I’ve been doing a lot of reading about lighting and thought that having a light meter in my CG scene would really be useful. I’ve created an expresso expression to do just that. Here’s how you use it:
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Download the xgroup from my website: www.briancbarnes.homestead.com/files/light_meter.xma
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Place this xgroup in your C4D library\xgroups folder.
Now, in any scene where you have a light that you want to check:
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Create a NULL object as a child of the light you want to check. This NULL object defines the location in your scene where you want to sample the light.
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Right click on the light, and add an expresso expression.
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In the expresso editor, use the FILE menu to load the light_meter.xma xgroup.
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Right click on this xgroup, and select “unpack” so that you can see the two “results” boxes.
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The two results boxes will show you the color and intensity of the light at the location defined by the NULL. The values range from 0 (0%) to 1 (100%).
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Note that the references in the XGroup for the light and the null object are relative references, so you can ctrl-drag this expresso expression to other lights (after adding child nulls to them) and then double click the expresso tags to check the light from each of the light sources in your scene.