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Also, Palettes > Reference Plane Parameters > Underlay Select custom placement, and the scale can be a little funky.

AC1000, thanks for taking the time to share this. I don't use a lot of trees typically, but this is very good to hear about it not slowing the computer down. Thanks again!

9.2 was released as a beta last Friday as part of the V-Ray beta...

Ah, no to the IES file, but I'll download that and see what I can get to happen. The beam is one part, the pool of light on the floor is another. Looking at the example image again, the chair shadows look like there is another light creating the pool on the chairs and floor, different from the theatrical instrument lights at the ceiling. I'll go back and check specularand other settings, and I talked with Brandon about the bloom issue. He said he wasn't aware of it at that point yet. Yes to V-ray 5. I have a lot of hopes for that. I'm disappointed a lot of the features of V-ray still aren't working with Imager after years and multiple versions of FormZ. Imager is essential to my work flow. I have a reasonable theatrically lit environment for Renderzone, but would like the emitter glows and better look of V-ray. And Twin Motion is also really interesting, especially for animations.

Interesting... the result I got looked like it was tiling the image map. What I want is a single image texture like you say. I'll try another map and see what happens!

Oh, and: 4. Textures added to a v-ray cone light repeated at a smaller scale than wanted. I couldn't figure out how to map the "projected" texture. For example, instead of the gobo pattern light in the image above, i had maybe 5x5 or more like 10x10 of the image repeated in tiles with no way to adjust the size of the texture. Where are those controls?

I have an "acceptable" image for delivery... but I'm still not getting some things to work well. I have a working light plot except: 1. V-ray Sphere lights render as a cage showing segments even when the visibility is checked off. Support advised to deselect "affect camera rays" in the Volumetric Environment tab of the v-ray settings pallet. Unfortunately this cancels out any "beam" that my stage lights were making in the environment. 2. The lighting instruments I'm using to wash the audience are represented by cone lights. I got nowhere close to the effect of color blending and softness of the example image I posted. Eventually went with a solid wash on the chairs. 3. My emitter materials (glowing LED edges, LED strip lights) look good with the Bloom settings in the v-ray frame buffer. However, when I send images through Imager the Bloom Effect doesn't happen and my emitter materials resemble the constant shader in Renderzone. IS anyone else having this issue with sphere lights? If so, what are you using instead? Is it possible to keep the Bloom Effect in Imager renders, or to post-process Imager renders in v-ray to add the Bloom Effect back in?

Thanks, Justin! I've been trying different things and tweaking a lot of settings. I brought in a Renderzone project that i use for this type of environment and spent yesterday and last night moving lights and converting non-V-ray (mostly projector lights) to cones. It's cumbersome that light groups don't work to control color, intensity and cone. I ran into a problem with V-ray sphere lights showing as wire frame looking objects even with visibility turned off, and I'm working to get the multi-lights working with each other. I'll post some progress when I can. Thanks for the helpful suggestions above!

I'm having trouble creating stage lighting in V-ray. Is anyone creating events that show lighting effects like in the attached image? I learned to get this in RenderZone, but don't understand the V-ray tools. I've experimented with plane, mesh and sphere lights but I'm not getting anywhere. Are there any tutorials or pointers for the instrument lights above (I watched a little of a god-light tutorial for 3DS Max, which wasn't helpful), the light wash on the audience, and the gobo lights? Do you still use a dome light in this setting? What about the ambient light control in the lights palette, is that still used with a dome light? I feel like a beginner all over again, and it's fun!

Totally cool, thanks for continuing to keep this going!

Hi! Circling back as a big fan and long time user of mimi in 6.7.3. Is it working in the new 9.1 yet?

I second this, Matthew's tutorials and webinars were excellent. His style of explanation regarding V-Ray would be appreciated!

Hi, everyone. I wanted to say thank you and that this thread is excellent! Thank you for the tutorials and discussion. I'm looking forward to watching them and experimenting with this. I've been away from FormZ for (more than) a few weeks as designing events for 30,000 to 100,000 people has been a little flat.

Thanks, Jaako. I emailed Brandon, and he said PNG was working with Renderzone in his test, but not JPG which is what I was rendering. PNG creates the same result of a missing bottom half/error in camera view for me. It feels similar to the errors I have gotten in the past when geometry is corrupt or an image map is either smaller than 70k or an unsupported format like CMYK or progressive JPG. Bummer. What was once a novel "toy" for presentations would be incredibly useful right now for a project.