Digital Art Zone

Happy holidays!
I am working on an animation where a beam of light enters a skylight and moves across the room.
I’m in pretty good shape, the light moves and casts a shadow. It would be nice if I could see the light beam,
and got a lens flare as it moved across. If this is possible in carrara it seems to be to be in the new light settings.
I just upgraded to V8 from 6. I thought I heard mention of God lights? I do see some Halo and lens flare settings in my light,
but I have tried a few and not found a visible beam. I don’t mind going through and checking all the options, but turning that stuff on
really jacks up render times, and trial and error is very very time consuming. Any suggestions?
Thanks
8068

you need something to interrupt the lite to bounce and reflect off of, a atmosphere, dust, fog etc. try a lite cone

Yes, it’s called a “light cone”, and you will only see that option if you’re using a spotlight.

And FWIW, keep in mind that there is a reason that lights might have visible “cones”....it’s because the light is bouncing off a bunch of dust/mist/water vapor in the air. So don’t have an otherwise clear scene that has a thick light cone shooting thru. It’ll look all weird and stuff.

Excellent thanks guys! It worked great!
Only one question, the spotlight seems to penetrate the walls a bit
using a default shadier. Is that a light setting.
Thanks again!
8068

Make sure that you have Cast Shadows selected on every light in your scene, and set the Shadow Intensity at 100%.

Do that for every light in your scene. Always. In every scene from now until the end of time. And while you’re at it, Select Scene and under Effects/Ambient turn Brightness down to 0%. Always. In every scene from now until the end of time.

And don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. 

There is an option to check 3D Shadows in the Light cone interface.

if lite is penetrating add some thickness to the walls, doesn’t have to be much

JoeMamma2000 - 25 December 2012 07:34 PM

Make sure that you have Cast Shadows selected on every light in your scene, and set the Shadow Intensity at 100%.

Do that for every light in your scene. Always. In every scene from now until the end of time. And while you’re at it, Select Scene and under Effects/Ambient turn Brightness down to 0%. Always. In every scene from now until the end of time.

And don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. 

Unless there’s a reason to use ambient or to turn off shadows. Never say never. And don’t listen to anybody that says otherwise!

dot_bat - 26 December 2012 09:53 AM

if lite is penetrating add some thickness to the walls, doesn’t have to be much

I’m trying to decided if this was a joke or not…. 

Even a zero thickness polygon will completely block a light that has the settings I suggested. Thickness makes no difference.

And Evil….yeah, whatever….

holly wetcircuit - 25 December 2012 09:22 PM

There is an option to check 3D Shadows in the Light cone interface.[/quote
That did it thank you! It also improved the quality of the shadows through the skylight. Wall thinkness didn’t seem to have much effect.
8068

JoeMamma2000 - 26 December 2012 04:32 PM

dot_bat - 26 December 2012 09:53 AM

if lite is penetrating add some thickness to the walls, doesn’t have to be much

I’m trying to decided if this was a joke or not…. 

Even a zero thickness polygon will completely block a light that has the settings I suggested. Thickness makes no difference.

And Evil….yeah, whatever….

 

being thick, I had to try it rather than making a sweeping untested statement
since adding thickness DOES affect bullet physics, transparency etc
well, the shadows on the thick ones look better to me!

there’s an old bug in carrara where light seeps at the joins of two meshes eg wall and floor - could be this

JoeMamma2000 - 25 December 2012 07:34 PM

Make sure that you have Cast Shadows selected on every light in your scene, and set the Shadow Intensity at 100%.

Do that for every light in your scene. Always. In every scene from now until the end of time. And while you’re at it, Select Scene and under Effects/Ambient turn Brightness down to 0%. Always. In every scene from now until the end of time.

And don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. 

Still trying to determine if THIS was a joke…
but it simply must be.

Dartanbeck - 27 December 2012 08:04 PM

Still trying to determine if THIS was a joke…
but it simply must be.

