| TIPS |
| 1. Replacing Ambient Light Settings Where objects need to be illuminated as if in daylight, or in any other situation where they are brightly lit from a broad direction, then the traditional Ambient parameter can be rather disappointing. The results are very flat, and tend to leave the object looking washed out. The Ambient parameter also lessens the effect of bump maps. TG Virtual Light can provide a replacement for using the Ambient setting, giving the effect of broad lighting while still retaining detail in the object, since the light changes in colour or intensity across the object’s surface, and bump maps are retained. It can be quite useful for landscape objects too, as it allows the unlit areas to be given a separate colour. For example, you can add a blue tinge to unlit areas on a landscape scene, with a yellow tint to the lit areas. |
| 2. With Radiosity Getting the lighting looking right with radiosity can be a matter of trial and error! Adding TG Virtual Light can let you tweak the end result, similar to adding a light which is ignored by the radiosity calculations. Also, since the virtual light isn’t affected by radiosity, the bump mapping effects from the virtual illumination will still show up under radiosity, allowing you to have bump maps and radiosity working at the same time. Bear in mind that bump maps won’t show up on faces which point directly toward an infinite light source. For example, if you have a ground plane and you want a bump map to show up on that plane through using an infinite virtual light, you’ll need to ensure that the virtual light doesn’t point straight down! |
| 3. Picking Out A Single Object Sometimes it can be difficult to highlight an individual object. Perhaps you have a background which is darkly lit, and you want a prominent object more brightly lit. Although you can set up your scene and lighting to achieve any effect you want, it can be awkward when trying to prevent the lighting of the prominent object from affecting the lighting of the background. Using TG Virtual Light you can give each object its own unique illumination which will have no effect on the rest of the scene. |
| 4. Adding Detail To Shadows By adding TG Virtual Light, you can prevent shadowed areas from trueSpace lights from being completely black. This can also allow bump mapping to show up in the shadows. This effect can be achieved by adding a non-shadowed trueSpace light, but this gives another alternative that may be easier at times. |
| 5. Lighting Several Objects With The Same Virtual Light To do this, you’ll need to paint each object using the same parameters (Light Position, etc). This will let several objects be illuminated by the “same” virtual light. |
| 6. Setting the Light Position The easiest way to set the Light Position is to create a trueSpace object at the place where you want the light to be. You can then copy the Object Location from the Object Properties dialogue into the TG Virtual Light “Light Position” parameter. For a Point Light, this will give the absolute position of the virtual light. For an Infinite Light, this will help you set the vector (the direction of the Infinite Light will be from the trueSpace object’s position to the World Origin if you use this technique). You could get a virtual light to follow a moving object by adding an invisible object to the moving object, representing the light source. You would then have to manually copy the Object Location for the light source object for each keyframe into the TG Virtual Light “Light Position” parameter, and use the Paint Over tool to set the new Light Position (otherwise, the virtual light remains at a fixed location in 3D space and does not travel with the object it is painted on). |
| TG Virtual Light Intro |
| TG Virtual Light Parameters |
| TG Virtual Light Tips |
| TG Virtual Light FAQ |
| TG Virtual Light Samples |
| TG Pack Index |