Hey guys,
I've put Moi into my production work on some work this week and I have discovered something
that is really bothering me...
It is the ligthing on the model. From some angles the model goes completely dark while I'm rotating around
the object while checking shapes.
Is there any way to adjust the lighting, it should be the same from all angles...
Like maybe have the point of view camera project the light so what you're looking at always
is illuminated.

Please let me know if there is setting or something I can adjust.
thanks
Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com

there is a script to switch the lighting,
have a look in the documentation, and assign a shortcut to it

Hi Fitz.

There is a script that covers that problem.

Copy and paste this script into the shortcut keys and assign a free key, it toggles the light direction from side to side and works great.

script:var dir = moi.view.lightDirection; if ( dir.x == 1 && dir.y == 1 && dir.z == -1 ) { dir.set(-0.5,1,0); } else { dir.set(1,1,-1); } moi.view.lightDirection = dir;


This comes from the script page, have a look (if you have not already) very interesting.

http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/

Hope this helps

Malc.

Ohh, very interesting page.
thank you for posting this!

Instead of switching the light, is there a way to lock it in the direction of view. I also use XSI and we used to have the same problem which was solved by a "Headlight" feature that could be turned on. This effectively parented a light to shine in the direction of the view camera.

Is this possible in MOI?

Regards,
Alan

Hi Alan, the default light does actually move with the camera but it is angled to come sort of from over your left shoulder instead of shining straight forward.

It is possible to make it shine straight forward by setting up a slightly different script than the one mentioned above. To do this, go to Options / Shortcut keys, and add a new shortcut, enter your key on the left side (for example put in L ) and for the command part, copy and paste this in:

script:var dir = moi.view.lightDirection; if ( dir.x == 1 && dir.y == 1 && dir.z == -1 ) { dir.set(0,1,0); } else { dir.set(1,1,-1); } moi.view.lightDirection = dir;

Now when you push L (or whatever key you picked), it will switch between the default "behind left shoulder" direction and straight forward.

But that straight-forward lighting tends to give a kind of "harsh" lighting effect though - things that have flat surfaces on them like a box will only have full light shining on faces that are facing directly at you. Often times when modeling it is nicer to work on objects like a box by viewing them at a more oblique angle instead of straight on at one face, that's why the light by default shines in from the "over your shoulder" type angle.

- Michael

Hey Michael,
I would like to suggest that we have the light issue addressed (when you have the time!!!).
Having the model fall into complete darkness upon inspecting the shapes by freely rotating around it
really derails me on a mental front as I start moving all over the place in the camera view
just to get to an angle where I can see the model.

Pressing a button to update the lights position is also a bit counter inuitive and derails
the mental state of seeing the models shape.

I don't think that there is a need to have anything more then an ambient type of light
while modeling. There has to be a way to solve this.

thanks
Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com

If it is not too difficult to implement it may be a good idea to have a 3 or 5 light setup, instead of a single light source ( it helps if the different lights also have slightly different hues)

This is a good suggestion, but I'd really just rather have the lighting just illuminate
the model from all angles without any "shading" taking place.

But if its not too difficult, then that would be cool too.

if you illuminate equally from all angles, it will be impossible to see the object shape because you'd have no shadows... I think all that's needed is a 2 light setup. One key light (as it is currently) and one fill light set exactly in the opposite direction of the key light. The fill light can be of much lower intensity, just enough to reveal the hidden areas and soften the shadows...

jonah

It would have to be locked to the camera position though.

Other modelling software does it, so it should not be impossible to
implement in MOI3d.
How hard it is? I have no clue. The creator is the only one to say....

Mike Fitz
www.3dartz.com

Hi Mike,

> I don't think that there is a need to have anything more
> then an ambient type of light while modeling. There
> has to be a way to solve this.

It's really hard to get a good looking solution for everything using a constant ambient light factor, because it causes such an amount of washing out.

It's not really a problem on flat things like a box, but on curvy things it really messes up the perception of the curved areas.

The best way to do it is to have more distributed lights.

I definitely want to experiment with some different lighting choices in the future, I've added this as a note to the wishlist page to help me keep track of it.

But fancier lighting schemes will probably only work on somewhat more advanced video cards that support stuff like pixel shaders. For MoI 1.0 I wanted to nail a kind of baseline system that would work even on older video cards without needing any shader support at all.

The current method MoI uses is actually a kind of double-ended light. Like if you look at a sphere you will see that an entire half of it isn't actually dark, there is kind of a dark band around the middle of it. This does help to reduce some of the darkness, like in this squiggly surface:



With a normal single-directional light the part pointed at there would be all black, the double-sided lighting helps to show contours in that area instead of darkness. The cool part about this is it still works with all cards.


But lighting from more angles would help a lot, it will definitely happen at some point. I kind of have an idea that it would be nice to have lighting options as an dropdown that shows up on the View toolbar on the side pane. That's one reason why the View menu is there already even though it only has 2 things on it, because I would like to fill it with some other stuff in the future. Like a lighting choice, and a checkbox there for showing edges or not.

- Michael