotlights poistioned and sized to exactly cover just the 2 cut surfaces in this scene - at least "ranged" works, cos that helped to limit the cast light to just the cut surfaces.

Clay,

you said you hadn't had any problems with exclude or include - how on earth did you use it then???

(when you said 'play with the range slider' it was already at 5, and casting not enough light on the cut fruit, and too much on the other one, so I've abandoned that, and gone for a spot instead)

Tom271

• I did try moving the rearmost fruit - it had no effect on the light cast by the radial, but at least it gave me room to position a spotlight - but of course now I think it looks funny, as if the cut fruit is balancing in midair - which of course it is... sigh

Skiwillgee,

Is it?  I've no idea.  How would you find out?  Mind you ranging the radial affects how much light is cast on the back of the face down fruit half, does that mean it is or it isn't light reflected off the cut surface?

Is it?  I've no idea.  How would you find out?  Mind you ranging the radial affects how much light is cast on the back of the face down fruit half, does that mean it is or it isn't light reflected off the cut surface?

*First off, I've never played with the exclude light feature. I have always used range to control the light. 

To test my theory:  Use your original settings then move the object that is receiving unwanted light away from the cut fruit or simply swap positions with it and the cut fruit.  If the problem follows the cut fruit, it is bounced light giving the problems.  If the light stays with the uncut fruit no matter its location, then the problem is in light lab's handling the feature.

This is not a solution, only a way to narrow down the problem.

I recall.. that the exclude and include work differently for the type of light source you use...   use a different light source and you might see a difference...   a spotlight's properties might not work the way you think using exclude or include functions..

suggestion:

This is a good time to set up an experiment on this...  using different sources...

set up 5 spheres, name a to e, in a circle on the plane put a source light above and center and play with the exclude and include functions..   see the results...

Hmmm, so it works with radials AND spotlights... I wonder why I can't get it to work on these models then...

I'll try it on spheres.

Oh, it works on spheres - Bryce spheres, but not on anything else.  Not my models I mean.

B*mmer!  Oh that's really agravating.

Is a weird one for sure Fran, I just tried it on some imported models and it worked just fine, so I'm not sure what would be causing your issue.

email me the scene maybe and I can take a look at it?

ok so after more testing here's what I discovered, if you have an imported object that has groups, or if your object is grouped the light will not exclude unles the object is ungrouped and each item selected seperatly in the light lab under the exclude list. I never noticed this before, what a pain in the but this can be for sure.

Attached Link: MedlartinesProblem

The models I actually tried to exclude - are all the other items in the scene, not the grouped one.

Pic is light from radial falling on both the sphere and the mouldy fruit at the back sitting cut side down.  Both are selected to be excluded - but only the sphere seems to be obeying.

I can still send you the scene file if you want, but it's 21.9MB, so I'll pop it on my website:

The file can be downloaded from the page at the link, it's the first one on the list.

Lemme know when you get it uploaded Fran and I'll have a look, I'm starting to wonder if it might have something to do with image/pict texures.

I'm not seeing where to download the fle Fran?

I do not think you can have groups excluded from lights at all. Even if you grouped the objects after excluding them. It's a real pain to set up a scene!

Attached Link: MedlartinesProblem

Can you not see it?  It's the very first one in the list, called:

Medlartines.Bryce

Here's the link to the page again: http://www.franontheedge.com/extradownloads.html

dyret,

I'll look at the groups idea - I hadn't grouped the model myself, but I'm wondering if when it was imported, as the cut surface was UV mapped differently to the mouldy skin, Bryce might have treated the model like a group of 2, instead of the single model it's meant to be...?

Clay, can't be images or textures, as I put the same texture (mouldy skin) onto the sphere, and that reacted totally as expected:

Dyret, Clay, Yes I think it is to do with groups, it's incredibly fiddly, and doesn't always work, but now and then if you ungroup an object with more than 1 texture (grouped even if you didn't group it yourself, (Bryce does the grouping on import)).

It does seem to be quite temperamental though, and what's worse, is that once you exclude an object in one light it seems to be excluded in the other light, even if one is a radial and one is a spotlight.

The other two big light sources in this scene are made up of multiple radials grouped together, into 2 groups - one for each 'sun-light' - but they don't seem to be affected by the exclusion in the spot or the radial - is that perhaps because they are themselves grouped?

This seems to be a bug, or at least unfinished work. lol. I really like the new dome lights but for some types of groups they take forever to render if you use to many light sources and I would like to not have the domes cast shadows on the groups. This can not be done it seems.

Sigh. I just like the pics you've done, Fran....

Cheers,

Diolma

Fran Wrote:

Dyret, Clay, Yes I think it is to do with groups, it's incredibly fiddly, and doesn't always work, but now and then if you ungroup an object with more than 1 texture (grouped even if you didn't group it yourself, (Bryce does the grouping on import)).

It does seem to be quite temperamental though, and what's worse, is that once you exclude an object in one light it seems to be excluded in the other light, even if one is a radial and one is a spotlight.

There are a few quirks to the Influence feature that I will clear up for you.

Influence is the technical name for Include/Exclude.

The implementatin of this tool is still primitive, but it is workable and it is consistent.

1. The Interface: The Light Lab cannot see inside of groups. You cannot exclude a group. You must exclude each of the individual parts of that group. This is ideal, because sometimes you dont want every part of a group to be influenced by a particular light. Everything is name based. If you have three items in the scene with the exact same name "sphere 1" and you have it selected as excluded, then all of the items named sphere 1 will be excluded by this particular light source. If you change the name of one of them to sphere 2 it will no longer be excluded unless you udpate the light lab again to consider sphere 2.

Make sure you use short names. If you use long names for objects the Light Lab will get confused.

Fran, in the case of your kumquats, you need to rename the innards as "Flesh," not Satsumahalf_SatsumaHalf_etc. The name is waaaay too long for the light lab to identify the item.

Anyhow, once you rename the fleshy innards to "flesh", you then need to ungroup the fruit so that Flesh can be listed in the Exclude list. Simply select Flesh, and it will exclude the fleshy innards of all of the cut fruit.

1. Labs in Bryce are controlled by .mov files. When a slider is moved one way or another it updates the movie file. If the movie file becomes temporarily corrupt, you can get situations where it appears as though the settings assigned to one light are displayed for other lights as well. Unfortunately, this can lead to oddness as observed by Fran. But I've never had a problem with this. I'd say that in this you are in error, each individual light retains its individual settings for Influence once you get it set up correctly as described above.

What I do know is that the memory dots seem to be shared by all lights in the scene. That is unfortunate.

1. There are a couple of bugs with this feature, but minor and predictable. There is an issue with Volumetrics and with a few other things. But generally the feature is stable.

2. Sometimes odd things can happen when shadow casting is disabled on a material that is itself excluded from the Influence of a given light.

Fran, I downloaded your scene and I am playing with it. The Sunlight you've rigged is cool, but I have another wqay of doing it that I think you will like. I think you should be making much more use of Domes. Domes can give you a better soft shadow than your current grouped radials ideal. i will explain more in time.