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DS Lights

PostPosted: Wed Apr 10, 2013 11:09 pm
by SimonJM
In addition to the plugin hiding the DS camera setting of focus point (or whateve rit's called!) I have just noticed that, in addition to it attaching Octane settings to Lights it also hides the light intensity setting - most annoying! :)

Re: DS Lights

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 12:29 pm
by t_3
SimonJM wrote:In addition to the plugin hiding the DS camera setting of focus point (or whateve rit's called!) I have just noticed that, in addition to it attaching Octane settings to Lights it also hides the light intensity setting - most annoying! :)
um. this is not intended ;) looks like any DS light added to a scene is also reported as new plain standard camera, thus the plugin believes there is a new camera, and adds it as octane camera settings to what is in fact a light source. hm; i must admit i never thought about that being possible. nor do i wanted that behavior.

will be fixed... but... what do you think: should a DS light camera view be also replicated as octane camera or not? i mean does it make sense, or is it of any use to look through a DS light on the scene in octane? i tend to think, that this doesn't make much sense until you start adding meshlight child objects to DS own lights. what imo again is not recommended, since octane requires a pretty different thinking regarding lighting. my pov is, it would be best to keep DS/3delight light setups and octane light setups strictly separated. this is btw also the reason why the plugin doesn't "convert" DS lights into octane mesh light objects, and won
t do that in the future.

but of course the plugin should not alter any existing or new DS light objects ;)

Re: DS Lights

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 1:47 pm
by SimonJM
I suspect it happens due to that fact that you can use lights to view through, so get 'announced' as having 'camera-properties' when they load, much as you say.

Much like you I suspect we'd wish to divorce DS lights from anything Octane-related - unless there could be some cunning way of automagically converting them to an Octane equivalent (like taking a suitably named Distant light and using the orientation to prep the long/lat settings of sunlight, converting a spotlight to an IES-driven model of a spot, etc.). I often peek through a DS light, just to confirm it is pointing just where I want it to. In any event camera-related properties are strange to see on a light and I'm glad they will be going! :)

Re: DS Lights

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 2:06 pm
by t_3
SimonJM wrote:I suspect it happens due to that fact that you can use lights to view through, so get 'announced' as having 'camera-properties' when they load, much as you say.

Much like you I suspect we'd wish to divorce DS lights from anything Octane-related - unless there could be some cunning way of automagically converting them to an Octane equivalent (like taking a suitably named Distant light and using the orientation to prep the long/lat settings of sunlight, converting a spotlight to an IES-driven model of a spot, etc.). I often peek through a DS light, just to confirm it is pointing just where I want it to. In any event camera-related properties are strange to see on a light and I'm glad they will be going! :)
from what i have read, luxury does that - it converts ds lights for luxrender. imHo not the best idea ever... the results i have seen so far (if not tuned) are extremely overexposed, show hard contrasts, and are in general oversaturated, or in other words do not return what luxrender is able to do, if a scene is properly illuminated. and it would have been the same with octane (of course, as the same principles do apply).

if i recall right "hellboy", one of the top artists using ds + luxrender, did at some point recommend to just throw away all converted ds lights to get better results ;)

so, i think i'll keep the plugin from altering ds lights (of course) and otherwise leave them alone.

oh, and btw, there is something planned which will make not only more sense, but will mimic the way to work with ds lights in octane by using special light props: viewtopic.php?p=113616#p113616
...

Re: DS Lights

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 4:54 pm
by SimonJM
Sounds good to me! :)

Re: DS Lights

PostPosted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 8:55 pm
by SimonJM
The fact that altering DS light parms very frequently will cause DS to crash with the error message pointing at Octane (or plug-in) related modules is another reason I am happy these will be going! :)


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For very frequently read every time I adjust shadow softness
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