Multiple lights as seperate render elements

[Koper]

Am I just miss looking it or is this just not possible.

 

So you have two spots and want each spot to be saved into its own render element by only rendering once.

 

see attachments.

 

does anyone know how or maybe of any script?

 

 

A

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I have long been jealous of Maxwell's ability to adjust items post render.. Lights, Exposure, etc... It is the one feature I am jealous of in Maxwell.

 

But anyway, ...this may get you one step closer to what you need. It is not exactly what you need, but may be a different way of doing it. I have never used it, but I think it does something similar to do.

 

http://www.evvisual.com/maxscript/script_multilight.htm

[Koper]

yes, i have seen this but I am thinking of now just scripting all lights into an array and then auto submitting each light in turn to the backburner queue. In effect it will be the same thing

 

thanx for the reply

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I would be interested in hearing about the process and results when you are done.... if you have a chance.

[Koper]

will do.

 

is just a simple "for loop" with "class off".... i think

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Scene states might be an organizational help.

 

Just guessing you ought to be able to batch render various scene states and I think I recall "light settings" is something you can save with scene states. So just turn them all off. Turn them on one at a time and make a new state for each.

 

If you're already scripting, I don't know that that saves you anything. Or anything.

[DanGrover]

I did this for a short film I worked on, although not in a way that might be useful to you as it wasn't an element - it basically involved rendering the scene twice (or thrice, or however many lights there were) which was a pain, but it was great to have that control. I ended up just rendering most of the lights white and then tinting it in post, as you had direct control over all of it. Combine that with MR's Arch and Design output elements and i ended up with about 18 passes for each shot, but it meant there was basically nothing I couldn't fix in post due to all the control, or if I needed to re-render, it was often only one of the passes.

 

So I can't help, but I recommend doing it anyway!

[WAcky]

Might one of these be of use?

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/l-pass-manager

http://rpmanager.com/

[Koper]

yes, its the control I'm after, and it was about 50 street lamps, but allas, i was just told we're only doing daylight, no night time stuff, bummer

 

 

 

I'm sure the scripts mentioned might help, just sooo much buttons my head goes boooom.

 

 

 

I did however start with a small script and think it can be the backbone for what i described. This script just puts the selected lights or lights in selection into an array (not the targets just the lights) Then there are two for loops, first all the lights are switched off and then in the second loop each light is turned on in sequence and then turned off. it only have some print commands now but anyone will get the idea.

 

 

 

 

the script ---

 

 

lightobjs = (for l in selection where superclassof l == light collect l)

for m = 1 to lightobjs.count do lightobjs[m].enabled = false

 

for m = 1 to lightobjs.count do

(

lightobjs[m].enabled = true

print lightobjs[m].name as string

print "I am on" ---- set the light state

print " I render" ---- run the render settings and submit

print " I am off" ---- set the light state

lightobjs[m].enabled = false

)

 

 

----

[Koper]

@moderators, maybe move this thread to the scripts section

[Peter M. Gruhn]

Noticed something on the Compositor video about separate lights. Didn't look close at what it was or wasn't doing.

[Koper]

Nope, you still have to render them out as a separate pass

 

[Dave Buchhofer]

well, the L pass manager at least has a menu option to create a "Pass per Light" for you automatically

 

Its actually a pretty useful system once you get the basic treeview flow down

[Koper]

I'll have a more closer look at the l pass manager then