is there a way to make the shape of the area light round or ovoid?

I know it seems silly, but it would be nice to have for some of my shots. I'd like the option to be able to hide an area light in a source that's round.

I'm very new to the whole "area" light thing and superfly - so I'm sure it's a silly question.

thanks,

sturkwurk

Nope, you can't change the shape of the area light.  However, you can use a reshaped primitive object to emit light.  If the primitive has separate material zones then you can create just one side to emit light, otherwise you will need to get creative.

just to add to what hborre has said about mesh lights: Area lights ARE mesh lights in that they work exactly the same. When Poser 11 first came out I did a bunch of tests with area lights and square mesh lights of the same size. exact same lighting results in the render from either. They are interchangeable when you are using a square. The advantage of area lights is they show up in your lights list but mesh lights can be any object you want to emit light. I sometimes use light fixtures in room props as light sources or use a torus as a ring light attached to a camera.

Here is a bathroom prop that I turned the light fixtures into mesh lights to get a more real lighting.

oh, cool! Thanks

I guess I'm used to firefly's ambient lights not really having the punch I needed and causing the shadow artifacts. 

Good to know!

are there direct corresponding values between a mesh emitter and the area lights?

I can't remember. It wasn't hard to get them to look the same but I don't think it matters all that much.Just load up a mesh and make it emit light and crank up the value till it lights the scene the way you like/think it should look. I don't do any of that scientific numbers thing when setting up my lights. I just use the Poser root to make things simple and Superfly will calculate the inverse square for the light.

thank you, Ghostship2 - it was YOUR material sets that pushed me to finally get into superfly! 
I hope you have more sets coming.

Yes. My hair shader system is coming soon. Thank you!

@ ghostship2: looking forward to that.

@hborre Thanks! It just went to beta testers last week

Yes. My hair shader system is coming soon. Thank you!

Thanks!

Woooow 😍😍😍

One proviso...

There seems a hard-limit to emission per unit area when using 'super-ambient'. Unlike a 'real' Poser light, you can't just dial brighter and brighter. It 'maxes out'.

This is not a problem foe eg big ceiling light panels, but may be a nuisance for slim 'strip lights' and is a pain if scene's 'luminaires' are but a few pendant bulbs or wall sconces.

I've tried sub-division, the unit-area limit still applies. I've resorted to 'hiding' eg point-source lights inside bulbs. Strip-lights are harder...

FWIW, this unit-area limit seems un-documented...

Just as a reminder: using Cycles nodes, everything can be turned into a light emitter, you can even control the temperature and the power.
Here an example using a lollipop:

-you can see the settings for the heart, while the stick is using "Daylight".

Oh and using the BrightContrast, the emitted light remains white.

Why does part of that shader look familiar to me?

And if you want to attenuate the Inverse Square for the emission, use a LightFalloff node and connect the Quadratic channel to the Emission node Strength.

Why does part of that shader look familiar to me?

And if you want to attenuate the Inverse Square for the emission, use a LightFalloff node and connect the Quadratic channel to the Emission node Strength.

Thank you for the information about the LightFalloff.

Yeah, that was me, and you're very welcome.

Yeah, that was me, and you're very welcome.

NikKelly posted at 7:14 AM Sat, 12 March 2022 - #4435810

One proviso...

There seems a hard-limit to emission per unit area when using 'super-ambient'. Unlike a 'real' Poser light, you can't just dial brighter and brighter. It 'maxes out'.

This is not a problem foe eg big ceiling light panels, but may be a nuisance for slim 'strip lights' and is a pain if scene's 'luminaires' are but a few pendant bulbs or wall sconces.

I've tried sub-division, the unit-area limit still applies. I've resorted to 'hiding' eg point-source lights inside bulbs. Strip-lights are harder...

FWIW, this unit-area limit seems un-documented...

Yes, the smaller the object, the less light it throws out. However, I'm not seeing any issues with cranking the ambient level to 100,000 on a 2.5% size sphere and lighting the entire room with that.

I set the ambient to 200,000. the sphere is at 2.5% size

One proviso...

There seems a hard-limit to emission per unit area when using 'super-ambient'. Unlike a 'real' Poser light, you can't just dial brighter and brighter. It 'maxes out'.

This is not a problem foe eg big ceiling light panels, but may be a nuisance for slim 'strip lights' and is a pain if scene's 'luminaires' are but a few pendant bulbs or wall sconces.

