IgnusFast
04-05-2011, 01:10 PM
I have a circular central shaft, say 400 ft tall, and about 60 ft wide.
Through that shaft pass 6 equidistant elevator cylinders, each about 10 ft wide (well, and a bunch of unrelated pipes and cables).
Each elevator shaft has a horizontal slot stenciled into it, which wraps approximately 1/3 of the way around it (the blue glows).
I'm trying to add a node setup that will shade these bars, but I can't seem to get it right. And I realize a picture of the nodes I've attempted would help - I'll post one once I get home.
The first node I tried starts the same as the second. Oh, and "Item" in this case is the hub object.
I take the vector from the Item Pivot node, and feed that into the X and Z coordinates of a Make Vector along with the Y coordinate from the Spot item. This should give me the X and Z from the center of the hub, but the Y from the impact point on my surface, if I understand even this much properly.
In the first method, I fed that resultant vector into an Incidence Angle, then feed that into the Luminosity Channel of the actual surface.
In the second, I fed that vector into a Distance node, and compare it to the Spot position. That in turn feeds a Gradient, which does distance-based shading.
The only problem is that this doesn't seem to work. For some reason, every even shaft is shaded properly, the odd ones aren't.
So I tried using a separate surface for each elevator, and it STILL doesn't work.
I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong (likely), or if Lightwave is doing something strange (less likely)?
I'll post a simplified object when I get home.
Thanks to anyone with advice!
EDIT: It might have helped if I'd posted the effect I was going for in the first place. *Facepalm* I want the center of the bar to be really bright, which fades to almost black near the side edges.
Through that shaft pass 6 equidistant elevator cylinders, each about 10 ft wide (well, and a bunch of unrelated pipes and cables).
Each elevator shaft has a horizontal slot stenciled into it, which wraps approximately 1/3 of the way around it (the blue glows).
I'm trying to add a node setup that will shade these bars, but I can't seem to get it right. And I realize a picture of the nodes I've attempted would help - I'll post one once I get home.
The first node I tried starts the same as the second. Oh, and "Item" in this case is the hub object.
I take the vector from the Item Pivot node, and feed that into the X and Z coordinates of a Make Vector along with the Y coordinate from the Spot item. This should give me the X and Z from the center of the hub, but the Y from the impact point on my surface, if I understand even this much properly.
In the first method, I fed that resultant vector into an Incidence Angle, then feed that into the Luminosity Channel of the actual surface.
In the second, I fed that vector into a Distance node, and compare it to the Spot position. That in turn feeds a Gradient, which does distance-based shading.
The only problem is that this doesn't seem to work. For some reason, every even shaft is shaded properly, the odd ones aren't.
So I tried using a separate surface for each elevator, and it STILL doesn't work.
I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong (likely), or if Lightwave is doing something strange (less likely)?
I'll post a simplified object when I get home.
Thanks to anyone with advice!
EDIT: It might have helped if I'd posted the effect I was going for in the first place. *Facepalm* I want the center of the bar to be really bright, which fades to almost black near the side edges.