Hey thanks. That seems to be working.

One odd thing though:
I preanimated them to open up over time, saved as vob's into my collection, added the collection, then in the material populated them as objects into the ecosystem.

That works, but strangly the animation is backwards. They start off normal then shrink and fold up over time.
I guess I'll have to preanimate them backwards and that should fix it. Strange though, ha.

I'm also just getting all red color so I suppose I'll need to save a few with different colors also.

It's workable though.

//edit:
DOHHH!
I pre-animated them backwards. So it 'is' working right after all. My bad.

Thanks again. :)

Quote - True, Mazak - im watching a render that has another 15 hours on it - (51 lights - 40 of which have flares)

the flares show up as its being rendered.

RedBeenie ---
i think if you change the intensity of the flares frame by frame (or several frames apart), it will then animate - but there are no actual settings to animate it.  Now that you brought it up, i wish there was - that would be neat =D

maybe a thought for Vue's development team =D

Yeah, I agree, I'm dumbfounded as to why I can't animate all data. It's just data. It's just a matter of the programmers giving us the option to animate it, not a big  coding issue. I don't get it.

If they want us to have as much creative control as possible, and thus get more use out of the program, I'd say they should take a very serious look at it. Else, honestly, I can't believe it.

In the meantime I can do it old school stop motion style I guess., hehe.

-Thanks all.

Quote - With Vue Infinite you can influence the light too.

Mazak

Thanks. That's not the effect I was after though.
It seems peculiar that I can't animate any property, after all, it's all just data.
Oh well.

At any rate, if I have to I suppose I can do it frame by frame which may take a while but it might work. :)

-Thanks.

Quote - Just change the flare intensity at a non zero time, and it will animate.

That's what I assumed at first but I can't get it to work.
The only things I seem to be able to keyframe are Orientation, Color and Softness.

Quote - In reference manual (page 506) is a flickering lights animation tutorial.Maybe that help too. Mazak

I had a look at that tutorial. I'm able to animate to Color because that's one of the properties mentioned above that it allows me to.But anything else won't.

Maybe I'm missing something.

-Thanks.