Very first question in this new forum! he he
I notice a “Inherit Deformation” check box under Light’s Joint Editor.
that starange, since Light does contain any geometry.:shrug:
but the check box in not dimmed…
Try to play around with it, but no luck, must be something i miss…
Thank for help!
Loon
I don’t think we can deform lights. I noticed the checkbox too and had a project some time ago where I thought I could use deformed tube lights. No go.
In the end I just had glowing light shaped geometry pretending to be lights.
Aziz.
Ahaaa! 
The old dream of deforming a tube light? 
I believe that lights cannot be deformed, but now with the 6.5 new powers any object can be a light
Inheriting deformations on non-geometry objects is really just altering the object’s position. If you have a light linked to the end of a cylinder and you bend the cylinder, the light will move along with it.
Bending lights requires some small black holes which at the moment are pretty expensive.
David…
Very true. Create your own “tube lights” out of actual geometry, deform them, and through the magic powers of GI…tadah. Bendy lights.
Brian
About the “Inherit Deformation” not being greyed out… My guess is that it allows a Light to be part of a complex hierarchy and still allow deformations to pass “through them”… Just my guess.
Aziz, David & BRIAN!
good to see you all here, and also thanks for the reply,
actually my goal is simple, I just want a glow light to deform’ together with other group, the light is following the deformation in ‘position’ (hope i’m not confusing)
sample here
i’ve try to use constrain position as well, but no luck.
so the only way is… yes GI.:lightbulb
but in that case i’ll lost the control of glow radius, light dropoff, ray smoke etc…
Loon
Yhloon,
I only have EIAS v5.5 on my home machine, but I’m trying to recreate your problem. I’ve taken a standard cube with a light placed on top with additional geometry and then applied a similiar deformation to yours. I set all children to inherit deformations from the parent cube. The geometry deforms fine, but you’re right, the light for some reason will only inherit the deformation if you click the inherit deformations checkbox on the light on and off… then it snaps into place. That’s fine if you’re doing a still, but if you wish to animate that will become a problem. It seems that this might be a bug that needs to be reported to Matt.
I also tried to deform a null instead of the light and then point/rotate constrain the light to the null. A similar problem occurred. The null did not properly inherit the deformation. Finally I tried replacing the null with a piece of geometry, since geometry inherits the deformations just fine. I then point/rotate constrained the light to the cube and the light moved properly along with the cube until I activated deformation. Something must be broken with nulls and lights inheriting deformation. This might have been fixed in 6.5, but I don’t have it here to test it. Try using a null or piece of geometry and constraint to it and try your deformations.
Brian
Well, I upgraded the home machine to 6.5. The inherit deformations problem still persists. Definitely something that needs to be corrected. The problem also occurs on nulls as well as lights.
Just tested here at home…
Yeah, you have a way to do it… its not one click… but works pretty well.
You can use basic Bezier deformation (no the bezier 2), since bezier have values to Anchor point and upper Locator, then add XPressionist, and voila, make a simple script to the light value of your radial light be the same position of the locator and to the light rotation be based and in a constrain with the Floor or another model in your prj.
Hope this help
Tomas Egger
Yhloon,
You could do this;
Create 2 small dummy object, constrain one to the geomerty of the dummyobject where the light must be, and then constrain the position of the light to the geometry constrained dummy object
Cheers
Hans
All in all… it would be better if Matt fixes this. I didnt think about using a geometry constraint…but still, multiple constraint systems to do something that should be easily accomplished with inherit deformation isn’t the right answer. I’m more concerned about nulls not properly inheriting deformations.
Wow! suddently we have all kind of different solution…
I come with a solution as well:)
I just use Bones, but after looking into Hans idea, i feel that is a better way, because I can apply different deformation on it.
Thanks! Tomas, Hans, Brian
All in all… it would be better if Matt fixes this. I didnt think about using a geometry constraint…but still, multiple constraint systems to do something that should be easily accomplished with inherit deformation isn’t the right answer. I’m more concerned about nulls not properly inheriting deformations.
Agree! it should be easy
best regards,
Loon
Mmm, I posted this in the EITG requests forum a while ago. This bug/lack of ability becomes a real pain in the neck when rigging characters. I’ve spend a lot of time in XP just to compensate for this.
I completely agree. This is essential and needs to be fixed immediately. Convoluted constraint systems are not the solution, plus they slow down the entire solving solution.
Matt Hoffman’s response from EITG’s tech support team:
I have looked at it.
This appears to be a bug. What is so odd is that the light does move with the deforming object when the light’s Inherit Deformation check box is OFF. But it doesn’t move when the check box is ON.
It really should move with the parent regardless of the setting.
Also, I had no problem getting a box effector or a cross effector to move with the deformed parent.
It’s important to remember that children should move when the parent deforms regardless of their Inherit Deformation settings. The Inherit Deformation check box control whether or not a child deforms when it moves inside the deformation region of the parent.
Personally…I found the box and cross effectors didn’t follow the deformation. I wonder what is up with that?
Brian
now i know what is going wrong,
just uncheck the ‘inherit deformation’ for light or effector which work in opposite way, and confusing…
and it works:eek:!!!
Loon
Aaargh, all those hours spend on XP-scripts and all it took was to untick the box rather than to tick it. :banghead: Oh well.