Hi, two questions about point lights.

#1 - can you bring in sphere objs and make them into lights?

#2 - can you make a prop that has a light attached to it? Example, I make a lightbulb and I want a point light in it to light the area. I want to be able to click on the prop in the prop folder and have it load with the light.

I tried making ambient glow but then I had to change the material around it with a gather node. That didn't work when you go back to regular lights as those surfaces are then too bright.

Thanks

Please specify which Poser version you are using. The current iteration has introduced mesh area lighting, however, you mentioned gather nodes which are virtually unnecessary with IDL rendering.

Answering your last question first, yes, you can parent a prop to a light or a light to a prop, assuming those lights are either a spotlight or point light. Trying to parent a diffuse light or infinite light to a prop is fairly pointless. You can't see a infinite or diffuse light in a scene and even if you could, it's like trying to parent the sun to a ball on earth. You're never going to move the ball far enough to be able to tell.

As for question #1. Again, yes, sorta. You can make ANY prop give off ambient light in a scene. The environment sphere prop in Poser's primitives folder is essentially a ginormous ball prop with normals reversed. It can be used to light a scene without any lights in it, as long as you have IDL turned on.

If you have P9/Pro2012 SR3.2 or later, a glowing sphere will be pretty easy. In the Firefly render settings, engage indirect lighting, and set both irradiance caching and indirect light quality to about 67%. If you have P11, it's even better and easier with Superfly.

The gather node is a vestige from P5; the indirect diffuse lighting (IDL) introduced in P8/Pro 2010 made it obsolete. The gather node is slow to render, and the results are crude.

You may want to scan this thread; it has a glowing cube prop. If your version of Poser has subdivision, you could just subdivide that cube (and subdivide its unseen emitter cube) 3-4 times.

I used 2 cylinders and made them lights emitters, and added ambient node with white colour. The cylinder props became lights. This scene rendered using FireFly and using IDL. No Poser Lights in the scene.Poser Pro 11 SR5 64-bit.

@EClark1894 While you are correct that there is no way to parent an infinite light, there is an easy way. I use it with a skydome to cast more realistic shadows. Step 1: create a point light and match it to the sun on the skydome Step 2: parent the point light to the skydome Step 3: go to the lights properties and change the light to infinite

now when you rotate the skydome, the infinite light will rotate with it.

Bill

That's a great idea, WillyB53! ^^

Sorry I'm late. Family life got in my way for a few days.

Thanks for all the great tips. I have PP2014. I tried saving my prop with a point light but I never got the option anywhere. I will try parenting it first. I need something that will load in with a light and not change the light setup in the scene or have to change render settings when I do. This is a more accurate representation of my question.

Changing an obj into a light was a thought from Vue (I think it was Vue...been a while). In Vue you could select a figure or object in the scene and replace it or change it into something else. Am I remembering right? Think that's what I was asking for in Poser.

The gather node was something I came across while looking for a solution. It does indeed render VERY slowly...just not viable.

Seachnasaigh, was there suppose to be a link in your thread? I wasn't sure which thread you meant.

What I'm going to do is try the ambient spheres but make sure that I turn on IDL. Don't think it was when I tried the first time so none of the other surfaces in the scene reflected the glow. If I can get that working it could solve my problem. Thanks everyone!

Oooops, looks like it got lost. Thread link

I posted a downloadable P9+ glow cube; it's actually one visible cube and a second unseen cube which does the lightcasting. It will work for Pro 2014. Just subdivide it 3 or 4 times (both cubes), and it will approximate a sphere.

Thanks, I'll be interested to take a peek at it.

willyb53 posted at 1:38PM Fri, 19 August 2016 - #4280210

@EClark1894 While you are correct that there is no way to parent an infinite light, there is an easy way. I use it with a skydome to cast more realistic shadows. Step 1: create a point light and match it to the sun on the skydome Step 2: parent the point light to the skydome Step 3: go to the lights properties and change the light to infinite

now when you rotate the skydome, the infinite light will rotate with it.

Bill

F***ing Awesome! I always use an infinite light with skydome on outdoor scenes but always have to relocate the light if I rotate the sky. Thank you!