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Lumination is a lighting rig plugin that controls multiple InvisibleLights in a single user interface. It allows conveniently setting up and adjusting lighting in a scene, and offers automatic control of light sources relative to targets in the scene. These automatic controls include auto-aiming, adjusting the light source's distance from the target, and adjusting range, intensity and spot angle based on the distance. For details on these features, see Advanced features below.
Getting started
Lumination comes bundled with 9 subscene lighting rigs by @Dragontales. These can be used to instantly get professional looking lighting for virtual modeling and photoshooting, and as templates for indoor scene lighting in general.
If you want to start without a template, add Lumination in the subscene's Plugins tab, then create lights from the plugin UI or add lights from the scene.
If you want to use an existing subscene lighting rig that isn't yet integrated with the plugin, you can load the subscene and then the plugin. Lumination will automatically hook up with any Point and Spot InvisibleLights in the subscene.
Advanced features
In addition to simply adjusting the usual things like color, intensity, on/off etc. via the plugin UI, you can:
- Select a target for a light from the scene
- Keep a spotlight aimed at the target
- Adjust the light's distance from the target using a slider
- Auto-adjust range: keep the length of the lit area behind the target constant
- Auto-adjust intensity: keep the intensity of light at the target constant, when range is also auto-adjusted
- Auto-adjust spot angle: keep the width of the spotlight's cone constant at at the target
- Make copies of lights quickly
- Use multiple Lumination subscenes at the same time
- You can split your lighting between subscenes and move and animate them independently. You can also turn the subscenes themselves on/off (from the main UI or with triggers) to quickly switch between different lighting setups.
Additional info
What's a subscene?
If you haven't yet ventured into the world of subscenes, they're just like scenes: they contain atoms and those atoms and all their properties are saved with the subscene. But because subscenes are also atoms themselves, they are easily reusable by saving/loading in the subscene atom's SubScene tab. And they can be moved around in the scene - which is great for a lighting rig as you grab-move and animate the subscene itself!
Atoms in the subscene are parented to the subscene. Setting the subscene as a Parent of an atom adds that atom to the subscene (and unsetting removes it).
How to
Use very low amounts of global illumination (or none at all). For an indoor scene, you'll want to go and Open Main UI, select the Scene Lighting tab and reduce the diffuse intensity until dark areas without any point or spot lights are actually dark.
Avoid vertex lights. If you have more pixel lights in a scene than your Pixel Light Count setting in user preferences, one of them will become a vertex light (or if all lights in the scene have Render Mode set to ForcePixel, one of them will simply turn off). Generally, you'll want 3-6 lights mostly consisting of spot lights.
Spot lights drop better looking shadows than Point lights. With Lumination it's easy to keep them aimed towards the subject you want, and have the lighting area and intensity stay consistent while the subject is animated. Point lights are usually good only for lighting a larger area - e.g. one point light with max range to light up the room, then just spotlights for lighting the people.
Credits and thanks
@Dragontales for providing subscenes to bundle with the plugin, and for lighting advice, testing and feedback.
@VamTimbo for mocapping and for providing an unreleased/upcoming model to use in the video and in the subscene thumbnails, and for testing and feedback.
The community for inspiring me to want to improve the VAM experience
