Hi! Thanks for your comments on my Light Studio. Here are some features of the software:

• Poser Light studio will work with P4 and P5
• You can set the number of "Horizontal arcs" and "Vertical arcs" subdividing your sphere. For example, a value of 5 and 5, mean a sphere of 5x5=25 ligths. This, of course, reflects to the number of "picking color points" in the color map image.
• You can set all the standard poser light values such as the angle, the distance, the intensity, the map size and the shadow strength
• If you don't want to use a color map, you can globally choose a color for your lights
• You can decide a name pattern for all the lights in your sphere. This is helpful when you merge several lights into one light set
• You can define in detail the geometry of the sphere. This means the radius of the sphere and the starting and ending angle. With this values, you can create full spheres or also arcs of spheres.
• You can decide to "revert the normal" of the lights to make them pointing "outside" of the sphere. With this feature, you can create realistic light sources.
• You can use ANY image to be your color map (JPEG, BMP,..)
• Depending on the number of lights, Light studio will map them on the color map as a grid
• You can click and drag individually the light you want to move, to set it over the position you desire
• You can double click over the light to change the color, overriding the one picked from the color map
• I will give for free the app in a beta version in a few days to beta testers
• To become a beta tester, just ask me in this forum !
• The Full version will be in Renderosity Marketplace

If you have any comment or suggestions, you are welcome to propose here.

Bye.

Another suggestion/question for you postapulcino. Will it be possible to add clusters or concentrations of lights to the e.g. 5x5 array, if one wanted to simulate a sun or other intensly bright light source in addition to the HDRI. Regards STORM

"- You can click and drag individually the light you want to move, to set it over the position you desire" My question above is in addition to the described feature. I.E. add a cluster to an array without changing (by dragging) the 5x5 array. Regards STORM

Can you make some (graphical) examples of the results of adding a cluster on the sphere?

Can you post some renders ?

This is what I mean. The ability to add clusters of lights in the app in order to simulate suns etc without changing the e.g. 5x5 array. Can you make this possible?

Thanks
STORM

Great idea, STORM! I'm starting NOW to make this possible.. Thanks! Postapulcino

If you can do this it will add much greater versatility to the app. The ability to add ONE or MORE individual lights or clusters of lights to the HDRI array in the app window will provide a more complete lighting solution. Well done, this is looking very, very interesting. Regards STORM

Ok, I'm adding the feature of creating a cluster array for each light. And you'll be able to decide the "radius" and the number of the lights of the cluster. Also, I'm creating a separate window for the color map, to allow fine positioning. Thanks again for the idea. I will give you a free copy of the full version of the app! Postapulcino.

Wow. Thanks postapulcino. You are very generous. I would be more than happy to beta test this for you. I have P4 and P5, OS Win 2K Pro SR3, AMD XP2000, 1.5 Gigs DDR EEC Ram. Regards STORM

Great work, Postapulcino - I'm beginning to think this might actually be just what we have needed all along, especially if you implement Storm's suggestion which is brilliant (pun intended :-) HDRI is all fine in theory, but what a lot of them miss is that ability to add a final Kick or hotspot to a scene - without it many scenes might as well have been shot through gauze or post-processed with gausian blur to achieve a similar result in a lot less time.

I would love to betatest this. I am usually very VERY bad with Poser's lights, so I recon if I can make this work, EVERYBODY can L

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Can I be a beta tester? If there is anything I like it is help with lighting! Alex

This is very cool. I think it will be a much-needed accessory. Thanks postapulcino!

I have Poser4 and aTri star computer, 1gig memoey, Poser is on my second hard drive 80 what ever? :O) anyway it's a great pc. I'm so dumb at lights, I need to be a beta tester.

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I would love to beta this! I have both P4 and P5, and am on an Athlon 1600 with 384 meg and Windows XP Pro

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postapulcino : can you explain some more about the shadowing ? As well as post some samples. Say I want a out side shadow do i only have one or a whole bunch of shadows ? Does your program allow global dimming / brightening ? What I mean is if i need the overall light to be a bit brighter or I need to turn it down a bit is there one slider to do this ? Like whats on my wall in my house . I loved this idea when it can up in bryce and I became a big fan of it .

Did it! Now light studio has the ability to manage clusters! As you can see in the picture, it's possibile to create a cluster of a variable radius and light number associated to the light!

And this picture is how it looks in Poser. There are three "suns" just for this example! Please, continue to post you opinion, suggestions and dubts! I will try to answer to everybody! Postapulcino

I would like to beta test this, too. Although it looks like you might already have enough Althons. I have P4, PPP, P5. My Pc has an Althon XP 1800 with 1 GB of RAM, nVidia graphics card. This looks very cool!

