silly experiments

Mistara

slly experiment

if i set the point at modifier on something, replicated the something, would thereplicatees all point at the thing or only the original.

lol

when i converted the replicatees to instances, the point at carried with it, they all pointed their lil hearts at the something.

mschack

Did the somethings point at the something before you converted to instances?

WendyLuvsCatz

think they all do before too as that's how many lightdomes work 

surface replicated lights on a dome pointing at a target helper

Mistara

point at was activated before replication.

the replicated spotlights all pointed in the direction of the original light pointint at the something.

was funny to watch them all instances turn to point  lol  was like quietly controlled chaos

100s of lights, caustics renders dark.

is there a general rule for light falloff?

only the shape light has falloff rate, distance squared, logrithmic

Dartanbeck

First, if we have something "Point At" something, and then Duplicate that along with the thing that it's told to point at, the new duplicated item will point at the original target unless we tell it to switch - even if the two targets still have the same name - so it's good to either delete or rename the duplicated target (thing that's being pointed at) to avoid confusion down the road.

 

Second - Light Falloff is a taste/artistic preference. In science, light doesn't actually fall off, but can diminish in intensity through absorbtion, reflection, etc.,

 

It really kinda sucked being both a CG artist and attending Astronomy Club at the same time when I was a noob at both. My astro-physicist friend would yell at me for saying things like "Light-Bounce", stating (correctly) that light cannot bounce! So I come into the forums and start correcting everybody! LOL It was Awful!!!

 

Not to get back at him in the slightest, I almost always set my light falloff to 100%, because I want it to become less intense the further it travels. Then I adjust the distance level to get the effect I want. Works great for adding very subdues lighting. In the case of light domes, I prefer to use Spot lights with an diameter falloff of at least 35 and then distance versus falloff set to taste. Most often for a light dome, I'll set the falloff to 100% and the distance to twice what it takes to hit the ground. So if the lights are on a dome that's 1,000ft from the ground, I'll set the light distance to 2,000ft with 100% falloff - if that helps. 

 

With the angular falloff combined with distance falloff, I feel that I can get much smoother global illumination with less lights, so it looks more natural than, say using the same number of Distant lights, which seem to me to make more sharp-edged shadows unless I increase their numbers.

 

Nowadays I tell my dome lights (if I'm using any) to exclude my character and light the character separately. Then, to cast shadows from the character onto the environment, I'll either use a shape light or a spot - so I can have one consistent shadow instead of several funky looking ghost shapes for shadows. Hence my Character Template scene file with light rig, so that all of my 'Hero' characters have a uniform highlight rig that works very well with the addition of that environmental shadow-casting light.

Mistara

can multiple props be keyframed in 1 animation file or does each prop need it's own pose clip?