Thanks guys, I am glad you like it!
On an unrelated note, I don’t suppose anyone has any nice screenshots that illustrate the shader they would be willing to let me use for the highend3d entry? Right now the highend3d entry just has a generic icon. I am much more of a programmer than an artist (all the test scenes I have made are very simple and boring), and I am thinking that one of you guys will be able to put together something much more impressive…
Thank you Wombat for your efforts!
I am currently experimenting with your shader and I try to figure out which method will give the most accurate results. I have read your manual, it helps alot but doesn’t really answer my question.
I’m trying to set up a light with a IES-profile from a spotlight. When I use this profile with an maya area light or a maya spotlight I get very different light intensities. The profile together with the maya spotlight seems to yield the most accurate results. Which is logic I think. However I don’t want to guess about this matters and I would really appreciate to know which setup gives accurate results for a spotlight IES profile?
By the way if anyone is looking for IES-profiles then GE Lightning has plenty of them.
Hi orre,
That is VERY strange. When using IES profiles in absolute mode, there should be NO difference in intensity when using spotlights or area lights. I just tested on my machine, and I get identical intensity with both area lights and spotlights.
The only thing I can think of is that you might have the “Use Cone Angles with Light Profiles” setting enabled. That setting is not a “physically correct” setting, as it will reduce the intensity of light profiles when using spotlights.
If that is not the problem, could you send me a copy of your scene or a detailed description of how the scene and shader is set up?
Thanks for the quick reply!
And your certain answer helped alot! Its good to know that your results are VERY strange :banghead: 
It might be me who misunderstood the profile rotations. When I used a maya spotlight I chose downlight to spotlight and when I used maya area light i chose downlight to arealight. This way i get very different results, but if I use downlight to spotlight with both they render the same.
If I use uplight to area light I get expected results. Is there any special thought behind the different uplight/downlight rotations?
Anyway my problems are solved! Thank you very much!
By the way, did you come to any conclusion on using archlight with protons?
Glad its working! Regarding the profile rotations, its a little complicated. The short answer is that mental ray area lights (disc and rectangle) and mental ray spotlights generally face opposite directions. In other words, if you create a standard rectangular area light with default transforms, and a regular spotlight with default transforms, the “front” of the area light will be pointing exactly backwards from the direction of the spotlight cone. The profile rotation presets were designed to allow you to rotate the profile so that it would line up with the direction of the area light or spotlight.
Now, the weird part comes in when using area spotlights. These basically create a “backwards” area light that faces the same direction as the spotlight. Thus, when using area spotlights, you should choose the Downlight/Uplight to Spotlight options to get the correct profile rotation. I should probably rename the preset to make clear that it applies both to spotlights and area spotlights. Apologies for the confusion.
Regarding importons, unfortunately I have not had much of a chance to get into it as I have been quite busy at work recently. I will try to take a look in the coming days/weeks though!
I’m testing wom_archlight with FG+Gi+Importons and it seems everything works fine.
The fact is that I’m not sure about importons usage, so I’m testing so much just to understand how importons work but from my visual results, and comparing the results I get in the output window everything seems correct.
I’m quite satisfied of the effects I get with archlights+importons, much better than with simple photons.
Just to let you know
Wombat: Thanks for the explanation!
Fabergambis: It’s good to know that I’m not the only one who thinks it works ok. :applause:
Hello everybody.
I’m trying to use this great shader, but I’m not able tu use wom_light_object in Maya 2009/32 on Windows XP.
I followed instructions (actually, I think so):
And in the render everything is black.
With default light enabled I can see background, but the object I’d like to use as light is invisible.
I verified and changed scale, without success.
FG or GI on/off don’t change the result.
Later I’ll test the scene on another system (Maya 2009/64 on Windows7RC)
May someone help me?
Thank you
Francesco
the correct way is: create a poly dummies like you want. Enables geometry shader and connect womobject light. Create your tourus or anywant object and assign this as source. After this creat a womarchLight and assign it as Light and emitterphoton shaders. On the end, the dummys like a cube, take the tourus transform in render, you understand?
