Light Falloff - Feature Request

[darkline]

Would it be possible to implement light ranges/falloff please?

I'd love more control over my lighting

[UnCommonGrafx]

Isn't that what efficiency does?

[darkline]

I don't use standalone really - there is no option for that in the 3DS Max plugin.

Trying to light intricate scenes is hard with the current light options. It would be great to be able to set start and end falloff parameters for the light, as well as barn door parameters for basic lights without having to build them manually (wasting calculation time on light hitting the flags)

[UnCommonGrafx]

Ah, I don't use the standalone, either, but it is implemented in our plugin: lightwave.
I don't think they will do that, based on the physics ideal, because the engine is supposed to be a "real" world renderer.

Falloff does do as you suggest. So, they have it in there...

[darkline]

Thanks uncommon,

I wonder why it's not in the max version then? I was just building a scene where I wanted a reflection in a knife of a figure stood in a doorway in shadow (backlit). Trouble was if I put a light in front of it to define a reflection in the knife, it also lit my subject which I didn't want. I wanted to have controllable falloff so it showed up in the reflection but didn't illuminate the subject.

The backlight is hard to control without barndoors too. Sure I can build them, but I've often found that leads to more hot pixels and increased render times. There must be a better way to control the direction/convergence of emitters. It would still be 'real world', just instead of emitting from the whole plane evenly we could have controls for light intensity to the edges of the plane, controls for the sharpness of that falloff, shape of it etc. IES shows it can be done, mimicking a lens infront of the emitter -it has its uses but it's limited by simply scaling a predefined pattern that we download. I'd like controls to define the pattern in the first place and interactively control all parameters of it in relation to the emitting object. That way we can define whether its a Frenel HMI or a soft Flo box by tweaking parameters and can see barndoors opening/closing interactively.

TBH I don't know how exactly it would be done but right now it's like working with naked flames when you compare it to the lighting options in vray or any other renderer.

[UnCommonGrafx]

I saw an answer in your reply.
Use IES lighting info. In this way, your light is already shaped and you should have control, as you so eloquently put it: shape, falloff and directionality.
Or so it would seem to me.

Yes, some kind of a lighting rig, with barn doors and an iris/adjustable port would be a worthy thing for Octane.

Naked flames... hehe

Edit: I, too, look forward to such controls.

[darkline]

lol, yes IES is a start The problem is IES files are naked bulb patterns. Many use them here because I see tons of architectural designers who like to mimic simple or natural lighting situations. It's not the same when matching for film vfx plates where all the lighting is controllable and heavily sculpted.

Just incase any of the Octane team are reading.....we use many lights for real world filming, for example Dedo lights have controls on them for intensity, cone width, diffusers slots, barndoors and projections patterns/gobos. You need that level of control when lighting. I'm trying to put 3D objects into that shot footage. In standard Max or Vray you've got the ability to mimic these kind of lights with total control over its parameters, so you can easily match the vfx plates.

With Octane the only way to have directional lights is to load a naked IES pattern, the only way to change the cone width/falloff is to load in a different pattern and hope it looks better. You'd never get it to match what you'd shot and the controls are still too limited - no diffusion for small light sources, no barndoors, no falloff controls, no projections, etc...

Anyway, I'm blabbing on. Just hoping they are working on it because for matching lit film vfx plates its essential to have these lighting features.