Adding a light source

     You can add a special object, a 'sun' to your scene via the 'objects' menu,
     but to be honest you're much better creating your own custom lights in
     most circumstances.

     Adding a light:

          Go to objects>>primitives>>light source

          You can manipulate this light in the same way as most objects (moving,sizing,
          rotating etc). You can even add a texture to it (!) although I dont see 
          much of the point in this =)


     Editing the light:

          Go to Extra>>light/polygon (press D)

          

     Name : 
             uhhhh? :)

     Rgb sliders:

               These allow you to change the colour of light
               thats radiated from the lightsource. You can
               also switch between RGB/HSV here if you want to.

     Brightness:

               Pretty self explanatory

     No light radiation:

               This is pretty useful if you want to have a light 'effect'
              (eg having a lensflare) but without it actually lighting 
               up any of the surrounding objects.

     Shadow casting:

               Does exactly what it says on the tin! If you check this, then
               this light will create shadows.

     Spot :

               Specify an angle here, and it will make the current light
               a spotlight. This is good for things light car headlights,
               torches etc. The angle is the angle of the beam that comes
               from this light. You can change the direction of it after the
               light is created by rotating the light.

     Red. :   
               Stands for Reduction and lets you make a light that only
               affects a certain distance away.

     Parallel : 

               Works in conjunction with spot, this allows you to create
               a straight 'beam' of light. You'll notice that if you click
               on this, the value in 'spot' changes from degrees to metres.
               This is the width of the beam.

     Soft :

               Hmm I'm not actually totally sure what this does, but I think
               it lessens the glare and reflections to objects. I've
               not used it much to be honest, best to experiment :)

     Direct visibility:

               This one allows you to create 'visible lights'. For example,
               a sun, a glowing orb, a photon torpedo :) You select which
               planes are to be affected (EG in which direction the light is
               actually visible), and then specify a value to determine
               how far the light is visible for.

               Eg : XYZ decreasing makes a light that spreads out in all directions,
                    if the values are all set to 100, it means that the radius of
                    the visibility is 100m.
          
               Brightness and reduction pretty much do the same things as
               the Red.and brightness settings that are mentioned above, 
               except they affect the lights 'direct visibility'.

     Lens Effects:

               This one is the fun part :) This allows you to create lensflares,
               and a central glow on the light source. This is really good for
               things such as Stars, suns, and the aforementioned photon torpedo.
               Play around with it, thats all I can really say.

               Note: For the lens effects to actually work , you have to make
               sure the light source is totally visible in your scene. For example
               if you have an object covering it up, even slightly, you will
               get no lens effects from this light.

Back