How do I turn something into it's own light source, again?
WillowRaven
Posts: 3,724
I know someone told me how to do this at one time, but I can't find the thread and that was when I was still able to use DS3. How do I make a light bulb it's own light source?
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Ensure the item is selected in the scene tab, then under surfaces select the surface you wish to have emit light then look for the UberArea Light shader and apply to the surface. Increase Samples parameter to get better quality light.
Which one do I pick of the seven options?
Wait, sheder? It's not under lights?
this should help http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/ and no it isn't a light but a shader but it should still be under lights. Give my tutorial a read and all should become clear.
OK ... lol ... thanks. Off to do some reading :D
don' hesitate to ask questions in that thread if something isn't clear. It helps me refine my tutorial making process.
In DS4.5 it is under My Library> Light Presets> omnifreaker> UberAreaLight and you'll want to apply the !UberAreaLight Base.dsa (probably ctrl-click to get to retain existing maps).
Sniped by Pete! :)
nananana beat you. :P
*shakes fist* Why you ... if it hadn't been for those pesky kids..... ;)
chuckles outloud...very loud. :P
Revitalizing the thread because I am doing something wrong, lol.
My brain goes numb at the mambo-jumbo in any lengthy light or shader tutorials. But I need a flat plane to glow and create a white light in a night time scene. It's a portal between two trees, to another realm, but it has to emanate its light on the existing setting and figures.
I'll adjust the lights I am using to see my scene after I make the portal glow/emanate white, as well as prop textures. I just think adjusting those after I create the portal light makes more sense.
To give you an idea ...
So you want a plane to emit light, glow and with a texture, which is facing the camera?
no texture ... just glow white and produce light
Load an Area Light plane, make the Diffuse surface White, Ambient ON and White, set the strength to you want and play with the Intensity. If you want the light to stop at a certain distance set Fall Off to On and set the Fall Off end to what you want. Leave Fall Off start at 0. You will have to do some test renders to get the look you want.
So I can't make the triangular shaped portal already in the tree do it?
Yes if it has it's own material zone.
Select the portal, select the surface in the Surfaces Pane load "Area Light Base" and follow the rest off what I said above. You will find the light settings in the surfaces pane after the Area Light Base has been applied.
To make a surface emit light, select the surface, then select "!UberAreaLight Base.dsa". Then, in the Surfaces(color) tab:
To see the light source itself, set "Ambient Active" to On, and set the Ambient color, and apply an image to the Ambient Color if you want the light to have surface features.
To change the color of the light emitted, set Color .
Change the Intensity slider up to make it brighter; note some lights may need to be dramatically brighter to be seen, work with powers of 10 to start with. Opacity can also be used at the same time.
To fix any graininess, especially in shadows: increase the samples parameter (at the cost of greatly increased render time). The value varies greatly depending on the light. I have seen 32 work for some lights, 1024 was needed for one.
I need the lights at the bottom of the ship to not only glow, but to eliminate light; enough light that some may be seen reflecting on him, but not so much to light up the canyon with more than an eerie glow. Doable?
I've been trying to follow previous directions, but all it's doing is casting too much light on the back land mass. I want the light more focused under the ship. But the shadow is over powering everything. Suggestions?
Can you post a screenshot so we can see where the light is coming from and what it is doing compared to the screenshot above?
Is the light coming from underneath and really should only be shining down, or is it on the sides along the bottom and shining out?
Can you cheat and just stick a cube or something behind the ship to reduce the light shining backwards lighting up the wall?
Not sure what you are asking... But here's a screenshot...
The purple/pink light on the bottom and bottom-side of the ship have a glow shader on them, but they don't emanate light, like real lights would.
I've never used linear point lights, but would that work if I shaped them like the geometric material zone shapes that 'glow'?
A point light doesn't have a shape, that will not work for what you want to do as far as I know. It's just light coming from an infinitely small point in space, pretend it's like a very bright but a dust-speck-sized lightbulb.
For the uber area light, let's see if we can fix it. As I don't see any light coming from the purple area at all, I'm guessing that means one of several things is happening.
First, maybe the !UberAreaLightBase.duf shader/light didn't get applied, or was accidentally lost with an undo or something. With the surface tool active, select the purple surface, than in the Surfaces pane's Editor tab, look at the very top and make sure it says "Shader: omUberAreaLight".
Second, maybe it's applied, but the default light level is just too low to really see the effect. The default for the Intensity slider is 100%. Try raising it to 1000% or 10,000% so it's super-obvious if it actually casts any light, and if it does, just start lowering it until it you get the value you want. Remember the default quality is low, so the light won't be even, it will be in little spots here and there, which makes it very hard to see when the light level is low (you can fix that later once you know the light is working.)
Third, maybe some other setting is somehow interfering or set wrong. You could post a screenshot of all the surface parameter settings for that uber area light surface in case we see something that jumps out.
I don't know what my mental block is with this, but every time I try this, it messes is the other lighting in my scene.
Anyway ... I like the look and lighting of everything here except the shadow and area below the ship.
Is there a way to make the shadow purple, as if the area is illuminated by the lights above it. If so, I can fudge the rest in Photoshop.
Also, how do I undo a convert sub D? I think I liked the jagged edges better.
lets see a screenshot with the intensity slider at 10,000.
Intensity of the shadow?
I turned off the uber light on the surface because it was lighting up the rear rock formation and not the ground.
Is there any way to change the color of the shadow cast by the ship?
Sorry about my confusing last post, trying to do two things at once there and did not succeed. :-)
I don't know how to change the color of the shadow, somebody else will have to answer that one. Although you mentioned you planned to postwork it in Photoshop anyway, could you just select the shadow there and change the color from black to purple?
Another idea that probably won't work would be to set the terrain to have a bit of ambient purple color. Of course it will mess with the rest of the unshadowed terrain color too, but I don't know by how much or if you could adjust the colors to compensate.
Could you just have a couple of purple spotlights positioned under the ship pointing down? it wouldn't be even lighting, it would look more like landing lights than light coming from the sides, but maybe that would be ok.
If you ever decide to try the uber light shader, I think you can set the falloff distance so it won't reach as far as the canyon's far wall, although that might give you an unnatural line on the ground where it cuts of somewhere.
I thought about just changing the shadow color in PS, but wasn't sure how natural that would look since I'd want some of the terrain to show through also, which it doesn't right now.
I'm going to try an idea I just had and I'll post it to see what you think.
One of the things about area lights is they rely on surface normals to emit light in a particular direction.
From the sounds of it, they are pointing the wrong way.
If you used one of the material zones on the aircraft, then I'm not sure how to 'flip' them around....but if you attached the light to a plane, just flip it 180 around the X axis.
The first image is just a plane with the Area Light applied, as loaded and tinted purple.
The second is the same plane rotated 180 on the X axis.
The third is the same as the second, with falloff active, set to 1 (linear), start distance = 0 and end distance = 500.
In all cases the samples were upped to 64, from the default 8.
The third one shows the effect I want best, but not from a plane ... from the ship itself.
I had originally chosen the purple/pink areas on the bottom and sides of the ship, which are currently using a glow shader, and tried to make them lights, thinking they would light the ground below, but all it did was light up the rear mesa, leaving the ground dark in shadow.
If I could figure out how to use a plane and keep the shape of the ship, I'd do that. In reality, if the purple areas were real lights, the lit areas would be more intense in the shapes of the lights, and then diffuse from those shapes. Wouldn't it?