How to display in the viewport, which light is switched on and which off? (Neon lamps animated)

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max General
1

Hello,
testing a graphical animation with lamps switching on and of.

Unfortunately I can’t see of course anything in the viewport while scrubbing in the timeline.
And rendering would be a ridiculous slow workflow.

Any ideas, how to display this in the vieport?
I only need a visual help that works quick.

(It would be also tedious to switch visibility on/off, because the lamps should be of course also visible when off and it’s not fun to work in the track editor with many objects.
And later I would have also to copy the keys.)

Thanks

2

I presume you’re keying the color of the lights, right? What I thought of is using this script to match the viewport wire color to the light’s color:


for each in selection where classof each == VRayLight do
(
each.viewport_wire_color_on = on
each.color
each.viewport_wire_color = each.color
)

Select all lights and evaluate.

3

if I am not mistaken, he is talking about switching lights on and off only…or?
But anyway this colour script is also not bad for preview purposes!
Cant you give direct access via Vray already implemented?

Then I found this here about Corona: https://youtu.be/2annTOgzImM?t=140
There you find streaks at the lights that indicate Intensity - well working thing isn´t it?
Why not for Vray as well? is this a big deal of changing the code?

and I have another thing about lights in viewports - I putting it on another thread better maybe

4

That’s a nice idea!

5

@caypiranha The on and off switch can’t be keyed, that’s why I presumed OP used the color parameter. Besides, the default coloring is yellow for on and black for off.

Regarding the intensity indicator - It does sound like a good idea. I’ve logged an improvement request (internal bug-tracker id: VMAX-12341).