Why is the Spot Light hidden?

[RwVision]

Hi

I just started a project where I need to use simple spot lights - first look and it's not available form the drop list - same as ambient light.

But you can easily enter it by seeking with SHIFT+C

Why are these lights hidden?
Spot light is a base function, which can't be replaced. Is it somehow still unsupported?

Thanks
Rafal

[sirio76]

I remember both those lights were available in the menu during the private beta but have been removed for the commercial release, probably were considered legacy stuff.
For spot lights you can either use an IES light or a disk area light and increase the directional parameter.

[RwVision]

I remember both those lights were available in the menu during the private beta but have been removed for the commercial release. For spot lights you can either use an IES light or a disk area light and increase the directional parameter.

The thing is, no you can not use other light to simulate Decay, Cone angle, Penumbra Angle and Drop off options which work very nice and I hope CG does not have intention removing it!

[sirio76]

You should ask developers to reintroduce those option then
I never use spot lights on older version since the results always felt a bit fake, it would be interesting to know why they have been removed though.
I think that a proper mesh light option is very important as well.

[RwVision]

Well, not removed - they are in and working well - just lighting up a stadium and works like a charm for this kind of scene. Also probably most fastest also.

aleksandar.kasabov - any thought on this?

[shaio]

The lights exist since the first release of V-Ray 5 for compatibility and interoperability reasons but were never intended to be accessible directly from the V-Ray menu since the Cinema 4D standard lights (omni, ambient, spot, etc) are translated to the same hidden V-Ray lights so their rendering speed should be the same as the Cinema 4D standard lights.
We do have notes in our documentation pages on how to access those lights.

[RwVision]

shaio - Thank you for clarifying - I didn't even know you can still use those from c4d. Please just keep them

[akos_kiss]

I just want to +1 this. The spot light, omni light, ambient light objects are very much needed and useful for a bunch of situations. If we can use the default c4d lights and have the same control of the spot light for example, i'm fine with it. But these light objects are life savers in some situations.
Just just to name one. light gobos are way easier to control with the spotlight.

The other thing is, that it feels like vray is missing a bunch of light "shape". I would really like to have at least the same options as in corona ( cube, cylinder, object etc).

[sirio76]

I would really like to have at least the same options as in corona ( cube, cylinder, object etc).

A simple mesh area light option will cover all those cases, I hope this will come soon.

[akos_kiss]

Hi All!

I wanted to review this thread as I'm testing a matte painting + camera projection setup in vray for some environment setups.

The ambient light is a must have for these situations as the dome light doesn't produce the same result - or at least i couldn't figure out an easy way.
the ambient light works well with backplates and element projected onto a plane in 3d space and it makes it easy to control the lighting.

The other way i was thinking about is to use a standard material with self illumination turned on, or maybe a light material, but with that setup the viewport performance and the material previews with alpha/ opacity are a bit unreliable.

The c4d standard material and a vray ambient light the setup works well enough to get solid srgb renders.

Is there a more up to date workflow with these matte painting + camera projection setups without the ambient light? I know it's a legacy light, but atm this is the only way i know to render these types of shots.

Currently I'm looking it and easy way to convert the srgb psd files into usable acescg texture so we could use it with vraybitmaps as the srgb transfer function in the bitmaps does something weird with files from photoshop as it converts it wrong.