Spotlight not showing in render

spswafford

Not sure what I'm missing, but I put a spotlight in my scene to simulate the light of a fire in a bowl. I can see the light in the pre-render workspace, but when I do a render, it does not show up. I have attached a screen shot of the workspace with some settings and one of a render. Let me know if more info is needed.

Thanks

BeeMKay

If you are rendering in Iray, you need to increase the strength of lights using the lumiance setting further down in the Parameter tab. Check out http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/110771/natural-iray-lighning-for-rooms#latest The thread has some information about lighting in Iray.

The strength settings are for using the lights in 3Delight.

 

Richard Haseltine

I wouldn't be unduly surprised if the light was under the geometry of the bowl, depending on how it is modelled, in which case all light would be blocked.

spswafford

I'm using 3DL. Will check out the link.

I can try raising it up a bit to test that. If it turns out that is the case, what can be changed to allow it to work?

Thanks

spswafford

That does not appear to be the issue. I moved the light so it was flush with the top of the bowl, then moved it so it was above the bowl. Did renders both times. No difference. Something else is going on. This is a basic spotlight.

Richard Haseltine

In 3delight you can set the Shadow Type to none, but then nothing will block the light so it's harder to control where it falls.

spswafford

Currently I have the Shadow Type set to Raytraced. It was set to Raytraced for all examples.

BeeMKay

You've set the beam decay to 2. I know that that would be the normal decay for light, but it might be too much for the scene, and the light fades out before it reaches the all.

If you select the light in the viewport, and use it as camera POV, does the beam angle allow for the light to actually touch the the lady's face and the walls (assuming that's the effect you're after)? If you are looking for a 360° spread light effect, using a linear point light is probably a better idea.

spswafford

I'm trying to simulate light from the fire in the bowl. It should light up some of the wall behind and the girl next to it. It should be somewhat bright in the immediate area. I originally thought of using a point light, but then I read about using a spotlight as a sort of point light by incresing the Spread Angle. I currently have the Spread angle set to 150. I like the effect I see in the workspace and that is what I would like to get in the render. I have my Intensity Scale set at 1. I'm guessing that may need to be raised, but I thought setting the Intensity to 2500 was enough.

FeralFey

If you're trying to simulate actual fire, might I suggest using a point light instead. It throws light in all directions, unlike a spotlight or a distant light, which throws light in one direction?

Using the point light you can scale it up or down as your needs require (and because it's a sphere shape, you can easily see where the influence of the light will fall when you're scaling it up or down - of course you need to have it bright enough to be able to see the sphere in your viewport.) Make sure that the pointlight is in front of the flame geometery in the bowl, otherwise it won't illuminate the flames.

Good luck!

dawnblade

Try changing the color of the light to white, just to see if the problem is the shade of yellow you chose. Maybe it's not strong enough, although I do notice the intensity is high.

spswafford

Changing to white made no difference. Its like its not even in the scene.

dawnblade

If you added a camera, the headlamp is on by default. Maybe it is obscuring your light. Turn the headlamp off, and also set the "Auto headlamp" in render settings to Never.

spswafford

I have several cameras. I checked and switched the headlamps to off. Auto Headlamp in the render settings was already set to Never. No difference.

Going to try creating another spotlight and put it on the subject, just to see if it shows up. Starting to wonder if any light works beside the ones for the environment.

Will also try putting in a point light.

dawnblade

Bee was right. Decay is too high. I never change it from its default, but I used your spotlight settings, including Decay = 2. My scene rendered completely dark.

I then changed the Decay to .5, and the light was working better. Try setting the Decay back to zero just to test it. Your spotlight should work.

spswafford

OK, spotlight pointing at the subject worked. Point light worked better, and brought the flames to life.

So going to leave the point light, but going to play with the spotlight a bit more. I remember there are 2 cones in the spotlight and I only adjusted 1.

Couple more questions. Any suggestions to make the fire light look more natural? And the metal of the outfit look more natural, not glowing?

spswafford

Setting the decay to 0 did make it show up, finally, lol. But it doesn't look quite right. going to play with the Spread Angle to see if i can get it to look more like the Point Light.

spswafford

Looks like the Point Light is better for the job. Tried a couple more settings with the Spotlight, but it looks like a spotlight. Not as natural as the Point Light.

spswafford

After talking with a friend, went with a orange-yellowish light color. Thought it looked much better.

For the outfit, I tried changing the Lighting Model to Metal, then Glossy (metal), but neither seems to look right. I have http://www.daz3d.com/real-metals-for-daz-studio and applied that to all the metal items of the outfit and pretty happy with the result.

Thanks for the help.

Richard Haseltine

dawnblade said:

If you added a camera, the headlamp is on by default. Maybe it is obscuring your light. Turn the headlamp off, and also set the "Auto headlamp" in render settings to Never.

That is, or should be, redundant - setting the Render Settings option to Never should also turn off all camera headlamps unless they are set to On by the user.

dawnblade said:

Bee was right. Decay is too high. I never change it from its default, but I used your spotlight settings, including Decay = 2. My scene rendered completely dark.

I then changed the Decay to .5, and the light was working better. Try setting the Decay back to zero just to test it. Your spotlight should work.

2 is physically correct - that's the inverse square law (doubling the distance from the light reduces its brightness to a quarter). If Gamma correction is being used it should be possible to get adequate light that way - if gamma is 1 then that will be a very faint light very quickly.

dawnblade

Richard Haseltine said:

dawnblade said:

If you added a camera, the headlamp is on by default. Maybe it is obscuring your light. Turn the headlamp off, and also set the "Auto headlamp" in render settings to Never.

That is, or should be, redundant - setting the Render Settings option to Never should also turn off all camera headlamps unless they are set to On by the user.

dawnblade said:

Bee was right. Decay is too high. I never change it from its default, but I used your spotlight settings, including Decay = 2. My scene rendered completely dark.

I then changed the Decay to .5, and the light was working better. Try setting the Decay back to zero just to test it. Your spotlight should work.

2 is physically correct - that's the inverse square law (doubling the distance from the light reduces its brightness to a quarter). If Gamma correction is being used it should be possible to get adequate light that way - if gamma is 1 then that will be a very faint light very quickly.

Thanks Richard! Just copied this to my tips doc. :)

runidjurhuus

check your environment settings, if it's not set to scene, dome or scene, scene only, then you're spotlights won't show up, emissive surfaces will however

D4nThrx

And how might we locate those settings?

ps2000

Render > Render Setting > Environment