Hi,

The lighting in this scene is supposed to just be from their cell phones, so it has multiple spots pointed at midle convict character and spider. The jack o lanterns are lit as well as the skele with the candlestick, but those are point lights with a very limited range.

I"ve used spotlights with Firefly and you get a nice conical shape with the end lighting in a nice circle, which you can adjust.

I switched the image to Superfly.

Now, all the light is blown out.

I reduced the settings and can get an image, but it is with barely any Dist End. setting now on 5 to 10 to light the object.5.

I tried using a cone, making semi transparent and it didn't work out.

This is the image after lowering the levels in Photoshop quite a bit.  It's okay, but not great.

I have made light beams in Photoshop that look better than this, and may resort to that.

Any suggestions or is this just a limit of Superfly or my understanding.  (Could be the latter)  Thanks!

My P_11 #1 light is well behaved. Yet, with what seem the same settings, #2~~4 are often too-bright or too-dim depending on spot/infinite/area/point etc. I've reached the 'shrug' stage.

But, yes, even with Superfly, I can dial down spots to a narrow beam with 'cast no shadows' to illuminate eg face under big helmet...

Takes much 'trial & error', much swearing, a lot of test-renders, always wondering if my dozen-plus deleted test-renders will all re-appear next time I open Poser...

You may find you must combine two lights from same direction.

Use the 'Create Atmosphere' button in the material room and choose fog or smoke and you'll see the cone of the spotlight.

That's one way to do it at least.

You can also try plugging an emission node into the alt specular channel on a cone primitive and adjust trasparency, strength, etc.

Is inverse square in use?

Thanks all, just thought is was me. 

I heard create atmosphere eats cpu cycles, but I may try it anyway.

I"m not really great at creating additional nodes. I could probably experiment for a year and still not be satisfied.

Not really sure what "inverse" square is, so probably not. ;)

Thanks everyone. I may play with it for a bit more, but it's not necessarily for publication. It's more for inspiration for a chapter in a new book I'm working on.

Thanks again!

Maxx Powr

If I'm not wrong, spot lights comes with the attenuation parameters set as Constant by default, which means that the light never decreases, pretty much like the Sun's at our level, not really correct for a spot.
That's something you'll have to change on the light's properties window, on the second tab:

Inverse Square is is more real-life like
Don't forget also to play with the start and end angles, to give an effect like a flashlight. Start angle not nul but less than the end angle gives a blurred border.

Wow! Thank you. I'll try that.

putrdude posted at 7:29 PM Fri, 14 April 2023 - #4462208