Light Layers confusion

Help and Troubleshooting
1

Hi, I’ve been playing with Light Layers.

I have noticed that it seems like the same part can’t be added to multiple layers. Is this true? I created a new layer for each part of my scene.

I chose which lights I wanted to affect each layer.

And I’m able to select parts and assign them to a layer.

But it seems like if I create a layer with ALL the parts to be affected by ALL the lights, when I turn off this layer and toggle on any of my other layers, all the parts have been removed from the other layers.

So, am I misunderstanding or is this how this tool works?

I need to spend more time playing with this tool, but so far, it’s proving more confusing than I thought it would be. I feel like it’d be a lot more intuitive if the scene tree was used to show which light affected each item (like how animations appear in scene tree).

2

Hi Will, I see where your confusion is coming from. The way light layers work is:

  • Each part is on one and only one light layer. You can indeed not add your parts to multiple layers.
  • But each light layer can of course include a free selection of light sources. Multiple layers can ‘share’ a light source etc.

Does this help? What are you trying to achieve in your scene?

3

Thanks for commenting Jan! I think the documentation in the manual lacked specificity, so I wasn’t sure what I could expect.

A light layer can have multiple parts, yes? But a part can only be on one light layer, right?

I think in most cases, I’m just trying to prevent a light from affecting a single part. (ex. light 1 does not effect part C)

So, in this case, I’d need a light layer that contains all lights and all parts except part C. Then, I’d create a second layer that only contains part C and add all lights except light 1.

Do I have that right?

In this case, it feels a bit labor intensive just to exclude a single light from a single object.

I’ll keep on playing with it!

4

Hi Will,

In the scenario you describe you need just one Light Layer with the one part on it. Then for that Light Layer, you check all the lights in the scene except the one you don’t want the part to be affected by.

Dries

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5

That’s better than what I described. Okay, thank you!

6

There could be some work in showing the layers a bit better for sure. If you have a group, you might assign that to default, then a subgroup might need a specific light that others don’t, and maybe one part of another just needs one highlight somewhere in there right? So now you have 3 light layers. If you select that main group it just highlights all 3, as if your selection is on all 3 light layers, but it’s not. It’s only 1 of those selections.

I think it should show a blue radio button for the selected object, but then show maybe grey that there are sub-objects on other layers. That way it indicates the layer for your selection at least.

It would be nice to have a lock option as well, similar to how we have hide and lock. I made one light Just for a highlight on this one part, so I’d like to lock those together. If I then select the parent assembly and realize that I need a specific light for the 5 instances of that then it would be nice to not accidentally override my other part.

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