Creating a "Light Bulb" in Poser!

[Lyne]

Because I had a need...I had to search, read up, and LEARN a new thing... I will post these images on my website when I can, but thought it would be helpful for folks here.

Ok got it fixed, hope I substituted the images correctly...thanks MissB for catching that...me and my dyslexia... oh and ok... I won't offer any freebie... material has to be made by the user to suit.. (ie: light color and strength)...

 

[eclark1894]

Since it would only work in Poser anyway, to avoid any legalities, I would just save the material settings and distribute that.

 

[Miss B]

Good point Earl, and Lyne, while you're editing, you repeated "where you" twice in the parenthetical on the second line.

 

[seachnasaigh]

Lyne, generally, casts shadows should be un-checked for any emitter. If the emitter closely envelopes a visible prop (light bulb, etc), it can block light.

Note: Lyne's lamp will work in P9/Pro2012 (with SR3.1) and later - earlier SRs lack the magic visible in camera box.

 

[Lyne]

ah... thanks, sea... I'll check cast shadowing in my current project to see if it helps, or makes any difference because some lights from a lamp (and they are not really enveloped they are under, beside or above, etc....hmmm in fact, since they are invisible in a render (camera) I'm not sure any shadows would be affected... I don't SEE any shadows with my three 'bulbs'.... but hey, still learning! Thanks!

 

[Miss B]

Good to know about the cast shadows option Seachnasaigh.

 

[seachnasaigh]

Belatedly, it occurs to me that I should clarify. When I said that an emitter should not cast shadows, I meant an object/MATzone which is being used as a light-casting mesh, such as Lyne's light bulb.

The light emitter check box in an object's properties panel actually means "participates - passively and/or actively- in indirect light diffuse calculations, ambient occlusion, and other related effects". Everything has this box checked by default. Everything participates in IDL calculation, by default.

I used the term emitter to refer to objects which are active light sources - mesh lights. If you have a neon tube prop, with an (unseen) emitter mesh shrinkwrapped over it, then I recommend turning off casts shadows for the close-fitting emitter; else it may do weird things when rendered.

 

[Miss B]

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Ken1171]

It's good to get used to lighting scenes with mesh lights nowadays since both Poser and DS now ship with PBR solutions, where mesh lights are the only way to go. I have been using Octane for about 2 years before iRay and Superfly, and there too, mesh lights are the only way to lit a scene, besides physical sky.

But one thing to keep in mind when using IDL in Poser is that if you use a sphere primitive as an emitter, be careful with the number of facets, since Poser converts EACH face into a light emitter. Not only your scene will be lit with hundreds of lights, but also the size of each face is rather small, and that tends to cause artifacts in IDL renders. Octane also has issues with small emitters, because the light diffusion so large, it doesn't know where to place shadows.

It is recommended to use simple planes (with a single face) as emitters for Poser IDL and general PBR solutions, and make sure they are large enough to avoid noisy renders. As an example, the default plane primitive in Poser is too small to work well as a light emitter in Octane, and I tend to scale it up to 300% to have a better starting point. The default size creates noisy renders that take much longer to clear, if ever. ^^

 

[Miss B]

It is recommended to use simple planes (with a single face) as emitters for Poser IDL and general PBR solutions, and make sure they are large enough to avoid noisy renders. As an example, the default plane primitive in Poser is too small to work well as a light emitter in Octane, and I tend to scale it up to 300% to have a better starting point. The default size creates noisy renders that take much longer to clear, if ever. ^^

That's what I used when doing my first Cycles render in Blender. The tut author said to use a plane, and how to angle it so the light emitted down to the prop I was rendering. I think I also used one of the Uber lights in DS 3A, and it too was a plane.

Good info Ken.