Lighting Control

My #1 feature isssue is the lack of lighting control in randomization and disconnection from primary filter controls......

I would love to see the following improvements to lighting;

1) Omit/Include option for each lighting scheme in randomization.

2) Ability to set lighting control parameters for each lighting scheme.

3) Option to include lighting controls with primary filter controls.

I think these improvements would make lighting much more "usable".....especially in randomization......instead of hoping that the user will just use your presets at Medium Randomization Level.....

Can I get an "Amen!!!"

PS..... Turning lighting schemes into components would do the trick.....full control over lighting parameters.....adding lighting controls to primary filter controls......and allowing lighting to be put anywhere in the filter for all kinds of neat new things.....

LOL.... Thanx for that constructive input

I guess that no one else has a problem with how the lighting is set up.....and it's just me

Yeah, I've kinda given up on the implementation of new lighting or fixing existing lighting to remove that pesky reflection noise......something I would like to see just for some of my unsubmitted 3D glass filters

With that said, I just posted this about getting more control over existing lighting, it's parameters, and it's controls.....

Yeah, I can't imagine that anything is going to change with this.....at least not in the imediate future......

I would think that if FF bought the HDRI licenses, then they could customize them however they wanted??? I thought reverse engineering was permissable under the law???

Does FF's HDRI licences prohibit customization??? I would think that FF could customize the licensed HDRIs in any manner they wanted to implement them with their software.....just so long as they had valid licences???

We only licensed HDRI _images_ that come with FF, so there is nothing to reverse engineer for us. The "import" and actual "rendering" algorithms and their implementation are of our own, developed completely in-house.

And ... I'll leave answering the original questions to Vladimir

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onyXMaster wrote: their implementation are of our own, developed completely in-house

Ah, so that means that your licensing would not prohibit FF from "implementing" adjustable lighting control parameters, inclusion/exclusion HDRI options, combining lighting controls......or even implementing HDRIs as individual components.....

Of course, I don't know all there is to know about why lighting is set up the way that it is......could very well be the best way to do it for all I know.....

I would just like to have "full" control over lighting. As you know, it is either all or one lighting scheme in radomization.....and sometimes only a few, but not all, lighting schemes work well with certain effects. The other thing is that I would like the user to be able to set randomization to high and explore everything without having a single bad effect pop up.....from things like the lighting brightness value going to zero and turning the effect black.....

So basically just range-limiting the light controls, and being able to block out say #4 and #6 of the 7 lighting environs ? That'd be simple to put in FF. Convince Vlad and they could add that tomorrow. The other stuff like adding lighting in the middle of the filter, eh, I dunno, I'd havta see it in action to make any real judgement on it, but offhand, I'd have to guess than in most cases, that would somehow break the tiling and/or look like crap. Just a guess though, and certainly some interesting things could be done with it. I don't think FF is too into experimental stuff though, it seems to be a about a solid set of tools that work consistently in a normal-ish way.

jffe

Not sure what Onyx meant by "hurtful", but just eliminating certain lighting environs from the randomizer would be easy and not hurt anything. It could become a hair more confusing for users, but they need not use it, if it gets remembered/saved with the filter. It makes perfect sense to "limit" them though, since 2 of them have distinct blue tones, and 2 or 3 have amber/gold/brown tones, and some are more "busy" than others. But then what about people using their own lighting files ? In the end, I'd just make a note of it in the description and on the forums here, and not really worry about some the small handful of people out there who hit random twice and couldn't figure out why it looked weird. *shrug*

jffe

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StevieJ wrote: if I hit the randomizer and get a couple of bad ones in the first handful.....makes me feel like it is not a very good filter

----Yeah, but there's filters that look great on the life preserver and not on many pics, or vice versa too. You'll never really eliminate all the problems users can come up with when it comes to software, just look at what we all (and yeah, myself definitely included ha-ha) come up with to complain about and ask for as features. But, that said, it never hurts to keep reminding *cough* nagging *cough* FF about stuff we really want to see in the future eh.

jffe

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Crapadilla wrote: *** insert sounds of crickets lazily chirring in the afternoon sun ***

Seemed appropriate to put this back in now

LOL..... Well, as i've stated so much in the past, I think it would be pretty slick to have lockable controls.....especially on filters with alot of controls.....then you could just keep locking them and hitting the randomizer to zero in on what you want. As it stands, the randomizer is the last thing you want to touch when narrowing down control values.....and lockable controls would change all of that. Also, it would be an indispensable tool for troubleshooting a filter.....

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Kraellin wrote: you just want an on/off switch for them in the gui

Exactly.....little check boxes to the right or left of each control......to toggle a control value lock on and off.....

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Kraellin wrote: when jffe starts talking 'locking' things, alarms go off in my head.

LOL.... Yeah, I believe jffe was talking about protecting filter construction from cloners and outside hijacking....

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Exactly.....little check boxes to the right or left of each control......to toggle a control value lock on and off.....

ok, well that's cool then