What lights/materials do you need for a spotlight?

[MulaG]

Can anyone tell me how you make a good ceiling spotlight for an interior scene. I don't mean the actual mesh but the materials for the bulb and the type of light used: eg. Omni light?

 

I'm assuming that the bulb has to be at least 50% transparent to let the light through and to see the luminance of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[STRAT]

must be honest i've never modelled a conventional light bulb before now. i usually do more modern designer fittings. take a look at this image -

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=477

 

 

the mesh is very simple, but i literally used a plain old omni light for the actual light itself, making sure it was attenuated (obviously) and i added a bit of visiblity to it to to show up the glow.

And the mesh fixture itself is a solid chrome ringed base, with a 50% self illumed and 50% transparent glass disk for the dissipator, with render tag switching off cast shads.

 

c4d's lights are very very flexable and usable. i could have used a whole host of different light types in this example with equally good results. just experiment and try stuff out. YOU MUST USE ATTENUATION THO!

[Ace_Face]

A spotlight will render faster than an omni. So for a downlight it is probably the best choice.

[Ernest Burden III]

A spotlight will render faster than an omni. So for a downlight it is probably the best choice.

 

Can you put the light into the geometry of the fixture, create an instance to copy about? Save it like a 'block' for future projects?

[Frosty]

yes ernest.

 

create a null, insert geometry and necessary lights. Instance the parent null as needed.

 

rotary or grid arrays could also be used rather than instances.

 

the only caveat is that one copy must be brought into the current file unlike an xref (is that the same as a block?).

[MulaG]

Thanks Strat! Your image looks very good I must say. I was trying to get the glow to come out a bit on my scene that I'm working on but it didn't quite work. I have been rendering it for some time now and will post it shortly.

 

[Tom: Your right the spotlights are a hell of a lot quicker to render! :-)]

 

Thanks for your help :-)

[MulaG]

These are the spotlights, are these okay? Here's my first render...

 

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/showthread.php?t=5297