maya: instancing lights

rooster

Hi, I want to have a bunch of instanced lights so when I alter the value of one, the rest change. When I duplicate one with instance ticked, the new one doesn't do nowt (nee light).

NE clues?

Daz

Dunno about clues, but it works fine for me. Duplicate a light as an instance, change values of either and the parent or child updates. Or are you trying to do something more complex?

Justin Meisse

when I was doing my demo reel I had issues with instanced lights not functioning correctly. I think you can use set driven keys to control your lights, It's been a long time since I've done anything with them though.

cholden

Sounds normal, rooster, but do they work when you render the scene?
I think it has limitations such as only 8 lights will show anyway. After that, they don't appear to work until you render the scene, and possibly it's a memory saving option because maya figures you'll have way more than 8 instanced lights. Anyway, my old work around for full levels with a lot of lights was putting lights of certain type or specific areas in their own layer. Not sure if that helps for what you're doing.

rooster

ah, no its not the viewport display. Max also has that 8-light limit, or is it the video card? (I think software rendering displays all lights in viewport)
anyway, no I mean I duplicate a light, and it renders, but if I do it with instancing turned on, nada. Maya 6 bug?

noritsune

I have run into this same bug, for what it's worth. Software Renderer should render all the lights in a scene regardless of number - but any light I had instanced wouldnt show up in the render.

Curious to see if anyone has solved this.

Zergxes

Have you tried the attribiute spreadsheet? Tends to help me when I have a bunch of lights to tweak.

Gizmo

No you can't instance lights in Maya, it notes that in the help. You can connect each attribute up to the other lights though of course; but this is a big waste of time if you have more than 2

rooster

damn that kind of sucks, I'll give the attribute spreadsheet a look I guess