I had an idea to make a simple string of lights, like to go around a Christmas tree.  I created a string of spheres in a 6 ring helix in Hexagon.  It was easy.  But now I'd like to add a point light with a brightness value of 1 or so to each one.  Not so easy.  Can you think of an easy way to position a point light at each sphere?  I exported the group as a 3ds file so all of the spheres would import individually.  I could replace each one with a point light one by one (what a pain).  I also can convert it to an area light.  Not quite what I'm after I'm afraid.  I could play with the latter to see if it would do but I thought I would ask for a solution for what I really want.  Too bad you can't use lights as ecosystems.  That would be closer to a solution.

Try "Replace by..." under the edit tab. You should be able to select all the objects at once and replace it with e.g. pointlights.
Lars "bigbraader"

I did that but it just replaced the many spheres with one light.  However I think converting to an area light may be good enough.  I'll have to experiment with this more later.  At the moment I'm playing with an idea in Carrara.

Hmm, did you make sure that spheres were not grouped together? If I do this (select all spheres and then use the "replace by command") with a set of replicated spheres that are NOT grouped together, I get each individual sphere replaced by a point light. If they are grouped, I get one light as I would expect because in agroup they count as one object. This is in Vue 9 and 8.5 Infinite.

Ciao
TD

Okay that worked.  I must have had them grouped the first time.  However even at power 1 the light is overpowering.  I will have to play with this to get it to look right.

Quote - Okay that worked.  I must have had them grouped the first time.  However even at power 1 the light is overpowering.  I will have to play with this to get it to look right.

There are several things you can do for the overpowering lights:

• reduce power below 1 by typing in the value.

• darken the color

• use a custom fall-off filter to reduce light overlap

• scale up the scene

Ciao

TD