Lights playing tricks on me

[Eric2575]

Starting with the basic three light setup, I began adding lights to my chor. At first, the additional lights did what they were supposed to do, but after about five or six additional lights, my keylight seemed to turn off with the other lights doing all the work. Turning off the last added light, turned the keylight back on.

 

I figured the last light was somehow defective, so I deleted it and created a new one. The same thing happened, the keylight, although the chor said it was on, was actually not doing anything to light the scene. Another test confirmed this. Instead of deleting the last added light, I just turned it off in the chor and the keylight immediately went back to normal intensity. Turn the last added light back on and the keylight behaves just like I turned it off.

 

It seems to me this is some kind of default behavior by AM? How can I add lights without having existing lights turn off?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

Eric

[Eric2575]

Bump

[Eric2575]

Opening the chor again tonight, nothing changed. The key light was still not illuminating the scene unless I turned off the last added light. Out of frustration I hit "Light Default Models" several times under the keylight and all of a sudden, the scene came to light, er, I mean life, no light, well, anyway. Toggeling LDM and hitting the spacebar did the trick, although it should not have required a trick.

 

With all these responses, I'm so glad I have myself to fall back on <_>

 

Eric

[steve392]

Hi Eric ,sorry no answers never come across this problem ,but hey maybe you need to put another shilling in the meter lol , sorry couldn't resist

[Dhar]

Eric, maybe no one answered because no one had that same problem or some are trying to duplicate it.

 

I am currently working on a project with lots of lights, and I don't have the problem you describe.

 

I noticed that sometimes my camera properties change without ever touching it. See if your camera is in the same place as you put it, or if any of its properties changed.

[martin]

Only a limited number of lights show up in realtime rendering. Try "Final" rendering? Are they alright there?

[LurkerAbove]

Actually, I was going to fire off a "me too post", but it doesn't exactly match my issue which I don't think is an issue at all but a misunderstanding of how things work.

 

This seems to be related to a discussion in the Radiocity forum...

 

Which culminates here

 

I'd love to hear a bit more of an explanation of how the lighting and global lighting works --not from a technical lighting perspective but from a "how the software does lighting" perspective. Actually, both perspectives are cool, but I think most of the writings I see here are on the lighting behavior as lighting as opposed to thow the software behaves when you tinker with lighting.

 

From the post I liked above, the conversation continues further to talk about how global lighting is by default on and then turns off as you add more lights. However, when I look at the chor settings, I see that front global lighting is off.

 

Is there a discussion or documentation I've missed this further discuesses this behavior. There is nothing in the help, as far as I can tell.

 

Don't force me to use the pun of providing some 'illumination' on the subject of lighting

[Eric2575]

Dhar, could you describe your project just a bit please? I'm basically lighting a room with walls, floor and ceiling. I believe my problems started and still persist after adding about six extra lights besides the standard three. How many lights do you have and in what conditions? Is it an inside or outside scene?

 

Martin, how am I supposed to arrange lighting for a scene when additional lights seem to nullify existing lights? It seems very counterintuitive and counterproductive to have this happen only to be able to see the full effect of the light setup by doing a final render. So I wait for the final render, get the result, don't like the look, change a light setting and re-render just to see if the tweak has the effect I desire? If the tweak did not achieve the effect I wanted, do the whole thing all over?

 

How many lights until AM decides it wants to shut some down?

 

If this is the only way, lighting is definitely not my favorite subject.

[luckbat]

Martin, how am I supposed to arrange lighting for a scene when additional lights seem to nullify existing lights? It seems very counterintuitive and counterproductive to have this happen only to be able to see the full effect of the light setup by doing a final render. So I wait for the final render, get the result, don't like the look, change a light setting and re-render just to see if the tweak has the effect I desire?

Absolutely. You can't possibly rely on the GPU-rendered version for your lighting--it's an incredibly crude approximation. You *must* render your set to see what the lighting is going to be like.

[martin]

Martin, how am I supposed to arrange lighting for a scene when additional lights seem to nullify existing lights? It seems very counterintuitive and counterproductive to have this happen only to be able to see the full effect of the light setup by doing a final render. So I wait for the final render, get the result, don't like the look, change a light setting and re-render just to see if the tweak has the effect I desire? If the tweak did not achieve the effect I wanted, do the whole thing all over?

Uhhh... That's what Render Lock is for.

[Dhar]

Eric- you have a ceiling? Is the light in question above or below the celing?

 

My scene is a bar scene, 4 walls, floor, no celing. I got rid of the Key light and simply used two fill lights (blue at 20% intensity) and 12 fill lights (light yellow with varying intensities depending on location).

[Eric2575]

Dhar,

 

I had a light above the ceiling as a sun shining through windows and door, but decided to delete that and use other lights inside the room instead. Here is the thread: http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23734&hl=

 

The scene is actually looking pretty good to me right now.

 

Martin:

 

Ooohhhhh, is that what Render lock is for? I thought it was a security measure to keep Render away from unauthorized users

 

What's the best way to model/texture a ball of yarn?

[ddustin]

Eric,

We had the same issue in a large industrial scene where we had a bunch of lights overhead to simulate factory lighting.

 

In our particular case the render review was indicitive of the final render, so I just chalked it up to one of "those" things, and moved on.

 

David

[Eric2575]

My "one of those things" bin is almost overflowing. Gotta go unload that sucker soon!