Is it possible to make a sphere work as a light source (or any object other than a sun), and then to make the object invisible while still projecting the light?
Thank you
Sure can. You can pretty much use anything that gives out colour as a lightsource when you use GI.
Just give the surface a very high luminosity value(10, 100, 1000, 10,000, depending on how bright you want it) and un-check 'visible to camera'. The glow from the object will be picked up by the envirolight if you use GI at render time. Higher GI settings give nicer results, a relative detail of 1 will likely result in a very blotchy lighting.
You could also use a cloud layer with extremely high colour values in the colour or ambient tab. Un-checking 'enable primary' will stop the rendering of the actual cloud but leaves you with it's lighting effect on the environment around it. You can localise the cloud to limit the effect and drag it around or, leave it filling the whole sky for a global lighting.
dandelO to the rescue, thanks man! :)
Here's an example using a plane as a lightsource.
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=13183.0
Thanks jim, I downloaded your file to study. Very interesting effect!
Well thats not Jims file to be fair.
My thought experiments hadn't extended to clouds until mentioned by DandelO so I added a default shader to the input of the cloud, and upped the the luminosity - would this not work?
This image(http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=10923.0;attach=27163;image) has no sun and is only lit by the clouds and stars.
High 'ambient' values in a cloud layer create light when you exceed a value of '1'. ;)
These images have a very fantastical feel to them. I think I am seeing a lot of possibilities for this kind of thing. Thanks again
Quote from: TheBadger on September 17, 2011, 07:06:38 PM
Thanks jim, I downloaded your file to study. Very interesting effect!
What airflamesred said. Just the messenger. ;)
airflamesred,
Thanks for the file, sorry for the confusion.
I mean Vyacheslav. I don't know now. Thanks guys