No, Dartanbeck, it was not a joke. It was a suggestion based on some intelligent, rational reasons, based on a career spent in the visual effects industry. How about you? What sort of knowledge and experience and expertise are your recommendations based on?

When you use a light in Carrara, and set the shadow casting off, or at a value less than 100%, the light passes thru all objects in its path. It lights up stuff that shouldn’t be lit. It causes nostrils to light up. It causes parts of characters to be unrealistically lit. And BTW, your avatar is a perfect example. And when people see images like that, it looks wrong. That is a fact. 

Now, I realize that many people here can’t comprehend that. But just because THEY don’t see it, that doesn’t mean that the rest of the world doesn’t see it. The vast majority of amateurish, poorly done renders exhibit this problem. Same with the Scene Ambient. It unrealistically lights up everything.

And there are other, far better methods for getting the effect you want, rather than resorting to something that is cheap and cheesy. 

Now, you can also say that those renders are not poorly done, based solely on your perceptions and experiences, but none of that matters. If you are going to recommend a practice to someone else, recommend something that has some general merit, and that improves the quality of their renders, and applies to general audiences.

Now if all you care about is pressing some buttons and getting a render, and couldn’t care less if it’s amateurish and cheesy, then fine. But don’t recommend that to others.

And maybe try ASKING someone, other than yourself and your family, what they think of your renders. Because in the real world, not everything is awesome. Some stuff is great, other stuff is cheap and cheesy. And if you care even the slightest about the artistic side of all this fun software, you’ll learn the difference.

Look guys, it’s one thing to be clueless, but AT LEAST don’t be arrogant about it. Show just a little bit of humility, because maybe your tiny world of experience isn’t all there is. Maybe you can actually LEARN something, rather than just claiming you do.

And to continually argue about the very basic basics is just mind boggling.

Yes, at some point there is probably a use for both of those methods. But I guarantee that 99% of the people here have no business even trying it, until they develop a basic understanding of lighting.

” Can’t we all just get along: ?? 
Ok here are the results of different options.
You have all expressed valid points.
This is a very tricky project as there is no ambient light, and the client wants the walls dead black except
when light is shining on it, he wants the light to be white where the light hits. So any stray light coming in around the skylight
is very noticeable. A tough situation to say the least.
1) Holly was correct, turning on 3D shadows eliminated the light coming through the walls coming towards the camera.
Not reflecting off a surface..
2) Doubling walls copy and pasting with a small gap, thicker, etc, did not seem to help stray light that shouldn’t be there,
from coming through. I was sure wall shader was set to NONE on all variables, except casts shadows, and visible.
3) Yes the problem is setting shadows to any setting except 100% hard. The problem there was I didn’t like the shadows set that hard.
If I set to 100% there was no stray unwanted light. But the shadows were black and white which looked kinda comic book.
I tend to not use shadows 100% hard. One example would be a meter with a moving needle. If the shadow is set to 100% . The shadow was as black as the needle which made it look like two needles, so I tend to set shadows softer.
So I am looking at three choices.
1)Compositing, and few renders and dissolve in editing.
2) Work with the Barn doors on the light, which in a bit of a PITA because the cone light source moves and it wasn’t always perpendicular to the skylight, but I think this is the answer.
3)Is there a way to made a lighting ” Flag” in Carrara? A flat rectangle that blocks 100% of the light passing. Based on what I’ve learned from above I would doubt this is possible.
Thank you ALL for your comments. I learned a lot about Carrara lighting from listening to the diverse opinions and experimenting.
I would not have gotten this far with out your help.
Thanks
8068

I know it’s for a client, but is there a possibility of uploading some images to show what the light spill problem is exactly and what it is that you want from the scene?

The way you describe the scene, it sounds as if there are some contradictory things going on.

Hmmm…. Just had a thought on the unwanted light. You’re not using any of the GI settings like skylight or Indirect light are you?