I'd like to help test this as well. P5 with Athlon 2000, 512 ram, running XP. I have a question about shadows. From the interface pics, it looks like shadow value, map size, etc. are the same throughout all the lights. Will we be able to disperse shadows across the lights, ie-every other light, or like in your new cluster feature, say turn on shadows for only clusters, or only non-cluster lights? This does look like quite an interesting program. How about a couple rendered images, one with your lights, and one with a more standard light set?

Would love to beta test this in animations. P4 and P5; PIII 1300; Win XP home, only 380mb RAM Looks great!!! Cheers Masha

Well if nothing else you have just made the creation of global lighting sets a simple one or two click task. That alone deserves praise and, in fact, should be a major marketing advantage for you.
However, the potential of this app is much greater. The ability to match lighting sets to high definition light image maps on the basis of a rectangular template (on the fly) is going to be huge time saver.
If I can make one more general suggestion. Take as many of the ideas that are hitting you seriously and try and build them into the app. If you are working in Python most of them are feasible.
You are now looking at a total replacement of the Poser Lighting Interface with one that is much faster and user friendly. This is one serious development. If CL were still on the go they should be talking to you. But since they are not, steer your own course.
Daz might be more interested in the future or even now. Are Daz interested in using Python in Daz Studio?
Keep talking to the Forums here and elsewhere about this. Your speedy ability to respond to ideas and further the app in real-time is a major asset. This app can go places. This is going to be a big commercial item unless I am totally wrong.

Good Luck and
Regards
STORM

Just sparking off my enthusiasm in the above post. Would it be possible to open existing Global Lighting arrays in this app and use the app's resources to edit them? This would mean converting the existing spherical, or other, lighting array from for instance Daz Complex Global lights onto a neutral image map which preseved the light colours and values and possibly converted them to background colours on the map (Possible?). In other words the light colours in the existing Global array create the background lighting image map? This would finalise the ability of your app to completely replace the Poser interface. Maybe it is a crazy idea but who knows! Regards STORM

To STORM: Your idea is great but my feeling is that it will work only with existing spherical light array. If it's spherical, I can import it into Light Studio and write some code to "convert" the lights into background colours on the map. But, if it's not spherical, I can't imagine the results! So, what's about the light set you have in mind? For example the ones from DAZ? Are they spherical? In general, the global light set, are they spherical? Is there a rule, about your experience? to GraphicFoxx: I'm adding the possibility to edit the light values for each light. So you'll be able to set the shadow map, for example, different for each light. to everybody: About the rendered images, I need your help! I'm a software engineer, and only a begineer with poser. I will give the software to the beta testers and THEY will make the images! Bye! Postapulcino

Hi postapulcino

Most Global lights sets I have checked are spherical arrays. Essentially they are arrays of infinite lights.
Some time ago I asked ockham to write two python scripts to help people edit global lighting sets (which he very kindly made available for free). They are:

1. Convert all spotlights to infinite lights.
2. Convert all infinite lights to spotlights.

It means when you have a global lighting set it converts them back to spots giving a spherical layout and visa-versa.

Here is a link to them:
http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1057447

I think they are also in freestuff.

Daz global lights are essentially the same with one exception. Some of them have a spherical infinite light array with a few spotlights included. But this presents no problem as the spots can be deleted, the infinite lights converted to a spotlight spherical array, edited, converted back to infinite lights and the deleted spots rebuilt by hand.

So this should then be possible for those using Pro-pak and Poser 5 which can use Python.

One additional note: Many light sets have the properties of the lights changed from visible to hidden. This can be easily changed by going into the hierarchy editor, and putting an x in the show lights box. Each light can then be made visible by clicking on it.

Hope this helps

Regards
STORM

Looks fantastic Don't know if it's been asked but is there a quick way to delete all those lights though? and i would love to test it as well

Stormrage the link I gave above to ockhams python script will do this for you. The zip contains the following scripts: AllLightsInfinite.py AllLightsLocal.py AllLightsSpot.py DeleteLights.py Hope this helps. Regards STORM

There also two other scripts in Freestuff (which I have not tested) which might do the job as well. Under the Propak section look for the "Clean up lights - another python script" and "Reset Lights - a python script" by agiel. Regards STORM

I would love to betatest it. I'd also like to make a comparison between lightsets generated by this app and my handmade HDRI simulated lightsets. Is it possible to create softshadows easilly in your app? Did you also notice that because of the deformation of the sphere, the lightdensity goes up on the top and bottom of the sphere? I fiddled with it for quite some time to get it right and the only solution was to make the lights at the top less bright (logaritmic function was used) because of the round nature of the sphere. If you don;t do this the lights from the top will be too bright and result in a rather washed out image. Let me know if you want me to test it ;) Bye, SM

In order to distribute the lights evenly (and thats how its done in apps which have inbuilt global illumination functions) you must use the lights at the edges of a platonian solid, like an icosahedron, every thing else does not work. Mungo