Lightning

Started by Dune, January 13, 2021, 03:10:06 AM

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Dune

I came across a folder containing some lightning tgo's. Thanks to whoever made them (I later thought that Ivy generator would be good to make lightning objects). I used them in an experiment to light up clouds by objects (invisible elongated spheres at the lightning locations). But it's tough to just get a haze around the strikes to glow up. It would be good if there were a sort of invisible cloud that is only visible when lit, so I was looking for the right parameters. Haven't found them yet, but here's 2 experiments.

WAS

Quote from: Dune on January 13, 2021, 03:10:06 AMI came across a folder containing some lightning tgo's. Thanks to whoever made them (I later thought that Ivy generator would be good to make lightning objects). I used them in an experiment to light up clouds by objects (invisible elongated spheres at the lightning locations). But it's tough to just get a haze around the strikes to glow up. It would be good if there were a sort of invisible cloud that is only visible when lit, so I was looking for the right parameters. Haven't found them yet, but here's 2 experiments.
Try cranking up direct/enviro over 1 with a scalar for objects. These looks really nice. May have to try.

Dune

For clouds you mean, I guess. No direct/enviro in objects :P That's an idea.

N-drju

You can however attach luminosity to the lightning object's surface. :)

But when I tried to make lightning effects in my NWDA image, I just used "Light source" object. With some careful placement and enough cloud density it should be quite possible to limit the area being illuminated.
"This year - a factory of semiconductors. Next year - a factory of whole conductors!"

Dune

Yes, I did that too, even tried several ways of very softstarburst and bloom. Light source is also a possibility, but I was interested in objects emitting light.

Dune

Another version.

WAS

I tried a luminous card, and a obj and could not get luminosity to work on clouds even with excessive luminosity and modulator scalars for the clouds. The lightning would end up looking way blown out and still dark clouds so guess a light source is really the way to go.

Dune

Two elongated spheres here with luminosity at 10. Should work (it did for me). My idea for not using light sources was that illuminated objects could be used in a population. I also tried a sphere within the clouds with luminous spots, which also works.

Here's another one. Still work to do... I don't like the terrain, and the clouds can have  more variety too.

Hannes

Not bad at all!!! To me the lightning objects look great, but the tendrils are spreading apart downwards, which looks a bit weird somehow to my taste. Just a feeling without checking reference images...

WAS

My issue with anything not the actual light source, is it just immediately lookks fake. Like I can see the whole shape of what's creating light, and it's not the lightning, ya know what I mean? Same for a light source only originating from it's location. At this point I'd just output 32bit images and do the lighting in PS as then I could at least plot it without it looking like a sphere.

Dune

Yes, it looks fake. I had a good time experimenting, but I'm a bit disappointed at what can be achieved. The shafts will probably only work on a big distance, and possibly some image maps projected on cards may well work better. At least one can have some radiating light from the shafts, something I couldn't achieve by luminosity in this setup. I learned some stuff again, though.
Vdisp or mask in a volumetric cloud would be cool to make blinding light shafts...

Hannes

What if you duplicate your lightning objects, make the duplicates invisible and increase the luminosity of those to VERY high values? Just a thought...

Dune

Yes, already did that. Works as well.
I now have made some image maps, which actually works nicer, also with copied invisible cards very illuminated.

WAS

How are you lighting the clouds? This doesn't work for me in PT or SR. The lighting in the clouds isn't localized and seems to spread for thousands of meters glowing the whole cloudscape, and the lighting on the ground is a speckled mess.

What special settings are you using? Here I have a hidden object providing the high luminosity, and the visible is only at 2.

All screenshots have sun is below the horizon for a night, but the glow from lightning is taking up the entirety of the clouds area visible. AA6 used here, and still pretty bad.

Dune

#14
I agree it's not very reliable, but the specks in your ground are really strange. Last I used was an image map for color and opacity, just white on black, UV, and luminosity at 1-2 or so. Then an invisible (no shadow, but that doesn't make a difference) exact copy, but luminosity set to (from my head) 10-50. That illuminates the sky around that card, but it's not a nice fading glow, and hard to control. It would be easier if light sources could be populated.
The only problem with a lake I tried is that the copy illuminates the sky, but it's also very visible as a reflection. No way to separate those.
I also worked with the cloud direct and environment light inputs, but the the problem is that you can't translate the instance locations to a scalar. Something I requested some time ago, btw. And the other way around is also hard to control.
I didn't use PT, just SR, btw.

EDIT: I'm making a quick setup for you, though on this machine, so very old version. Rendering now.