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AoA lights - Flagged Surfaces

marblemarble Posts: 7,500
edited July 2015 in The Commons

I have been trying to figure this out for quite a while but I am now convinced the answer I am looking for doesn't exist.

I use several (3 or 4) AoA advanced lights in a scene. I flag any hair to an Ambient value of 0.99 and configure all the lights to use Alt-Samples when they come across that Ambient value.

However, there are many other surfaces in the scene and I want to know how to configure the lights to shade them differently. For example, solid walls or props: I may want to use Primitive Hitmode but not Alt Samples. I really don't want to start adding more and more lights just to light specific surfaces. All the time I save by rendering using AoA lights would be taken up in tweaking the various lights.

Ideally, I want each light to react to various flags.

Post edited by marble on

Comments

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,996
    edited December 1969

    You can only add one flag.

    This is what I normally do with the AoA lights.

    Lights all use Hitmode: Primative

    Flag Surface Shaders With - Ambient Strength of...
    Value - 1%

    If surface is Flagged - Use Shader Hitmode

    This will avoid weird shadowing on surfaces recieving the shadow. It will render slower through these sections BUT the rest of the image will render faster. For modeled hairs I usally set all their surfaces to use the ambient value of 1%. As for G2F and G2M, I set the following surfaces

    Cornea
    Ears
    Eyelashes
    EyeReflection
    Face
    Head
    Irises
    Lacrimals
    Neck
    Nostrils
    Pulpils
    Sclera

    I sometimes flag shoulders and torso too but only if they have long hair on. WHen using clothing with transparencies like nylons you would have to flag surfaces recieveing the shadow.

  • grinch2901grinch2901 Posts: 1,247
    edited December 1969

    Not sure what your asking but it seems as if your saying "can I have multiple flag settings?" Well you can. Only one per light, however. Set a flag value and set it to illuminate flagged surfaces only, then have one light which illumines anything that wasn't flagged to cover the rest.

    So typically when I use these I set one ambient light to look for Ambient value of 0.99 and I make those surfaces high samples / shader hit mode. This is for skin and things I want high quality.

    The second ambient light I set up is looking for surfaces with diffuse of 99%, and those I use alt samples but still shader hit mode so it will cast shadows properly even if it uses a transmap (think hair).

    The third light is set up to illuminate "not flagged" so it lights p everything not lit up by the first two using primitive hit mode.

    That's my typical setup, three ambient lights. Once I set it up, I saved it as a light preset. Load that, adjust the surfaces to the appropriate flags, good to go.

    Complication is that I heard flagging was broken when studio went to 4.7 so you need to experiment. It was recommended you reinstall the AoA lights, just in case but it may not help. Seems it works for some people, not others. It wasn't working for me, I reinstalled and it worked after that for some reason. Good luck!

  • marblemarble Posts: 7,500
    edited December 1969

    Thank you both. I'll try both methods.

    I'm pretty sure the flags are working for me but I did reinstall the lights not long ago, so maybe that's why.

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