Is there a distant spotlight?

RexRed

Like there is a distant light for scenes, is there a way to make a spotlight a distant light? So the light penetrates longer, for example, through a gobo?

Spotlight parameters like light length don't seem to have any effect or change. I once heard these parameters don’t work in Iray.

I one time looked though a gobo spotlight light and it looked like I was looking though a dimension from far away.

Is there a distant spotlight and how do you make one in Daz?

And while I am on the subject, is there a way to focus a mesh light so it travels further but is not so intense at the source? 

I am having trouble understanding why spotlights can focus colored light far away, but mesh lights don’t seem to be able to do the same thing.

I turn the colored mesh light luminance up and it just goes white, and the color gets washed out before the colored light travels very far.

An explanation of this and possible solution would be nice.

Oh, and another thing,

When a spotlight through a gobo hits the floor and creates a huge spot on the floor, is there a way to turn this off so you only see the travel effect and not the destination effect?

Thanks in advance for any help with these inquiries.

 

SimonJM

I think most of your wishes would disobey the laws of physics so would not be able to be implemented in a PBR engine such as Iray. Some could be done (and are done) within 3Delight.. Light obeys the inverse square rule whereby if you double th distance it has to travel you reduce it's energy/power by 4; so if you have a distant light (of any type) far, far away you would need it's emission level to to ramped up for it to provide any mesningful illumination on items close to the camera - although you'd still be able to see the distant light source. Any light source with it's emission levels dialled up high has the potential to cause a white-out effect in the camera, and despite providing the basic colour of the light to what it shines on it the source will appear as white.

Looking through any spotlight may distort teh view depending on the spread angle setting, any plane providing a gobo woudl just, potentially, obscure the view you do get.

The shadow of the gobo on the floor is a thing you can deal with in Iray, turn off the Ground in the settings under the Environment section of the Render Settings.

All this presupposes you are using Iray and not 3Delight!

Fishtales

Is it something like this you mean. Spotlight on right and I just stuck a leafless tree in front of it as I don't have any gobos :)

Click on image for full size.

Richard Haseltine

If you turn off Show Hidden Properties in the property pane's option menu (right-click the tab>Preferences) then things which don't apply should get hidden, at least with the standard Daz lights.