Cineversity

Imagine you’re making a flashlight, but you’re limited to placing the light at the very end of the model. If you create a normal spot light and make it visible, you get what you see in the top of the attached image. I like how the light spreads (and I can adjust that to my liking), but I want the source of the light to not look like it’s coming from just one tiny point. I want it to fill up the lens. So I went to the light’s Details tab and changed the Area Shape to Sphere to make it fill up the space (the red circle). But the beam of light doesn’t change. It still looks like it’s coming from a tiny point.
So I went to the light’s General tab and changed the Type from Spot to Parallel Spot. Now, the source of the light takes on the shape and fills up the space nicely, but I no longer have the ability to have the ray of light expand as it gets further from the source (the middle image). It just goes in a straight line, because, of course, it’s parallel.
Is there any way to set it up so that I can get the result I’m showing in the bottom of the image?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Intaglio,

You have to take a “Spot” and in details set it to “Near Clip”. While in “Visible Light” mode (General Tab), the visibility starts from that point and get full with the second parameter. The light source must sit behind the lens to achieve that.
As I haven’t seen your image, nor a scene file, perhaps you need to exclude the lens from the “beam” by Excluding the object (lens) in the Project tab (or other parts of the ‘flash-light”.

All the best

Sassi

Thanks Dr. Sassi!

I did have to exclude a few objects in my scene using this method. I was hoping to avoid doing that, but it looks like it’s the best option. I just wanted to check and see if there was a simple checkbox or something that I was missing. Thanks again for the help.

You’re welcome Intaglio,

As long as shadows or volumetric is wanted, objects will be recognized. Which means they need to be ignored. That is the only way to get a simple light working.

All the best

Sassi