Is it possible to have an omni light in poser? A light that casts light in all directions? This would be much easier than 10 spot lights from a lamp/candle/fire/whatever.

As far as I have been able to determine, no. The closest you can get to this in Poser is using multiple spotlights. I once asked ockham about the possibility of a python script (for Pro Pack and P5 users) that would make any selected item in your scene behave as if it were a light source - much the same as the ball prop with a bunch of spot slights positioned around it so that it radiates light out in all directions, but without the need for manually loading and positioning all those spots. I think he did manage to come up with a script that does something very similar to this, if not exactly the same as I was thinking, which makes it easier to add these omni light sources to your scene. He is a really clever fellow and I am constantly amazed at what he keeps coming up with in the way of these python scripts.

Two spotlights with the opening angles set to 180 degrees are quite close to one omni with 360 degrees.

It looks like ockham has a lightball python script. http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Topsectionid=0&Form.SortOrder=UserName&Start=1&Form.Contrib=ockham I'll also try the two 180 degree spot lights. It takes too long to render 18 some spot lights :)

Hi stewer, I will have to try that one. Thanks. :O)

Oh wow! That's what I was looking for. And only two lights?! =)

Very cool, and the renders really help. Thanks a bunch!

BTW, once you got the lights in the right positions, make one the parent of the other - makes moving them much easier.

The max I can enter for the Angle start and End is 160. Is that what you had in mind? Or is there another way to modify the light's angle start and end?

You need to change the limits - double-click the parm dial, that'll show you the settings for the limits.

Oooooh! I didn't know you could do that.

Awesome stuff! You know, I was always confused by the limit on angle being 160 degrees. Never occurred to me it was a limit just like a character joint......DUH! THanks Stewer! This opens a whole new ballgame! Balander, Nifty render! Now, can we get Ockham to write another Python for this? I know hiw Python for Gloabal lights will allow you to create any number of them without removing your existing lights. Hmmmm......

Must be a Poser 5 thing. This sort of two light "omni" does not work well in Poser 4 :( Good find Stewer!

I dunno.. got it to work fine in Poser 4 PP... just that the ground keeps coming up black.. but thats not a prob... thanks for the tip!

It works great in Poser 5, but in ProPack the limits are hard coded at 160 degrees - even if you change them to 180, they snap back to 160. At least that is my experience.

uh uh.. not so... holding at 180 here after adjusting the limits set on the lights.. gonna try pushing that to 360... you never know it may actually work...

okies.. you can set the limits to 360... tho straaaaange things happen..

Re post #17: "...ground keeps coming up black.. but thats not a prob..." well it is IMHO, it means it is not a good approximation of an omni light in P4. Re post #18: Ronstuff, limits are not hard coded at 160, the limits are "forced" you can correct this in the library file by changing the "forceLimits 4" lines to "forceLimits 0".

...you use the ground plane? me don't, so no prob :)

No offense to Ockham, but try Les Bentley's OmniLights (the file is in Free Stuff - go to his page and search through his Free Stuff contributions). I was unable to make Ockhams Omnilights work (even with his fixes - perhaps I missed something), but Les Bentleys works great! Can anyone explain the P5 node, New Node > Lighting > Diffuse > probeLight? How does this work? Whats it for?

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/probelight.html

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=695667

That's fantastic Balandar, great job!