Another thread I'd started had a classroom only lit by the overhead lights turned to mesh lighting and it got me thinking about making mesh lighting. Now first image is the classroom I'd mentioned. This is the ONLY lighting in the image. It is a rough Superfly render.

The second is also rough, but only one mesh light inside created with an open-cylinder/disc combination with the disc converted to a meshlight. It's pumped up to 1000. There is an infinate light from outside as the sun. The tiles again were a test and I know they are WAY too big. These are test renders.

I thought together we could come up with more lighting to share with each other.

A couple hundred mesh lights, paper lanterns (salmon colored) and biolumenescent glass globes (purpley-blue). Also, Tinkerbell (Posette) has a light-emitting aura and pixie dust trail. Aiko 3 in the wee sailboat. No Poser lights.

Sydney G2, as a glowy hologram. All of the fluorescent lights and LEDs in Stonemason's Arc are set to emit light light. No Poser lights needed.

John Hoagland's Viper MkII, with my addon animated IDL emitter set.

Judibug's MyLantern (with an IDL emitter/aura added), and RDNA's Christmas tree (with IDL emitter/aura added). Aiko 3 as TinkerBell.

Roxie as TinkerBell, with the Wurlitzer 1015 jukebox in TinkerBell's Drive-In Cafe'. No Poser lights; all mesh-lit.

Palace Theatre, one of the low-poly background filler buildings for the neighborhood surrounding Tink's Cafe'.

Xanadu!

Nobody does more with mesh lights than seachnasaigh.

I will say one thing. SuperFly uses path tracing. Path tracing sucks for mesh lighting. In a nutshell this means: start from camera, shoot ray to nearest polygon in line with ray, from there maybe to other polygons, finally head straight for a light as the last step, checking shadows (polygons blocking the path) along the way.

If there is no Poser light, then the last "blind" ray to hit a glowing polygon (mesh light) is the only source of light. In such cases, if the light source is tiny relative to the rendered polygons, it will rarely be "found". In that case you get a horribly slow convergence. In one test case, I placed a single physically accurate sized light bulb (glowing sphere) in a physically plausible room of normal dimension (something like 15 feet by 15 feet). Basically what you'd find in millions of bedrooms anywhere. More than 80% of the rendered pixels remained black or close to black even after 7 hours of rendering.

So - mesh lights must be large from the point of view of the lit polygon you render, in order to have a decent chance that the "blind" raytracer locates the glowing mesh light by accident.

I believe that in Cycles (which is NOT Superfly, remember - they share code and some parameters, but not all) there is a way to instruct it to locate glowing polygons as if they were official lights objects. But this doesn't seem to be automatically engaged in SuperFly, or it doesn't exist, and there is certainly no knob or switch to engage it in render settings.

I'll remember the trick of using a point light to draw the attention of sampling rays; thank you, BB.

Pauline - girl on fire

Ceiling lights (fluorescent tubes with eggcrate diffuser); not fully recessed, but they are fully functional as IDL emitters, as is the neon of the wall clock (no Poser lights used in this render).

seachnasaigh posted at 11:46AM Wed, 13 January 2016 - #4248888

I'll remember the trick of using a point light to draw the attention of sampling rays; thank you, BB.

I did not mean it will draw attention to a mesh light in the same area. I mean that I use it INSTEAD of a mesh light, for recessed ceiling lights.

Oh, gotcha. Distinction noted. I'll point out that I get best results in Firefly with a blending, using the mesh light to get more accurate distribution, and a point/spot light to get specular and to avoid IDL splotches. I do a lot of test renders with no Poser lights simply to see what the mesh lights are contributing without the confounding variable of also having Poser lights in the scene.

In Superfly, I just use the mesh lights since there isn't a splotch problem, but I could see that using a point/spot may resolve the render more quickly - because of needing fewer samples to get a clean image.

Here are a couple renders (very rough as the rendertime is long) one mesh light (cylinder/disc) and one figure: Danae's Paris.

The thing I do like about these lights are that the shadows are softer and seem more natural than with conventional lighting. The light reflection on her chin and lip is something I really like. It is too bad that it isn't as realistic as I would like, but it fakes it pretty well for me.

For soft lighting like that use area lights instead which are specifically designed for soft shadows/lighting like that, while still being direct lights.

As for mesh lights, I thought cycles had bi-directional path tracing now, did they not implement it into superfly or is it not present in cycles either ?

Ok ... replaced the mesh light "emit" with an area light in the same position ... primary difference is significant improvement in render time! All other settings remain the same ... except in second render reduced the intensity to 25%.

