Any way to make the spot render tool ignore scene lights and just use the headlamp?

cwichura

When testing normal and displacement maps, it's much easier to see the results in the spot rendering tool when it just uses the headlamp and not any scene lights. Usually I don't have any lights loaded when doing this, but occasionally I'll have things like a point light in the bulb of a staff that one of my saved-for-reuse characters is holding. The point light means the character itself will be very dark, since it's not really meant to illuminate the scene. The viewport lets you turn off scene lights and just use the headlamp. But I've not found a way to make spot renders do this, short of deleting all lights from the scene, which is a nuisance as they then need to be re-created. Setting the lights visibility to off, turning off their node in the scene list, setting their illumination to off, etc doesn't make any difference to the spot rendering tool.

Anyone know of a trick to make the spot rendering tool use the headlamp without having to delete and then restore all lights in the scene?

Thanks

Jaderail

Not an Option I'm afraid.

BlackFeather1973

cwichura said:

Setting the lights visibility to off, turning off their node in the scene list, setting their illumination to off, etc doesn't make any difference to the spot rendering tool.

That sounds odd, turning the lights off should spot render a black rectangle (it does for me).
You could parent a spotlight to your camera, wich would mimic the preview headlamp in your spot renders.

mjc1016

BlackFeather1973 said:

cwichura said:

Setting the lights visibility to off, turning off their node in the scene list, setting their illumination to off, etc doesn't make any difference to the spot rendering tool.

That sounds odd, turning the lights off should spot render a black rectangle (it does for me).
You could parent a spotlight to your camera, wich would mimic the preview headlamp in your spot renders.

Right...if the lights are off, it should be black...unless there is some ambient color and strength. set...

Richard Haseltine

What you can do is this:
group all of your scene lights
in the Property Editor create a new property for the group called One (right-click in the property list on the elft of the pane) - set it's min and max and default and value to 1, lock it and hide it. Now Drag that into the Controllers list for the group's visibility
Create a new light, parent it to the camera
Select both the light and the group of other lights
In Property Editor drag the Visible property from the list of properties onto the Visible control for the group, under controllers - DS will tell you it didn't create a link for the group, that's OK. You should now see both the One control and the Visible control from the head light listed under controllers. select the Visible control, and in the settings area set its ERC type to subtract. If it all worked, when you click to make the head lamp visible the scene light group will be turned off and vice versa.

cwichura

BlackFeather1973 said:

cwichura said:

Setting the lights visibility to off, turning off their node in the scene list, setting their illumination to off, etc doesn't make any difference to the spot rendering tool.

That sounds odd, turning the lights off should spot render a black rectangle (it does for me).
You could parent a spotlight to your camera, wich would mimic the preview headlamp in your spot renders.
Well, obviously it makes a difference in that you get a pitch black render. But it doesn't make Studio fall back to a headlamp render, which is what I am after. And yes, there are hacks to work around this like parenting a spotlight to a camera, but that's an extra step and requires an actual camera when often I'm just working in perspective view. Anyway, I submitted a feature request to make spot renders use the headlamp when the scene lights are turned off in the viewport (CTRL-L option).

mjc1016

cwichura said:

BlackFeather1973 said:

cwichura said:

Setting the lights visibility to off, turning off their node in the scene list, setting their illumination to off, etc doesn't make any difference to the spot rendering tool.

That sounds odd, turning the lights off should spot render a black rectangle (it does for me).
You could parent a spotlight to your camera, wich would mimic the preview headlamp in your spot renders.

Well, obviously it makes a difference in that you get a pitch black render. But it doesn't make Studio fall back to a headlamp render, which is what I am after. And yes, there are hacks to work around this like parenting a spotlight to a camera, but that's an extra step and requires an actual camera when often I'm just working in perspective view. Anyway, I submitted a feature request to make spot renders use the headlamp when the scene lights are turned off in the viewport (CTRL-L option).

Sounds like a good one...

BlackFeather1973

n/m

BlackFeather1973

cwichura said:

When testing normal and displacement maps, it's much easier to see the results in the spot rendering tool when it just uses the headlamp and not any scene lights. Usually I don't have any lights loaded when doing this, but occasionally I'll have things like a point light in the bulb of a staff that one of my saved-for-reuse characters is holding. The point light means the character itself will be very dark, since it's not really meant to illuminate the scene. The viewport lets you turn off scene lights and just use the headlamp. But I've not found a way to make spot renders do this, short of deleting all lights from the scene, which is a nuisance as they then need to be re-created. Setting the lights visibility to off, turning off their node in the scene list, setting their illumination to off, etc doesn't make any difference to the spot rendering tool.

Anyone know of a trick to make the spot rendering tool use the headlamp without having to delete and then restore all lights in the scene?

Thanks

Hi cwichura, fixed that for ya.
Now you can do that in Daz Studio : Daz Studio HeadLight Simulator Script