Maya for 3D Printing - Rapid Prototyping
In this course we're going to look at something a little different, creating technically accurate 3D printed parts.
# 1 30-01-2003 , 10:08 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Posts: 36

Fog light misbehaving - fog shadows disappear

user added image I have a fairly large scene made in Maya 4.03 where a hole opens in a surface and a fog light (spotlight) shines through. When I first make it, everything works fine, and I get a nice coloured fog beam shining through the hole in the surface.

After a few changes to other parts of the scene, I find that the fog no longer takes any notice of the surface or of the light colour, and I just get a white cone the shape of the spotlight beam.

I've tried deleting the light and making a new one, but that doesn't work. I've checked that the shadow casting and receiving properties of the light and the surfaces involved are switched on. The light does actually cast a shadow, it's just the fog that won't co-operate.

The only way I've found to get out of this problem is to go back to a version of the scene saved before I put any lights in and start again from there. But I've done too much work now to go back that far, and I promised the client a rough render today...

Please, please, can someone tell me how to fix this.

# 2 31-01-2003 , 12:34 AM
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Hmm... Quite odd... Tried exporting everything else but the lights to another file and then create the lights again?


Kari
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# 3 01-02-2003 , 02:17 AM
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After a few changes to other parts of the scene, I find that the fog no longer takes any notice of the surface or of the light colour, and I just get a white cone the shape of the spotlight beam.

what were these other changes?

Did u rescale the spotlight at all??

# 4 02-02-2003 , 06:46 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2002
Posts: 36
:banana: Hi guys,

Thank you so much for your help.

First of all, I discovered that I had been working on the wrong scene! Eight hours struggling with it, thinking that something had gone wrong again - AAAAGH! So I managed to get the job out, although it was an all-nighter.

The scene causing the trouble was one where I had tried to do some light linking and got it disastrously wrong - hence the strange fog lights.

Exporting everything except the lights did solve the problem with this scene. I deleted all the lights and exported the rest to a new file, and now fog lights work properly.

To quote Benny Hill: "Learning all ze time".

Alex: is there a reason not to scale spotlights with fog? I find I have to do that to get the fog to go far enough down the light beam.

Thank you again, both. I'll know how to get out of that one if/when I hit it again.

Julian

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