Wings 3D Lights

[Agent-0013]

Hi fellow users of Wings 3D. I wanted to bring attention to something I've not seen even one tutorial covering, that is in the Create Menu of Wings 3D; Light. If you click Light in the Create Menu, you get a submenu that has 5 different types of Lights you can load into the work window; Infinite, Point, Spot, Ambient, and Area. Editing them is a bit different from the way you would edit a Primitive to create a model part. You don't get the scale, extrusion, etc. tools. You get a set of submenus that are specifically designed for editing lights. The tools you get are somewhat limited, compared to other applications. You have no control over the brightness of the lights that I could find, other than manipulating the color controls to make the light brighter or dimmer. That said, you can get the lights to affect models you make. I've yet to find a way to control shadows, other than creating more lights to help change their intensity.

Now so far, I've only experimented extensively one time with Point Lights, setting a stack of six in a model of a light fixture I created for the experiment. The Light Cone had to have the Emission part of its material brightened, which seem to allow the Light to illuminate the Cone more brightly. I created a lens with the material for it at full white in the Diffuse, and full black in the Emission, plus a transparency value of 0.013, making it almost invisible. As I write this, the session in Wings 3D 2.2.5 is still open, and I am taking screenshots of the model with the lights inside its reflection cone at different angles. These I will upload to my gallery at DeviantArt; and when I get that done, I will return here and post a link to each image, so that you guys can see what I am doing.

I'm still exploring Wings 3D's Lights, trying to learn all I can. If any other User here has knowledge I do not yet possess, I would be most appreciative if that person could share that knowledge here in this thread. One thing I cannot find a way to deal with is the blue radiating lines that the lights load with, such that I cannot make them disappear. It may be something that cannot be done, but I'm hoping there is a way, or will be in an upcoming new version of the program. The reason I want this is because I plan to put lights in my models to illuminate interiors, and add lights, like Headlights and Indicator Lights to the exteriors, that actually shine. Also, Lights can be used to make Thruster Glow look more real, among other great uses.

Look forward to more posted comments from me here concerning this subject. I will be sharing what I find with all of you that choose to read this thread. Eventually I want to do at least one tutorial covering Wings 3D Lights. Hey, if it is part of Wings 3D, I think it is worth looking into using at least, so that we can possibly encourage the developers to advance that part of the program!

Cheers and Stay Awesome!

[micheus]

Hi there.

I don't have much time right now, but I did a video for the old version which can give you some Idea about the lights in Wings3D. Unfortunately, there is no audio - it had annotations, but YouTube doesn't offers this option anymore.

[Agent-0013]

Hi there.

I don't have much time right now, but I did a video for the old version which can give you some Idea about the lights in Wings3D. Unfortunately, there is no audio - it had annotations, but YouTube doesn't offers this option anymore.

My apologies for being scarcely here. Life dealt me some rather hard blows, and finding the time was not possible. It was looking at the lights in Wings 2.2.6.1, plus in a later version I have, 2.2.9 (I think), and found no significant changes in the way they are edited and work. It seems that if you create a light fixture for a model, you need to keep it small for the actual light to look good. I was doing a Drive engine model and made a fixture for the light I placed within it. The engine glow was weak at best, and very unconvincing. I can make the model and add lights to it in DAZ Studio, Poser, or Bryce from their more robust lights menus, for better results than I can get from the Wings lights. Also the wings lights appear to not be exportable. That is bad really, because if you could add the lights in Wings 3D and they could be exported from Wings and imported as working lights into other applications, it would save a lot of time. 
I don't know what the lights menu is like in the latest version of Wings 3D, as I have not grabbed it yet. Gonna need to free up some space on my old PC for that. Anyway, that's where I am at this time. Oh yeah I know I promised some screenshots for the lights in Wings 3D, to be uploaded to my DeviantArt profile gallery, but the truth is that they looked really bad, so I refrained from uploading them. It would be embarrassing, to say the least.

[micheus]

Hi Agent-0013 that's a really late reply.

Also the wings lights appear to not be exportable. That is bad really, because if you could add the lights in Wings 3D and they could be exported from Wings and imported as working lights into other applications, it would save a lot of time.

That's strange because Wings3D export lights!
Which file format did you use?

The lights in Wings3D can't offer much, but it's used as reference and it's properly offers options from the render plugins.
If you are going to render it outside you will definitely made the adjustments required by the app you are going to use. But, these adjustments will vary depending on the render engine.