Light groups

[Michael_J]

It would be nice to be able to assign a light a specific group ID. Setting a model's "IgnoreLightGroup" value would cause it not to be affected by any lights with that group ID.

 

Proposed Behavior:

--By default all lights and models are assigned to group 0, which allows all lights to affect all models.

--Setting a light to, say, group ID 1 would still affect all models UNLESS a model was also set to "ignore" group ID 1.

--The ability to set multiple "ignore" ID's to a model is preferred, but not mandatory.

 

 

Why is this important? Not only is it a way to optimize your scene (so that you're not casting needless shadows from lights that would never have any affect anyway) it's also a good way to correct certain situations, such as:

 

Let's say you have a light being triggered by a lightening flash (just as an example). If your player was running on older hardware you may have an option so that VFX lights do not cast shadows.

 

Now, let's say your player is inside a house looking out. Normally, without casting shadows, if the lightening light was triggered then everything would be affected by it--house interior and exterior alike. BUT, if the house interior was its own model(s), and it was assigned to "ignore" the group ID of the lightening light, then it would not be affected (which would look more proper in this situation).

 

I know you can turn lights on and off and set ranges, but there's instances where this won't work, such as the case above where you still need to see what's going on outside of the house and a light is "all encompassing".

[YouGroove]

I asked some similar stuff, mainly for optimisation.

There is lot of cases where you will need to light with the closest light only characte or objects.

For some group system why not.