I've tried sub-division, the unit-area limit still applies. I've resorted to 'hiding' eg point-source lights inside bulbs. Strip-lights are harder...

FWIW, this unit-area limit seems un-documented...

I've dialled 'super ambient' to ~100+, but not beyond ~1k, certainly never as far as the 200k above...

Thank you, I'll investigate.

Props, primitives, box (box_1), Material room, Advanced, ambient colour white, ambient value ~9 is brightest will go as-is.

I took it up in x10 stages to umpteen millions, did not become brighter.

There's no obvious limit to setting (eg per 'displacement'), it just will not shine any brighter. Which is silly, yes ?

Which Material Room node(s) are being used for this testing in Superfly?  I am seeing a huge discrepancy between ambient lighting using the PoserSurface and the proper emission node for Cycles.

Yes. My hair shader system is coming soon. Thank you!

@ Believable3D: if you're using P12, you can use the PrincipledHairBsdf node for strand hair.

I hate to admit it - but I don't understand very much of this, and yeah, I've been using poser for a long time.

I need simplicity - click - the thing now casts light - slide "this" to make it brighter - kind of stuff.

just like Ghostship2's materials - click - it's silver! and move on to making my image :)

sturkwurk posted at 8:01 AM Sun, 13 March 2022 - #4435853

I hate to admit it - but I don't understand very much of this, and yeah, I've been using poser for a long time.

I need simplicity - click - the thing now casts light - slide "this" to make it brighter - kind of stuff.

just like Ghostship2's materials - click - it's silver! and move on to making my image :)

Plugging the blackbody node into the the color helps it mimic the color of real world lights. The extra nodes in Y-phil's example are sample numbers to use for different light sources. You don't need those if you don't want. You can also look it up online. The lightfalloff node in hborre's example helps the light not look flat. I think it's more needed if the light source is going to show, but I could be wrong.

The fact that the intensity of light decreases with distance is consistent with reality, that's why Poser's spots and point lights have this setting. Area light don't have it as they mimic this. Inifinite light "seems" to keep its intensity, as even the Earth'd diameter is nothing compared to the distance Sun-Earth.
The hborre's mat setting is the one that is the best.

That being said, it's relatively easy to use: setup the node as shown above, select the middle ones, right clic-> collapse to compound node:

Afterward, your setup will look like this

And from a scene like this:

You'll get this:

That's weird: My post + pic didn't appear. Must have timed-out...

Okay, thank you, thank you, I got 'Emission' to work. 

First part of problem was it took me best part of an hour to find the referenced nodes. Needs alphabetical lists, directory and map.

Second, only lit at render.

Upside, I've learned something today.

Downside, I'm going to be plagued by umpteen revenant trial-renders that won't stay deleted...

Again, thank you.

Downside, I'm going to be plagued by umpteen revenant trial-renders that won't stay deleted...

🤣🤣

This may be a friend, ready to help you with your... "ghosts" 😁

That's weird: My post + pic didn't appear. Must have timed-out...

Okay, thank you, thank you, I got 'Emission' to work. 

First part of problem was it took me best part of an hour to find the referenced nodes. Needs alphabetical lists, directory and map.

Second, only lit at render.

Upside, I've learned something today.

Downside, I'm going to be plagued by umpteen revenant trial-renders that won't stay deleted...

Again, thank you.

ghostship2 posted at 3:15 PM Fri, 11 March 2022 - #4435790

Yes. My hair shader system is coming soon. Thank you!

Wow. Sorry to go off-topic, but I take it this shader for modelled hair, rather than hair room strand-based hair?

I'm using the Poser root and it is set to ambient ONLY. Diffuse, spec and all other sections of it are set to 0.

in this example the torus ambient is set to 50. It's fairly close to her face and parented to the face camera.

My apologies: If I've had a broken night, stuff falls through the cracks.

I may not remember asking, never mind getting a nice reply...

This time, I've written myself a tutorial...

I have a free light set here at Rendo that has some work lights in it. Work lights only light the preview so you can work on your scene. They do not light anything when you hit render.

I've noticed that the larger the area light or ambient surface is the more grain in render.

I'll be waiting for that hair shader, young man

I'll be waiting for that hair shader, young man

Beautiful picture! 😁

I'll be waiting for that hair shader, young man

🤣🤣🤣