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Spotlight falloff - determining exact distances?

gederixgederix Posts: 390
edited December 1969 in New Users

Is there any way to accurately determine spotlight falloff start/end distances?
At the moment I am just guessing, moving my view above or perpendicular to the scene and counting grids, but its very hit and miss and requires actually running a render to see whats what (which is unnecessarily time consuming).
On cameras for ex. there is a visual aid to show you exactly where your f-stop starts and ends but nothing like this for spotlights.
What am I missing?
thanks!

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,745
    edited December 1969

    Poser, DAZ Studio or another application? Which spotlight? In DAZ Studio the default spot light doesn't have distance fall-off (which is annoying).

  • gederixgederix Posts: 390
    edited December 2014

    Uberspots in Daz.

    Sorry I thought I was posting in the daz forum, being hasty at work. Thanks!

    Post edited by gederix on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,745
    edited December 1969

    The start/end distances for uberSpot are in centimetres, as are most distance and size settings in DS.

  • gederixgederix Posts: 390
    edited December 1969

    Yes I figured that out. I am guessing there is no feature like Im looking for.
    I think it would be extremely handy is if their was a visual guide extending directly out from the spotlight (or any light with falloff) that showed you where your falloff starts and ends. Similar to how the camera depth-of-field/fstop indicator works. A couple of planes that slide along the focal distance that you can visually set rather than awkwardly maneuvering your perspective around trying to count grids and calculate the hypotenuse.
    I did come up with a solution though (after posting my question), place my spot then create a camera in the same spot and use its depth of field to measure. With lighting so critical to the final result I think a bit more precision would be nice, rather than having to guess, hit render and adjust as necessary, rinse repeat.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,745
    edited December 1969

    Try this, I think it will work for you (I just parented a couple of non-rendering, unselectable, planes to an uberSpot and use the Property Hierarchy to slave the translation of each to the Falloff sliders of the uberSpot).

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/sb3k0awjjbhy0zu/uberSpot with guide planes.zip?dl=0

  • gederixgederix Posts: 390
    edited December 1969

    Thanks! I will check it out this week!

  • gederixgederix Posts: 390
    edited December 1969

    Just a quick followup - the uberspot you provided was very helpful thanks! But it did not quite work as expected - only the plane for the far falloff slider shows up, however I was able to use it to make my measurements, very handy.
    I also realized pretty quick that my own solution using the camera fstop to measure will not work.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,745
    edited December 1969

    I'm not sure why only the far plane showed, sorry about that.

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