Sun, Sky and more

Joe, my wishes are:
- direct control of the intensity of the sun (also so the sun could be set 0 or off)
- enable/disable option for sun specular/reflection effect
- it could be good, if I could place different directional sun lights in a scene and choose at the global sun&sky options, which sun is active only (good for architecture renderings with different light setups) The current build show me all suns together.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

If I understand you correctly,you can already do that,what I do is turn off the ones I don’t want via the object properties,and than in the global manager,I choose the one that I want active in the list,I am not even sure we have to turn off the other ones,I would have to try.I have gone in the habit of turning them off. :slight_smile:

Renee

Re: Sun, Sky and more

You would need to disable the other sunlights though - they will be used as direct lights regardless of whether they are being used by a sky texture. But you can choose which sun you want via the Sky Texture editor, or at least you should be able to.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Thank you.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Yes you can it is what I do,I had not notice about other direct lights,because as I wroye I am in the habit of turning them off.

Renee

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Today I’m working on a scene with two suns for different camera views. Allways if I jump from one sun to the other, I must change the sun at the environment and (!) disable/enable the directional light. My wish is, that only the one sun light can be active. If the user enable a sunlight source at the environment options, than all other sun lights could be off per automatic. Or is it useful to use more than one sun light at a rendering?

Edit: maybe it’s needed that no sky is enabled, only a directional sun light, but in this case, the sun lights could act like directional lights like at the current release.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Micha, I think you are indirectly asking for scene states, which is something that Rhino doesn’t have (to my knowledge). The scene states would allow you to save a given setup (lighting, materials, cameras, options, object visibility, etc) which can be very useful for going back and forth between different conditions. Maybe a post on the Newsgroup will spark McNeel into taking a look into supporting scene states ;).

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Scene states. Sounds interesting and complex. My wish is a simple one only :wink: : I would be happy, if more than one sun light source is at the scene, than the sun light from the environment texture is used only.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Scene states can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. If all you want is to save the state of vray options or a given light I think you can do that, but you can also have them extend to a load of other things. I used them a bit in Max and they were pretty useful, and depending on how flexible they are, I would like to see them in Rhino. If they aren’t flexible (ie what parameters having the option of being saved or not) then they might become a bit of a hassle.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

And what about people who want two suns? I’d be turning my back on sales to every planet with more than one sun… :wink:

I guess we could figure some way out to do that - but I always feel dirty when I plan on removing functionality because I think “no one will ever need that”…because generally I’m wrong when I think like that. So maybe I can find some happy median - like an option somewhere that says to pay attention only to the sun that is being used by the sky.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Maybe if it could be attached to a specific camera…ie initializing Named View A will enable Sun01 and disable Sun02…in fact it could be done through a macro…give me a few minutes.

Re: Sun, Sky and more

Well I wrote a macro for it, but for some reason I am not able to actually turn on or off the light via the command line. I don’t think its a huge deal, but if it could be resolved I would greatly appreciated ;D.

Here’s the macro…Named View_01 can be whatever you have your view saved as, but if has a space in it it must be in quotes. To do the inverse, simply add the other view and switch light 01 for light 01 (provided you haven’t named the suns differently then what they are named by default). Other than changing the environment to reference the other sun it should take care of it. If some one could test this out that would be great. Maybe my computer is screwed up or something (or the user).

_-NamedView
Restore
“Named View_01”
Enter
_SelNone
_SelName “Light 02”
_-Properties Light On No Enter Enter
_SelNone
_SelName “Light 01”
_-Properties Light On Yes Enter Enter
_SelNone