I had posted this but on the wrong forum I think? Hopefully this is the better place,
One of the features I miss fromThea Render in V-Ray are the spotlight pointing tools that give a target helper that can be clicked to an object and therefore the light will be directed to that object, (along with cone and penumbre disc adjustments.) ( see Thea tool.gif). In V-Ray it seems a lot harder to get the spotlight to point in the right direction ( unless I’m missing something)
In V-Ray I have found that a sketchup extension (Eneroth 3D rotate) makes spotlight pointing a lot easier. ( free extension from sketchucation )
When a spotlight is added it points down by default. If you invoke the 3D rotate tool and click on the spotlight origin (cone tip) then click below it (which is blue z axis) then with the 3rd click you select the item you wish for it to point at, this will direct the spotlight exactly to that 3rd click point. (see point one gif and point 2 gif)
The issue after having pointed a spotlight and that if it needs re-positioning is that it will likely be off axis and so the first method (above) using the second click won’t work on that spotlight if you need to re-position it. There are a few ways to help with this, but the one shown in point 3.gif seems the best for me. Right click spotlight and “edit component”, use the tape measure tool to click twice on the blue axis of the spotlight’s component axis, this will produce a dashed lie on the spotlight’s axis. Then using the 3D rotate tool, you can click on that spotlights origin, the second click will inference to the dotted guide line, and then the 3rd click to the target.
Note: That while the “hide v-ray widgets” will work, the guide line remains, so if needed those guides can be dissabled on a scene by scene basis by hiding or adding them to a hidden tag.
Would be good to have a spotlight axis line as part of the native vray component to help with this.
