Okay, I am trying to do this scene and for some reason all of the lights seem to be broken (well msot of them) ... I am using mostly spotlights and a couple of point ligths but the scene is rendering mostly black. I am using P6 and I have 1 infinite light, 3 spotlights and 2 piont lights and the scene renders mostly black. I also have a couple of lights parented to a figure (and they lost the numbers, could they be goofing it up?) I am not inside something (like a wall) but the lights aren't hitting my figure (even though they are pointed at him using the point at funtction (in some case) I have increased the distance end and all kinds of other stuff but I am not getting him lit up. Any ideas? And yes, the ligths are all on. Thanks in advance.

I've had that before :) found I had an object between the light and the figure. I turned shadows off of the intervening object and all was well. John

I had shadows off though, it is really weird.

Wierd, Id add a new light somewhere around y=2,x=0, z=2, probably a point light n see what happens.

I think it was the parented lights that had the same names as the lights I added afterwards that was killing it. So, it seems if you parent the lights, you have to unparent them before adding new ones. Possibly doing a poser quit and open again to clean them out. Silly poser.

You cannot add light to a scenbe that has lights. Any instance of lights added from the library will null existing light the same way as if you were adding a new light set.

Ghost, If your parented lights are saved as part of a figure, you should give them and their shadowcams unique names. I make a lot of figures with parented lights and, unless you take precautions, poser messes them up. Adding new lights being a classic example. If you have a figure with a parented light called LIGHT:1, the instant you add new lights, it will be overwritten by poser. You have to go through the cr2 and rename each instance to 'MyLight' or whatever, and do the same with the cameras. Also, P6 has some bizarre habits with parented lights that previous versions didn't have. Despite having 3 separate menus, it doesn't show parented lights in any of them. You can only select them through the doc window or the hierarchy editor. mac

Actually I use two python scripts that will add lights and don't null out the existing lights (like light sets from the library do). One is by ockham called " AsharaLight" which adds a group of lights parented to a ball (for easy moving). The other is "MegaLights" which is fantastic for adding seperate groups of lights (each group can be moved and adjusted independantly of each other). Can't remember where I got this free script, but the info is..."Copyright 2003 - Cletus D. Payton - 05/10/03". SWAMP(Chuck)

Hey maclean -- thanks for that tip! Does this mean that if a figure has a parented light in a scene, and you save that figure to your library, the parented light is automatically saved with it? like props if you choose "Whole figure?" This could help solve problmes I've had with both loading new light sets (often giving me a mishmash of old and new sets) and the freeze I'm getting when using the "delete lights" scripts.

Yes, if the light's parented to a figure, it'll save to the library with it. Once you have it in the cr2, open it in notepad and search/replace the name to make it unique. The big advantage is that, when you open the figure, it will add the light to the scene without changing the existing lighting at all (assuming the name's unique). The only disadvantage I know of is that if you delete the figure, the light stays in the scene (in poser only), and has to be deleted separately. I have an entire photo studio where the lights are parented to the boom stands, etc, all with unique names, so the user can add a figure with it's own lighting, and keep the room lighting intact. I also use it for things like posable lamps with built-in lights. mac