Lights won't transfer to render Tweet

[Erick]

In Octane you would set this up is up as a photographer would. In general, it is very hard (in the real world) to have a focused spotlight - you need a real spotlight for that. If you are rendering a stage for example, where you need a spotlight, I think that will be challenging with Octane. I ran a quick test, and you can put a sphere inside open ended cylinder, and then block one end of the cylinder, so the light only escapes out the other end. Parent the 3 props together so you can move and rotate then as one. Then set the sphere ambient_color to white and ambient_value to 10 and run the Octane plugin and the sphere will be an emitter. However it will not give a focused beam of light - light will escape off to the sides - because in reality I think a spotlight uses various lens' to focus the light - and that is not easily possible in Octane.

So in summary, I think you would only need to do the above if you were rendering a scene which uses real world spotlights - otherwise use the more flexible Octane lighting in the previous posts above.

Ahh! Now that's a great idea.
I really have to try this out and play around with this.
Thanks for your response, much appreciated.

[Lightray]

There you are... creative thinking always prevails. Great idea EricK! Opens up the though process of making various lights from your own 3D meshes. How about a 3D model of a spot light. Then make the lens of the spot light an emitter. That would work too. You can buy or make a 3D movie light with barn doors I suppose. That would then become a REALTIME movie light in Octane. Interesting idea. I may have to try this concept.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

[face_off]

I actually tried this but putting a sphere inside an open ended cylinder prop, but the result was a slow render so you would need to experiment with different mesh shapes and densities, materials and render settings. It is definitely a lot more work than loading an IBL

[Lightray]

I have a model of a sic fi base interior command center which does not have lighting in the model. However, it's open on one end. So I made the texture environment an RGB spectrum plate and fine tuned the power settings to get the right amount of ambient lighting. Then added in the Emitter lights made from poser lights. It works pretty well. The emitters can be tempered to give a good color flow into the scene. The environment is easy to adjust to get good balance between the lights and the model. Textures respond differently to the combinations of effects, so you need to play with it a bit, but it can be fun.

The render time isn't bad with this situation either... about 20 minutes per frame at 1920x976 which is what I get pulling the viewport open to fill a full 52" HDTV screen I use as a main video monitor. With the image being so large, I can see exactly what I'm going to get on screen with full resolution. Even adjusting the size to full 1920x1080 after I have done my set up work. Which is an easy adjustment, the render time isn't much slower. Things can be done to tweak the settings to get a little faster render time.

THe results of the images are pretty good. Nearly photo quality on a model with low quality textures. I suspect that in a higher density model with true High Definition Textures, the render times may increase significantly, but the results will speak for themselves. I have found that the lighting is the most important aspect of producing a convincing looking shot for a film production like I'm doing. This software has allowed me the ability to do what I thought was not going to be possible without spending thousands of dollars.

[Zay]

You can use IES lights or textures on a simple plane for spotlights.

From page 100 in the Octane manual.