Spotlight component in Sketchup

[CadFather]

is there a way so that when i set the radius of the spotlight, its geometry does not fill the model and hide everything?

making the spotlight colour transparent and softening the edges?

Cap001.jpg (147.44 KiB) Viewed 9802 times

[Chris]

That's a good idea, to make it at least partly transparent, with softened edges. I'll see what's available for controlling edges. It's not currently available, however. The size of the spotlight is based on the radius of the light and the hotspot and falloff angles. If you don't have "soft shadows" on, you could reduce the light radius.

[Ecuadorian]

The only way the geometry of your spotlight can be that big is that you have set a very wrong bulb size.

[CadFather]

hi, thanks for your answers..

i thought the bulb size defines the soft shadows - in this case this size component should not be wrong - am i totally wrong?

i noticed that if i set transparency to the lights (as above), when changing the colour of the light, the component will default back to white and unsmoothed (of course..)

[Chris]

Yes, bulb size does effect the soft shadow. But you need to be careful because if it is too big, it will intersect geometry and will cause artifacts in the scene. Whether it's appropriate for your scene or not, it's hard to say but they do look awfully big!

And yes, the lights would be "reset" every time you make a change. I'll add it to the list of fixes to make them transparent and see if I can't soften the edges...

[Fletch]

please be sure to set the radius of the light as TRUE TO LIFE as possible!

A single 'average' incandescent light bulb has a filiment at the source. The filament will be about 1 inch (2.5cm) in length (call that the "diameter")... = .5" (1.25cm) radius.
A light will render extremely slowly and with artifacts when given a large radius like 10 feet (2m) = 20feet diameter light bulb

If you want a soft general illumination throughout the room, please refer to this tip by Kim Frederik. It will render faster and look better.

If you don't want to see shadows for your lights, simply turn off the 'cast shadow' property (this will only work for Easy 1-7 settings.)

[CadFather]

ok, thanks all - clear as mud

got the tip

[Fletch]

oops ... meant to insert this link to Kim Frederik's tip- sorry! it was a confusing post without the link.