Asset: Streetlamps (Patreon)
Content
Hello to all the new folks! So glad to have you here! :D I haven't made many assets lately since I've been pretty deep in the wrapping-up-the-episode side of things, but I'm trying to get back into a regular schedule!
Right Click, Save Link As:
Blend File
FBX Version (as always, not as optimized, with simpler textures)
Also, whenever we get into light bulbs and stuff we're in Firefly territory, so feel free to check out this old post about optimizing your renders for cycles (mostly by reducing fireflies):
Optimizing Your Cycles Renders
Additionally,
A Quick Talk about Shadows:
TYPICALLY you don't want to try to light your scene using a bunch of small objects with emissive materials (light bulbs); cycles isn't optimized for it, you'll have a bazillion fireflies, and it'll take forever to get a clean render. It works a ton better if you have an actual lamp object in there.
Unfortunately if you stick a lamp object right inside the bulb, the bulb will block the lamp object's light from escaping.
In Eevee, there are two equally easy ways around this.
1.) change the clipping of the lamp, so it doesn't cast shadows within a near radius:
Or 2.) go to the lightbulb material and change shadows to "None":
Now you can stick the lamp object immediately inside of the lightbulb.
In cycles, it's more difficult. I wanted to release the lamps as single objects, so they could be imported and immediately work with arrays and such, and while cycles lets you turn off an object's shadow, it doesn't let you do it on a per-material basis like eevee.
Since I usually want my lampposts to cast some sort of shadow, I usually bypass the whole problem by just offsetting the location of the lamp object so it's not in the bulb, and 90% of the time that works fine. But it's not totally accurate, and (as seen in the demo image above) can result in hot spots if you have volumetrics going on (ALTHOUGH someone was saying there can be ways around that).
SO if you want to turn off the shadows for a bulb (say, in the round spherical lamp model), you have to make it its own object. Jump into edit mode, select the bulb mesh (select one vertex and hit "Ctrl+L" to select linked), and hit "P", "Separate by Selection"- that'll make it its own object.
Once it's its own object, it's easy enough to go into the object properties and turn off shadows in the Visibility Tab.
I wish cycles had a shadow-clipping option like Eevee (if anyone knows any ways to do it, I'd love to hear it), but otherwise I usually just have to do something like this.