Yep, ytsejam is right. The sequence you should use is:
create an object “pTorus1”
Create another dummy object (e.g., a sphere, cube - it does not matter as it will NOT be rendered). Lets just say you create a cube.
Enable the geometry shader on the dummy cube object, and assign “wom_light_object1”
Assign “pTorus1” as the source
assign a shader such as wom_archlight as the light shader and photon shader (NOT “areaLightShape1”, as you appear to have done). You can also use any other light shader such as mib_light_point or physical_light.
It should then render fine. What should happen is that the there will be a light at the location of the dummy object in the shape of pTorus1. To move the light around, just move the dummy object. Let me know if it gives you trouble. Alternatively, I am happy to send you a basic scene with it set up properly.
Thank you very much ytsejam1976 and wombat778 for your quick reply!
Now everything is clear for me, and it works perfectly!
:bowdown:
Hi wombat. Hi all
As you see, i’m all in test with your light. I’m intersting results with a spotlight and cone angle in wombat, in a luminaire on the ground. Some opinion much appreciate from all.
Ciao
Looks very nice ytsejam!
Also, have you, or anyone else using wom_archlight, run into any bugs in 1.2? I know there is a minor bug regarding the intensity of visible area light shapes, but I have not heard any other bug reports. Unless I get more reports, I will probably release a version 1.2.1 that just fixes the one bug. But if anyone else is has found any bugs or has other suggestions I am happy to include it.
Thanks!
Hi wombat and thank you. In my tests i’m not results bugs. But some times, i not good work with one light shader connected on multipled light, i don’t know if this is a limitation knowed on WomarchLight, in any case is not a very problem. But one request for other release, i don’t know if this is possible: a fake falloff. ok we have a start and stop, but how control the falloff on wombat. I know that with area light inverse square i m work well, i think then your shader move in this way. But if i want some effects the control is hard. In ground lamp, i set two spot light, one up and one down direction. I don’t use one only light, then is more simple to setting, ok not a big problem, but if is possible to semplificate the workflow, i much appreciate this.
Anyway, your shader are great and… importance sampling when…?
Ciao and thank you
It is a pure mental ray shader, so it should certainly be possible to make it work in Max. The only reason I have not done so is that I was under the impression that Max’s built-in photometric light already does most of what wom_archlight can do, so I figured there would be little demand.
If there is demand for it, I am happy to port to Max though.
Are there any news on a possible MAX-Release for this shader?
As it is a mental ray shader it should work in MAX right away (did not test it though). But some info on how to set up the scene in MAX (especially for objectlight) and maybe a modified mi-File would be totally cool
Can’t wait to see it in MAX.
By the way, this shader is definitely useful in MAX as the photometric lighting in MAX sucks IMO (for example the show lightshape option is just a big BUG!).
Also there is no objectlight available (which is what the whole mental ray community is waiting for since years [and is what mental images + Autodesk don’t seem to be able to build in… SAD enough!:D]).
Conio,
Unfortunately I do not have a whole lot of news to report. Work has been very busy recently, so I have not had much of a chance to port it over to Max. The main problem is that I really don’t know anything about how Max’s shader UI logic works, so I need some time to get up to speed before I do the port. Unfortunately, that time has been hard to come by recently:( Of course, if there is someone out there who already knows how to make nice shader UIs in Max and is willing to help, it might speed up the process a lot.
Anyhow, I certainly do plan on doing the port over the next few weeks. Sorry for the delay…
I think it should, since it works fine on Maya 2009 for Mac. However, I have not tested on Maya 2010 so I cannot be 100% sure. I would go ahead and try, and report back how it works!
All seems to work fine, cheers.
The issues I had was taking carpaint shaders plugged in to mia from maya 2008 to 2010.
Creating a new mia fixed one problem and changing flake scale to anything other than 0 fixed the other.
Cheers,
Steve