Using a population to distribute light sources

[gregsandor]

I used a masked population to distribute visible point lights along roads on a terrain.  The bounding boxes appear in the preview but they do not render.  Has anyone had any luck with this?

[Mohawk20]

How high are the luminosity settings, and are they only lights or phisical objects?

[gregsandor]

They're lights, visible, .1m, strength 100.

[dandelO]

I've tried this too, it's possible with lightsources and suns. I got to the point of distributing them but they won't render either.
I gave up and put it down to 'it doesn't work'...

[Oshyan]

Light sources cannot be used in populations at present, however you could use luminous objects (objects with luminous textures).

- Oshyan

[Mohawk20]

So to make it easy, use the standard Sphere (if that's populatable), so you can use mostly the same size settings as a light.

[Mr_Lamppost]

So to make it easy, use the standard Sphere (if that's populatable), so you can use mostly the same size settings as a light.

There are problems with populations of spheres.  But it is definitely possible to use glowing objects on populated objects.  Have a look at this image I posted on ashundar:

http://www.ashundar.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-5236

[Jeremy Ray]

Light sources cannot be used in populations at present, however you could use luminous objects (objects with luminous textures).

- Oshyan

Do you mean it is possible to make luminous objects cast light onto other objects, or only to light up themselves?

If it's possible to make them cast light, how?  I am searching but not finding.

[Mohawk20]

Do you mean it is possible to make luminous objects cast light onto other objects, or only to light up themselves?

If it's possible to make them cast light, how?  I am searching but not finding.

Sure it's possible!

A surface layer has a Luminosity tab in the top half, a Default shader (mostly used for shading objects) has a Luminosity slider in the Colour tab (the first tab on opening the settings) at the bottom. If you set the slider to max it has a luminosity of 1, but that isn't really visible.

Play with those values, add some zero's to that 1 (a lot of zero's sometimes  ), and see what happens.

Good Luck.

[gregsandor]

How does a light created with this luminosity value differ from a point light?

I'm making some tests now:  so far no light is cast even up to 100,000 lum.

[dandelO]

so far no light is cast even up to 100,000

If it is luminosity applied to an object part, then it won't refresh in your preview scene with the lighting effects, objects aren't yet displayed in the 3D preview so low quality test renders are required to see the effect of the luminosity.

You could always make a default sphere of a similar size as your glowing object and and place it at the exact co-ords as the original object, giving it the same luminosity values as you want from the real object will enable you to see the effects in the preview. Remember to disable it once you're ready to render or else you'll have twice the amount of light as required.

[Mandrake]

How does a light created with this luminosity value differ from a point light?

I'm making some tests now:  so far no light is cast even up to 100,000 lum.

Greg, the lights on this ship just have the luminosity turned up for those materials. You can see some effect to the surrounding bay door but the effect is minimal
http://www.ashundar.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=1&pos=13

Whereas the lights on this bay door is a light source with no visible disk.
http://www.ashundar.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=lastup&cat=11418&pos=11

[gregsandor]

Even after rendering at low res no ambient light was cast.  I'll check my settings and run it again.

[Matt]

Any luminous objects will cast light into the scene because of Global Illumination, but how successful this is really depends on your GI settings and the size of the object. If you have large, bright objects you should see some effect, but if the objects are too small then either the GI will not capture them or the results will be fairly patchy or unpredictable. Very bright, very small objects are unlikely to give decent results unless you have very, very high GI settings.

Matt

[sjefen]

Any luminous objects will cast light into the scene because of Global Illumination, but how successful this is really depends on your GI settings and the size of the object. If you have large, bright objects you should see some effect, but if the objects are too small then either the GI will not capture them or the results will be fairly patchy or unpredictable. Very bright, very small objects are unlikely to give decent results unless you have very, very high GI settings.

Matt

In the future.... is it possible that we could see options to make any object be a lightsource?