IES lights - what am I missing

Support Lighting and Rendering
1

Hello,

I’ve scoured the forum but I can’t seem to find an answer, yet the issue persists with many others.

The IES lights I’m downloading from Blenderkit don’t seem to display the “texture”.

I made sure the node setup was correct. It’s linking to the appropriate external IES profile. But I see no change, whatsoever. And there doesn’t seem to be a lot of info on this topic. Perhaps the object I’m downloading just isn’t set up correctly? But again, I’m cross-checking with the few tutorials I can find, and the node set up is the same across the board.

I know somebody may ask for a screenshot, but really, it’s just a simple IES plugged into the emission shader. I tried to tie in coordinates, but that doesn’t seem to help.

Is this just something Blender isn’t particularly good at, at this moment?

Thanks!
Brent

2

You are using cycles (does not work in eevee)?
You are using a point lamp?

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3

Hi!

Yes, cycles, and yes for the point lamp.

I read another post that to get any sort of effect, you’ll need to reduce the size down to almost 0. But that doesn’t exactly work.

I may try downloading another IES file from another source, and not Blenderkit. But I’m still puzzled, nonetheless.

4

It should work fine here is an example:

ies
ies1920×1080 137 KB

While I was preparing the example I made the silly mistake of linking the example .png instead of the .ies file and it did not work (of course).

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5

I think that’s what I’m missing. In order to see the full effect, do you need to have a volumetric atmosphere? I know volumetrics enhances it, but I would think having the light close to a wall would do the same thing?

Anyway, I appreciate your input! I’m going to continue to experiment.

6

It must be Blenderkit then. The asset (IES light) I downloaded from Blenderkit’s library doesn’t exactly work. It even has the IES profile linked. But when I downloaded and IES file separately, it works. So I think I solved the mystery.

7

To see the light beams going through the air you do need a bit of volume, with no volume it will simply give different light intensities (light and shadow) on the object you light. You can see the “shadows” on the plane in my example, the beams in the air come from the world volume.

I have not tried the blenderkit ones I downloaded these:

There are 2 files for each light one is a .png which is just a “preview” of the effect, the other is a .ies file which is the one you have to put in the ies node.

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8

Thanks for the link. I’ll try it out.

I was able to figure out the file from Blenderkit just wasn’t producing the effect. When the IES file was downloaded separately, then inputed, it works.

It’s an extra step, but that’s ok:)

Take care!

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