A little help with Arealights!

daniel.crone

Hi all,
I'm trying to use area lighting to add more depth to an item, I have created the lights and they work in the render, but I can't find which option I need to enable the light to show in the workspace. This is becoming tedious and not so enjoyable trying to adjust the lights then render to test, rinse and repeat, I'm sure I've seen videos online where the light is cast in the workspace so if anyone could help me out it would be much appreciated!

Cheers

mark128

If you are using the uberArea plane, it should load an headLight blocker that will light up the work space. It does not light up the space the way the area light will though. If you are creating your own area lights by applying a lighting shader, you can try loading one of the uberArea lights and delete the light but keep the head lamp blocker.

JimmyC_2009

You can also use the Spot Render tool (Alt+Shift+C) to just render a small area for testing.

XoechZ

As far as I know, the UberAreaLight never affects the Viewport, because it is no "real" light but a light emitting surface, created with a special kind of shader. So you can see it only in the render.

ZarconDeeGrissom

yes, yes. Uber stuff has two different lights in each unit. The surface tab controls the lights in a render, and the 'Headlight blocker' in the lights settings controls the lights in the view-field to a minimal extent.

Not all Uber stuff has both parts, tho it is a 'shader' code that must be renderd, not an OpenGL thing visible in the view-field.

Also, use the 'Ctrl' key when loading the panels (or right-click and "Merge into scene"), as some of the lights tend to completely replace ALL the other lights in a scene.

Szark and adamr001, has some great stuff on the Uber Lights, well worth looking at.

Uber Area Lighting: The Basics
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14536/

Learning UberEnvironment
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/5320/