I am trying to make a model of a projector that projects a picture to the wall.
It is the first time I’m working with Blender so I’m still quite an amateur.
For the picture I just added a plane and the picture as texture.
But to make clear that it is projected by an projector I would like to make the Light visible. I already saw some tutorials onto how to make a volumetric spotlight but mine should be square and I didn’t manage that.
At the moment is looks like this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]181162[/ATTACH]
I hope you’re using fresh blender version 2.6x. That should be mentioned in order to receive correct answers.
For spotlights there is a checkbox in properties panel where it says Spot Shape: Halo, Square and Show Cone. If that’s all checked you should get square light spot and light cone visible. Not rectangle, but square. Depending on your camera position it might be or might not be an issue. My suggestion - subdivide a bit your screen object, make sides darker and middle add a bit emission material and picture you would project; that will make it look more real.
thank you very much, yes I’m using Bleder 2.6. Sorry, forgot to mention that.
one more question: Is it possible to avoid, that the spot-light is brighter in the middle. With a square spot the result is this strage kind of star, that I don’t really like to have projected on my picture. I hope you understand what I mean.
If playing around with cone shape and Lamp parameters does not give result you like, then next would be some trickery with glow material object, render layers and compositing. Sebastian König on Blenderdiplom has something useful for this imo.
Before to delve into that you could try to place several more narrow spotlights with different falloffs turning down individual emissions.
And last, also involving render layers and compositing, to blend brighter middle part and combine again into rendered picture.
