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Author Topic: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups  (Read 1154 times)

CharlyRT

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RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« on: December 17, 2021, 09:50:18 PM »
Hi there, im having trouble distributing lights in groups, in a previuos Beta release I could solve it thanks to u guys, but in the latest Beta and the official release i just cant figure it out. The scene has a simple box with a couple of teapots and lights. In order to set the teapots correctly i have to use an Xform and then make the group, but the lights are a mess, im using straight lines, rectangles, circles on Base Object.
 
Maybe im wrong but i remember that i could use the padding correctly and also all of the changes were showing in the Vray IPR, now every single change i have to stop it and re render.

Im using Vray 5 with latest update (2.2) on Max 2022.3

Paul Roberts

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2021, 09:34:17 AM »
Thanks for reporting this. Would you be able to share that test scene so we can take a closer look?

Many thanks,
Paul
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CharlyRT

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2021, 04:49:07 PM »
Hello Paul, here is the scene, as I said its very very simple and its on Max 2022
Thanks for the reply and the hardwork, cheers!!!

Paul Roberts

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #3 on: December 21, 2021, 11:29:27 AM »
Hi,

Thanks for the file, I can reproduce the issues you mention. If you plan to transform the group then the current implementation required that you reset the XForm and possible align all the pivots depending on what you need, BUT it would appear there is also an issue whereby RailClone is also not working with lights that have an XForm modifier applied, making it difficult to fix the alignment. I've passed this along to our development team who will fix the issue soon.

Thanks again for letting us know,

Paul
« Last Edit: April 07, 2022, 09:35:09 AM by Paul Roberts »
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Dragan

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2021, 12:33:55 PM »
+ lights are represented as boxes, therefore, affecting the positions/alignment of the rest of the geometry segments. I`ll prefer that the Light segment not affect the rest of the geometry and act just as a visual representation of size/position.

Paul Roberts

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #5 on: December 21, 2021, 12:38:23 PM »
The trouble with that is that RailClone uses the size of items in the array to place adjacent segments. If they are zero-sized we get infinite loops (which we avoid by killing the array if a zero-sized segment is detected). In groups, it may be less of an issue if the group contains geometry, but we cannot assume that's the case.

It's possible to use fixed-size to override the size of lights - so you can set it to something very small if that helps.

Paul
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Dragan

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #6 on: December 21, 2021, 12:47:32 PM »
Yes, I use fixed-size override already but I assume a lot of users, especially new ones, don't know about that at all, even for geometry workflow. I think there are one or two tutorials that emphasize this trick.
I guess you are preparing some new tutorials so maybe this will be good to show.
Regards

Paul Roberts

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #7 on: December 21, 2021, 12:49:12 PM »
Agreed, I'll make sure to cover it. Thanks for the suggestion  :)
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CharlyRT

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2022, 07:26:29 PM »
Hi there, It's been a while, I haven't had the opportunity to continue testing the behaivior with groups and lights for the new updates, this morning I've been testing the latest release and I cannot get the lights to align as they are in the group, as I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, in some Beta version it was possible to do it (I think it was 5.0.2b) Hope theres a fix for this soon.
« Last Edit: April 06, 2022, 07:30:20 PM by RTstudio »

Paul Roberts

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2022, 09:49:48 AM »
Hi,

At present, it's still necessary to reset the pivots. We did fix the issue where the XForm modifier on lights caused an issue though, so it should work correctly.
Best,
Paul
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CharlyRT

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #10 on: April 07, 2022, 04:40:01 PM »
Hi Paul:

Thanks for your reply, Could you make a little demonstration about it, I still cannot align the Lights correctly

dominic_patel

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #11 on: June 28, 2022, 05:53:34 PM »
Hi,

I'm also having an issue with the alignment of lights in grouped geometary.

Essentiall I have a simple track light model I've sliced up and set up on two linear arrays. One for the track and one for the lighting units. To be honest its probably a bit overkill to set it up as an RC object but i was thinking that for future scenes it might be quite fast and convienent if I had a little RC definition ready to go.

Two problems I've had:

1 - Railclone doesnt seem to be able to read the grouped lighting unit if the objects have a link hiarachy? I'd set it up essentially so i could rotoate the position of parts and each object had the correct pivot in the rig.

2 - Even when i use the reset xform modifier the lights dont align to the face of the  lighting unit. they seem to face down. (the lighting units are angled)

Is there a fix on either of the above or am i doing somehting wrong?

Thanks

Dominic

Paul Roberts

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Re: RailClone 5 Lights in Groups
« Reply #12 on: June 29, 2022, 02:45:03 PM »
As it stands at the moment, group support for RailClone is quite limited compared to Forest Pack. Only offset (translation) is taken into account while rotation and scale are ignored. It's on the roadmap to be improved. Thanks for understanding.

Paul
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