Advanced Spot Light Tutorial or the IES light fake

[Micha_cg]

Hi,

here I have try to get an advanced spot light effect, like to see at small spotlights with reflector.
Here my solution.


I use a point light with a transparency map in front (spot lights don't work right now).
Here the used light map.


Important: use a full black housing for the lightsource, so you avoid to much indirect light from the light source and you get cleaner results. Also it is good to set a lightsource radius at 1 - it smooth the projected map and give light blured shadows.

Here the scene (without frog) and five light maps.
http://www.simulacrum.de/download/An..._Spotlight.rar

I have try to scale down the whole light construction, but the render times increase much. Maybe somebody find a solution.

Ciao Micha

[Micha_cg]

Advanced Spot Light Tutorial or the IES light fake

Here part two - full 180? light distributation control.

We need a point light and one sphere around. On the sphere is a lighting gradient map mapped at the transparency slot.
The sphere will cause a problem: the sphere dosn't seems to be full closed, there is a light gap allways. To avoid this, I have placed the point light in two mapped spheres (see image), one sphere turned 180? horicontaly. If we disable the double side option of the sphere material, the spheres can be set to a diffuse color without increase the rendertime by additional indirect light.


In Photoshop we can adjust the map per gradient tool.


If somebody like, I can upload the sample scene and map.

-Micha

[andreas]

Advanced Spot Light Tutorial or the IES light fake

thank you Micha,

very interesting concept, i will try to recreate it!

Andy

[jdecreation]

Advanced Spot Light Tutorial or the IES light fake

nice,

and then you can use iesviewer ( freeware )
http://rapidshare.de/files/19045658/...Setup.rar.html
click on FREE in the second row and wait until a link appears...

and download the ies files of various real lights here in order to view their real emisive area...

http://www.acuitybrandslighting.com/...a_Lighting.zip

Once you've installed Ies viewer and the ies description files, you can dispaly thousand of real light map to use with vray.



great, isn't it ?

[Micha_cg]

Advanced Spot Light Tutorial or the IES light fake

jdecreation, thank you for sharing the infos and the tool. Cool. I will test it. It's a pity, than Vray for Rhino dosn't support IES lights now. But maybe I find a way to use it on the projector sphere.

Andy, if I don't forget it, I will post a new download tomorrow - scene, map and PS gradient file.

[Micha_cg]

Advanced Spot Light Tutorial or the IES light fake

Hi,

here an archive with all my light test models - the cylinder light from the first test and two spherical IES fake lights. Also I add a photoshop gradient file and two maps for the different types of lights.
Advantage of the sphere light is, that it can be scaled very small and build in standard light housings.

-Micha

www.simulacrum.de/download/IESFake.rar

[Micha_cg]

Advanced Spot Light Tutorial or the IES light fake

Today I have installed my old never used Flamingo. Flamingo support IES lights and I have try to find a way to get the IES light distributation from Flamingo to Vray. I have find a way, not perfect but useful:

(1) Flamingo:
- set a point light in the middle of a half sphere
- choose a IES file
- render an image of the top view of the inside of the half sphere

(2) Vray:
- copy the half sphere and the light from the Flamingo scene to a Vray rhino task
- assign a black diffuse material to the half sphere with the Flamingo rendering as transparency map
- choose planar mapping
- if necessary close the half sphere with a disk surface (black diffuse) and move the pointlight a little bit inside

At this way, I can import 180? IES lights. I think, it is not perfect, but better than nothing. If I have open two rhino task - one flamingo and one Vray, than I can create IES lights in less seconds.

If somebody need more infos, I could post some screenshots.

-Micha