Yes, that’s exactly it. The materials are all anisotropic metal, and half of them are radial, so require a bright small light to get a nice reflection. I have to add one for each part, but those little spots shouldn’t be seen in some of the larger flat or cylindrical pieces, so light layers is great.
But I need to custom light each layout because those radial object are really picky as to where the light is placed. It was incredibly difficult trying to do it with the environment.
I understand that there are performance issues with having too many. I wonder if there is a way to enable/disable them? It would stand to reason that if a light layer only has lights on a model set that is not active then that light layer is not in use. So maybe we could have more light layers, but just limit how many are active at once? I’m having challenges with naming because one studio might be 3 handles, another might be 3 handles and 8 knobs, another might be only knobs. I sometimes need a light for the front left side, sometimes only for the radial on the side, and sometimes only for the radial if it’s facing up. Sometimes I have to exclude a handle, and sometimes I’m creating a light to just block the reflection of the next handle. Luckily, you folks did make it so only the lights that are visible show up in the llight layers. So I might just have to name it light layer01, layer02, etc. and make sure my lights are well named.
I Have found that if I duplicate a light, it doesn’t show up in light layers right away. But if I turn the model set off, then on again it shows up.
Currently I’m at 104 studios and 37 model sets. I have 4 more model sets and probably 6 more studios to add. I would Love to be able to group studios. It’s a lot to scroll through, but having it all in one file has been perfect because the first few image that had been approved now have changes, so I can keep these all consistent easier.
I would also like to be able to add multiple environments together. Light take more resources, but my thought for environments is to use the same base environment in another environment. So I could create an environment that just sets the overall lighting that I might use in several studios, but if I need some custom lights, then I need to add some additional lights right? So under Background, we could have Environment listed, and I could choose from my existing environments. That environment would be used in the same way Image would, but now I can add some custom lights on top of that. Then I can duplicate that environment and change it for my next model set. This way, if I need to make changes to the base environment, I only have to do it once and there is still technically only one environment. On programming side of things it could be treated as an image any time it gets updated, or it could just be passed through to each duplicate to have all the pins rendered at once for each individual environment.
I’m happy to walk you through the file if that would help with clarity.