I wrote a tutorial and showed very clearly that point lights also produce soft shadows. Did you, who speak only of area lights, not read my tutorial?

I specifically talked about you - who keep saying only area lights. Point lights are SPHERES in SuperFly. If you make them big as your physical light prop, they will work exactly as you want.

All three positional light types, point, spot, and area, can product soft shadows. You only have to scale them appropriately. Shadow size is connected entirely, 100%, to the light size (Scale) in SuperFly. Only Infinite lights do not behave this way.

Point Lights

Spot Lights

Area Lights

The full tutorial is here.

http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?103156-Area-lights

ghonma posted at 10:47AM Fri, 15 January 2016 - #4249225

For soft lighting like that use area lights instead which are specifically designed for soft shadows/lighting like that, while still being direct lights.

Actually the spot lights and point lights are also designed for soft shadows. Please please please do not repeat things you heard. SuperFly is not Cycles. Use it, demonstrate how it works, do not claim to know what it's abilities are based on knowledge of Cycles. There's a lot SuperFly and Cycles have in common, but SuperFly is not Cycles.

As for mesh lights, I thought cycles had bi-directional path tracing now, did they not implement it into superfly or is it not present in cycles either ?

SM have either decided not to offer bidir or they started with an older snapshot of Cycles. (Probably the latter but I don' t know)

Are pojnt/spot lights no longer infinitely small light sources in superfly ? Or do you mean that they do the same fake shadow blur as in firefly ?

Note that area lights are good for soft lighting because they blur shadows in a realistic manner, with blurring dependent on geometry of the light (plane, sphere etc) and distance, just like with real lights. Do point/spot lights work this way as well ?

ghonma posted at 1:45PM Fri, 15 January 2016 - #4249285

Are pojnt/spot lights no longer infinitely small light sources in superfly ?

Yes that's what I said.

Point lights are SPHERES in SuperFly.

See - "spheres." Please read the linked thread. I demonstrate all this with more than enough physical evidence to prove it.

Boni and admins. Please note that I did not get an ebot regarding ghonma's reply 4249285 after my post. I have to keep coming back here to manually check EVERY FUCKING THREAD ONE BY ONE BY HAND.

Read my signature. The threat is real.

bb, I am sending the list on e-bots to the admins today ... I believe this is happening to everyone and it is a major issue. I'm behind you 100%.

As for the lighting. I've been lead to believe that non mesh lights (or area lights as well) would not create realistic "AO" effects and therefore was avoiding them and trying to come up with alternatives. That was my primary aversion to Poser's traditional light system. I will revisit your tutorial and get the "real" story.

Remember when offensive language used to be a reason to kick someone off a forum? Isn't there a TOS warning about language in the forums? How about a stern warning at least.

Yes ... warned.

Thank you Boni.

Isn't there a TOS warning about language in the forums?

Actually, as far as I was able to find, no - nothing about offensive words. The word "offensive" doesn't appear in the ToS at all, notwithstanding that if it did, a definition of some kind would be required.

There isn't even a requirement to click the Language advisory box in forum posts - only for gallery images.

There are statements regarding sexually suggestive language, insults to members, and making inflammatory statements. But I can't find anything at all relating or applicable to just using swear words.

Would you mind showing me the relevant ToS section prohibiting swearing? As far as I know it has never been a ToS violation, nor does accidentally forgetting to use the Language advisory result in anything more than "Here let me click that for you." from a mod.

Meanwhile, I'm still not getting ebots on this thread. The only reason I know of those posts from yesterday is because I manually opened every thread until I was sure I was caught up.

I will leave, and while Kazam561 might be happy about it, I don't think Rendo will.

I just reviewed the TOS - there is no warning about language, Kazam561 - you must have it confused with another site.

Thanks - you successfully chased off the #1 authority on lighting in Poser.

In my opinion, neither warnings nor complains about bad behaviour should be posted in the forums.

bantha, well noted. Such things really should be addressed in site-mail ... as this is not directly related to the subject of the thread.

bantha posted at 10:34AM Fri, 29 January 2016 - #4251929

In my opinion, neither warnings nor complains about bad behaviour should be posted in the forums.

Agreed.

It doesn't matter anyway. The software here and lack of action by admins has put me in lurk mode.

I have more to say on this topic, but I'm not going to. Bye.

Great, another PC thread. :( BB. Me and I am sure many others also, would love to read more about this topic. While I am reading my self inside of Blender light tuts like Blender Lights, I know Poser Superfly behave a bit different. Help me (us) to understand how and why :) Thank you.