General Category > General Anim8or Forum

Old Hallway candle lighting ideas?

(1/6) > >>

Nellucnaiv:
Hi all,  :D
I'm putting together a scene that takes place in an old medieval type hallway.  I've made the hallway, candles and morphs for the flames to move and flicker,(hopefully).  ::)
I have four candles and have set a spotlight over each one with inner 25 and outer 35 degrees radius which seems sort of okay but I'd like the candles to shed their light on the walls.(like real candles). Any ideas or suggestions?
I thought of using some kind of glow filters for this but mine are spheres and to blatantly visible!  :o
I'd also like to try and get the shadows from them to move which I thought may work if I move the lights randomly ever so slightly above them. I have a character that I'm working on and would like the light from the (candles) to cast his shadows.

Gee, I'd really appreciate any input on making this scene look a bit spooky!?  ;)

Look forward to any of your replies.

Ian.

kreator:
I did this some years ago But I used Terranim8or for it, The flames used animated texures (which you can do with Terranim8or)


What Lights are you Using? Locals or Spots?

Use Locals Scaled into each Flame, for Each one set Inner 50, Outer 75

Nellucnaiv:
Hi there. Thanks so much for your advice and input. I don't quite understand the scaling function on lights. I know you can make them larger or smaller but I see the beam lines stay identical. I thought it was merely to make editing easier without bulky lights in the way? Does it also decrease or increase their intensity? I'll give the 50/60 angle a go. At the moment I also have 3 glow filters around each flame with ambience set at 8.0 for each, transparency at 0.01 which I move as the flame moves with a local shining right into it. It gives a reasonably realistic glow but no light is actually seen on the walls. Is there a better way? I thought of placing a flat, smooth, transparent reflective patch behind each on the wall? Sorry about the letter but I'd really like to try and get it looking good.
Thanks again!
Ian

Steve:
The scaling that kreator mentioned in in the Advanced Light propertied. Set the Inner Radius to 50 and the Outer Radius to 75. Make sure it's a Local light in the main Light dialog. The Angle parameter isn't used for local Lights.

ENSONIQ5:
Local lights emit light in all directions, as opposed to spot lights that can only emit into a hemisphere at maximum.  Lights of this type should illuminate the walls, if no illumination is apparent it may be due to the normals being incorrectly aligned on the walls (if so, flip them) or something to do with the walls' material.

Regarding the radius settings, effectively the light will illuminate anything within the Inner Radius 100%, and anything outside the Outer Radius 0%.  So something that falls half way between the inner and outer radii will be illuminated 50%.  Depending on the scale of your model you may need to adjust these settings to get the result you're looking for.

Glow spheres are a bit trickier, especially if you are rendering with ART which always casts 100% shadows*. A sphere around the flame will effectively block any light inside it from illuminating anything using ART, if you are using Scanline you can set the spheres to not cast shadows.  An alternate method would be to place circular objects between the flames and camera that simulate the glow from each candle, so long as the camera is static it should look ok.  If the camera moves you will need to move the circles too.

* May have been resolved in an update, I'm a bit out of touch with recent developments.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page