Hi folks,

I've been working on a scene which sees a 3D 'grid' placed behind my subject (Annie) and a 'gel' light with a tiled grid image shone onto it from the front. Hard to explain, so please see the WIP render.

Basically, what I would like to know is: Is there any way I can have the light stay constant laterally and vertically? At the moment, as you can see, the light grid spreads out (realistically) as its distance increases from the centre point. I would like for this light to remain constantly aligned with the grid to give the best effect.

As it stands, I am very happy with how it has turned out in every other way, it's just this one problem that will either make me produce a set from this or scrap it entirely.

So, folks, can someone assist, please? :)

Cheers,

Glen.

P.S. This is an untouched raw render. Yes, Annie is actually all greyscale, lol!

Without having Poser to hand at the moment, moving the light further away from her and increasing the brightness to make up for it, might give you a nicer, more even "spread" to the light that falls upon her ;-)

This is easy. Use a spot light, not infinite or other type, for your gel light.

Now - you MUST get this part right. You need the spot light to be EXACTLY aligned with your camera.

I suggest this approach.

Position the Dolly camera at 0, 0, 0 with all rotations set to 0. Position the Gel Spot light at 0, 0, 0 with all rotations set to 0. Parent the Gel Spot light to the Dolly camera.

Now - look through the dolly camera. You can move it wherever you want. No matter where it is, the grid will project evenly in all directions at all distances.

The alignment of light and camera is so perfect that the figure looks transparent, instead of "lit".

If you want to separate the figure just a bit, move the light just a little. Here I zTranslated the light by 6 inches. It's just enough to deregister the figure and reveal that it's grid lighting.

Thank you for your help with this. I'm such a dunce! I made another post because I thought this had been ignored (still no notifications, Rendo!) and couldn't find it. That is, of course, until I looked through my forum stats and found it that way! I keep forgetting to do that!

I'll give this a bash and let you know how I get on. This topic is now bookmarked so I can easily find it again. Thanks a million! :D

Glen.

Is there any way of being able to see the effect of a gel light in the preview, instead of tweaking a tiny amount and then rendering? The light has to be perfectly aligned with the grid object and doing it 'blind' is a nightmare. I'm thinking that numbers might be involved and I am horrendous with numbers. What I mean is, I suspect that with the light at a distance of --- away from the object along the z axis, the scale of the light's image would need to be --- and so on. I don't know, this is something I could do easily with a projector in real life, I'm sure, lol!

Hi again,

I'm still getting the same problem but I think I've realised the misunderstanding here. Let me explain further: My issue relates to the light on the grid object, not to the light on Annie. I want the light to perfectly align with the grid object. If you look at the background just above Annie's head, you'll see that the light and grid object are pretty close to being perfectly aligned, however, if you look further away either side or lower, you'll notice that the light falls away from the grid object.

Once the light is perfectly aligned, I'll lock it so it doesn't move, then I can get on with posing Annie in the scene. The way the light interacts with Annie's body is the desired effect of this project.

I'm thinking there needs to be a method of projecting a light from a large area as opposed to from a point, which is what the light is, basically. I think the light is radiating out from a central point and distorting the image towards the edges.

Perhaps if I sent someone the grid object and light gel, they might be able to take a look for me, please? I'd be very grateful! Sorry for the confusion but thanks again for your help!

Hi folks,

I don't like to bump posts, but the problem still plagues me. Does anyone have a recommendation, please? :/

You can of course make the light, the grid and the camera one group, or just keep them as they are and move Annie and whatever shebsits or stands on instead?

Thank you for your reply. I still think I'm failing to get across the problem I'm facing, I think either I'm not describing it properly or people simply aren't seeing it.

The background object is a grid which has been stretched along the z-axis to form lots of small, square tunnels. The vertical pieces of this grid are set further outwards than the horizontal pieces, this is deliberate and the effect this has on the lighting is welcomed.

The problem I'm having is in relation to the falloff of the light, the fact that the light itself is not projecting the grid image in a perfect manner. The grid image is stretching from left to right and from top to bottom in such a way as it does not fit the grid object behind it.

In this image, I have marked the problem areas in red and the area where the light interacts with the grid correctly in green. As you should be able to see, the areas towards the edges of the image show the light failing to line up with the grid object. The light should cast a thin grid over the surface of the grid object and match it in placement across the entire image. Please completely ignore Annie in this, the problem only relates to the grid light and the grid object.

What seems to be happening is that the light is projecting the image in somewhat of a spherical fashion, as opposed to projecting it straight.

Could I send someone the scene to take a look at, minus Annie, just with the grid light and grid object, please?

Thanks for your patience, folks, and apologies if I wasn't being clear enough. If I'm still not making it clear, I've no idea what else to say. :)

Glen.

In an effort to make it even clearer: It's as if the grid light is being projected through a fisheye lens. The grid light is becoming distorted at the edges. This might well be realistic, but I'm looking to create a specific effect here.

Cheers,

Glen.

So if I understand what you want is to light the center section of each bar in the center and have a darker outside, is this correct? If so then you are going to have a lot of math to do to make each light beam appear at the proper location and change the grid map to account for the offset needed for the bars further from center. OR curve the backdrop to keep the light the same distance away. Another way would be to create a material zone on each bar down the center so that you can make it a light emitter that way the light will always be coming from where you want it to appear. Since the light does not line up on the girl to keep it in line with the grid adding the extra mat zone would probably be the most accurate way to get the look you are after.

Hi, Richard60,

Thanks for your reply. Yes, I believe it's likely that a lot of calculations will be involved, which is what I'm worried about. I see your thinking with making the grid object a light emitter, but I already came up with, then dismissed that a while back, due to the ideas I have for this set, which would mean that it all has to be one light.

I would have hoped that there would be some kind of setting for the lights like there is for the cameras. If you consider that the projection appears almost as though it has been projected through a lens, distorting much like the way that an image would distort through a camera, I would have thought that there would be a 'focal length' adjustment within the light or something. I need some way of making the light project more like a 2D elevation, in the same way as the elevation cameras in Poser do, with no lens effects.

Of course, this could just be a result of the grid light image being a fraction larger than the grid object, but this is where numbers would definitely help, as the lack of a real-time preview makes tweaking a nightmare.

Ok, I've given up on this.

The background object and tiling grid texture are available to anyone who would be kind enough to get this working for me, please let me know where to send them to. Aside from that, this project is scrapped, which is a shame because it had so much promise. All because of stupid bloody numbers!