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Lights following splines

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  • Lights following splines

    Any tips on how to animate lights (or glowing geometry) along splines to simulate car headlights?

    I have a motorway and I want to have light streaks going up and down it as you would get with a timelapse video. I had a go by creating a spline and using Pflow to get a system flowing down the spline using squares aligned to the camera with a simple bitmap applied to the squares. The result is 'ok', but I am an absolute novice with pflow. With that simple system I have pretty much exhausted my knowledge!

    This looks ok for one streak, but how would you randomly repeat that along either the same, or a different spline so there is a constant 'pulse' of car headlights zipping around?

    Is pflow the best solution?

    Opinions/tips appreciated.

    And is vray capable of rendering something like this? Using scanline with a self illuminating material took about a second. On vray, it took about 20.
    Kind Regards,
    Richard Birket
    ----------------------------------->
    http://www.blinkimage.com

    ----------------------------------->

  • #2
    have the spline be renderable and self illuminating, then animate a mask to run down the path. you could randomly offset the mask key frames to simulate many cars

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    • #3
      Here is a script
      https://cgtricks.com/vehicle-light-t...-lucas-milner/

      There is another plugin I used called Ghost Trails http://www.ghosttrails.net/
      https://www.behance.net/bartgelin

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      • #4
        Originally posted by tricky View Post
        And is vray capable of rendering something like this? Using scanline with a self illuminating material took about a second. On vray, it took about 20.
        If you aren't interested in those headlights lighting the environment around them, you could put their materials into a vrayMtlWrapper, and turn off GI generation.
        That will speed the render up noticeably; possibly not as quick as scanline, but close enough provided they aren't a million float in intensity.
        Lele
        Trouble Stirrer in RnD @ Chaos
        ----------------------
        emanuele.lecchi@chaos.com

        Disclaimer:
        The views and opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent those of Chaos Group, unless otherwise stated.

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        • #5
          Thanks guys. Useful ideas to explore...
          Kind Regards,
          Richard Birket
          ----------------------------------->
          http://www.blinkimage.com

          ----------------------------------->

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