Simply Maya User Community - View Single Post - changing the distance of Point Lights

Yop Bob, no worry dude, i'm not taking it the wrong way no worry.

Just that I might have missed something in your explanation.
So I preferred dropping and wait for someone who might understand what you ask better than I do.

Furthermore, using no decay with its intensity set above 0.75 seems creates sharp hot spots as well but doesn't illuminate the room correctly. So I came up with a solution. Put a linear decay light inside the ligh fixture, and place a normal point light below the light fixture with no decay and its intensity set to a much lower value. This works with bigger rooms but it doesn't seem to work with smaller rooms.

Originally Posted by

I must say, in order to be sure of my understanding, that this particular explanation from you, is precisely what I tried to point out with this ...

Originally posted by Pyrus
If you use SoftRenderer, play around with LightLinkings: whatever object or light-centric, it depends only on the way you understand things.
Then you'll have the control you want

Imagine you got some table lamp on a desk.
You'll put, of course, some point light where the lamp really is irl. You have some rendering with default intensity and notice that close area fits what you want but 95% of the room is totally dark, or lot more than you would. Of course activating photons calculation is out of question. So how the hell ?

Increasing intensity would be the solution for the room, but what about the desk, bleeding will be too intensive. No way then ? Yes, there is :

- Set a pointLight1 object centric on table+room with shads, set it quadratric. Control the bleeding on desk here.
- Set the second pointLight2 object centric on the room only, and set with this one the global lighting you would. You can, to have more control, have this global light as spot, e.g. if you want more global light on the floor than on roof. And once more, splitting there with UP and DOWN-ligting. Set these linear to prevent adding toooo much lights for final result.

pointL1 & pointL2 being at same world coodinates is not always true. It depends on what directly surrounds the light1. As you got a desk under light1, would be more close to reality to raise the light2 a bit.

And so on with the other lights and bounces when the scene gets more complex..

Window >> Relationship editors >> Light Linking >> obj or light centric. There you select a node on the left panel, it will show you the corresponding activated links. Simply click to add/remove a link.

Originally Posted by

I still feel convinced light-linking is your solution. Why ?
'cause beginning "splitting light roles" as you did (your explanation) is a good starting point. But it's not enough because lights in Maya affects ALL objects by default according to distance and intensity (with one of decay algorythm). And I would point out the word ALL user added image

That's precisely what Light-linking is for :blush:

- Avoiding some "too much burned" color while adding lights to get some detail more visible.

- Avoiding lowering ambient/general lighting when you lower the main scene light because it's overburning new objects added for example.

Your question interests me dude, be sure of that.
So I want to help you improve the final result, with SOFT RENDERER (but with general lighting concept).

I'll try finding back some of the great tuts I found 1 year ago. About lighting a scene (outdoor or indoor).
Would be a great help.

Here's a good example of popping colors with the help of light-linking (splitting light roles)

WITH LINKING : popping colors, consistent volumes
user added image

WITHOUT LINKING : dull ambient, boring
user added image

Complete source
https://www.highend3d.com/maya/tutori...ral/235-1.html

A question to fix what you would do : would your pool room have some lights like this ? (without forgetting the filler lamps in the "bar's roof" which are not set in this image).
user added image

How would I fake such bar illum. Look at floor lighting under bar seats and hidden lights right under the top of the bar. That's a good example to me : Both areas are burned, while light doing that is in the upper hidden part, and not near floor. I'm willing to say : it's a bit impossible to realize with default linkings, intensity and decays in Maya. There must be lights for :
- one for burning the wood,
- decay lighting the upper bar, (bounce light)
- one for burning ground,
- one to get some light from the ground back on the bar bottom, (bounce light)
- and one last to have that ground a bit light (can't be the same light burning the ground, as this one will be IN the bar >>we dont want - in this case - a spherical bleed/burn, so light has to be inside the bar, so that we only keep and see the part we want from it. Well, a bit like what you explained in your example : one to burn and one to get a bit of a ambient light)
To be mentioned that this example-list applies to as many chairs we got in this scene. So with about 20-30 lights you can get a pretty nice result on the BAR. Still a lot of others to detail and think about. But this is usually a step by step process >> why I told you earlier that you have to understand Lights Bounces to fake "natural" lighting.

A more simple fact about this image is the bluish light on table, lighting back of the a seat with bluish tint.
Source is tiny, and quadratic, high temperature so high bleeding close (inside the glass in fact), and thus, really quick fadind intensity >> impossible to get the backLight for the chair, exept with LINKING/SPLIT ROLES.
Because the intensity set to get the bleeding, won't, ever, drop enough light on the back of the chair. And if you raise intensity or lower decay range, well, then you'll end up with overburned table hahaha. I feel this is good example of how intensity and decay in Maya leads to dupplicating light sources (to get some kind of a cool looking photon effect). But mostly, to gain much control on the local AND distant areas.

I've understood you don't want that kind of lighting detail though << it's just one more example about how thinking the lights. From early stage with 3 lights to final with 32 or 103 lights, [b]concept just remains the same[b].
Same concept to get correct light on your corridor walls (the shockwave game you gave the url).

Well, I fear i got more and more confusing each time I try to explain. Light is pretty difficult with text hehehe.

/me prepared some rope attached to the point light within the staircase lol :attn: (kiddin' of course user added image

)

Kind regards, Py.