Photometric Primtive Posing Props?
Scavenger
Posts: 2,674
I've been doing some experiments with photometric lights, learning about the geometry funtions.
The problem with them, though, is changing the geometry of a point light is only visible when you render it, not when you're wanting to pose it, move it, etc.
I figure parenting it to a Primitive in the same shape (for example, a sphere) that you change it's size while you change the light's would make it easy to pose/move/etc...possibly I could set up a control that does both at once...
BEFORE I invest time in trying to make some of these, though, I figured I should ask...has anyone already done this?
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2026 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Changing the geometry of a photometric point light doesn't make sense to me. As soon as you change the geometry it effectively becomes a spotlight.
You can easily test this. Add the point light and render your subject, you will get sharp shadows. Change the size to be larger, you will still get sharp shadows.
Change the geometry to any of the choices besides point, with the larger size, and you will get softer shadows as with a softbox.
I also don't understand why you need to make changes in order to move the light. Easy enough to select in the viewport, or through the scene tab, or through the parameters tab.
What are you trying to accomplish?
I only position these types of lights by "looking through them" as views, aiming them at the scene. This works for distant and spot, but not point lights. For those, you can simply parent a camera to it. Select the camera to aim it. You won't have to hide the parented camera from view when the scene is rendered, as you would a standard primitive. One less thing to worry about.
Replicating the geometry of the light emitter using a primitive might be helpful when you want to use that shape as a scene element (a fluorescent light tube, for example), but otherwise, what matters is the effect of that light shape, and you can really only gauge that in a render.
Scavenger wants the light's viewport icon to change from the default spotlight shape to the shape and size defined by the geometry settings. It is something I would like to see done also. The only way it is likely to happen though is if enough users put in a feature request to support asking for it.
this is the secret to soft shadows?
in a 3 point lighting setup, can the backlight be set to not cast shadows at all?
thanks
@MistyMist "this is the secret to soft shadows"
It definitely is the secret in studio photography. Closer and bigger equals softer shadows. Iray is physically based rendering, all lights cast shadows. You can use the geometry tricks to get softer shadows. You can use darker background or even lighting to hide/ minimize shadows. You can't turn them off unless you use hdri with mo real "floor". In that case your scene is floating in nothingness.
Not only can you change the geometry, but you can change the dimensions...they are listed in cm. So changing the Height/Width to 100 and rectangle gives you a 1 meter square emitter.
Well, my experiments so far seem promising, focusing on cylendars, but the "render emitter" seemed to not be working, so I'll have to try some more on that. Part of it is as you enlarge the emitter, you spread out the lumens, so the apparant brightness goes down.
What I'd like (the posing props asside) is to be able to replicate a mesh light with a photometric light, for speed...but not sure that's even possible.