Hey guys sorry for the horrible explanations earlier but I am new to all this stuff but here goes to make it simpler. My first tutorial I hope I did well. If anything is missing please add to it as you see fit. Thanks
- Start by deleting your Blender starter cube. (Poor Blender cube never gets any play. LOL) Now add a MESH>CYLINDER (32X32 is good enough for now)
- Now switch to front view (1 - on the key pad) and hit TAB to get out of edit mode, then (A) to deselect your first object. Now place your cursor beneath the object about three squares or just eye it out. It should look like this.
- Now add another MESH>CYLINDER. You should have this.
- Now while the bottom MESH is still selected hit (S) for scale and (Z) so you can control the way you size the mesh. Now stretch it until the top of the bottom mesh is right up to the bottom of the top mesh like this.
- Now in your Links and materials panel add a new material buy pressing the NEW botton under the (0 mat 0) tab. You should get a one in the materials window now. It will read (1 mat 1)
- Now hit the red ball up by the panels to take you to the materials window and shaders window. You should get this.
- Now select the shaders tab and deselect all the buttons on the right side so they are not in. Also drop everything to ZERO. The Ref = 0 / Spec = 0 Hard = 1 and so on. Like the image below.
Now hit the leopard skin patch up top and select new.
It will show up as (None). That is good enough leave it at none. - Now select the red ball and look at the windows to the right which say
Texture, Map input and Map to.
- Select the (Map to) tab and deselect the (Col) tab and instead hit in the (Alpha), just once so its not yellow and the (Neg) which is just beneath it. Then go to the right and change the setting from (MIX) to (Subtract). Like this:
You should see the preview window go from Black to nothing. Thats good!
- Now use the same adding a material procedure and add a material to your actual lamp but do not change the Map to settings or it too will be invisible. I just made mine bronze. So after adding a negative material to the bottom and a Bronze to the top you should have this.
- Now switch to top view again (7 On the number pad) and make sure your cursor is in the middle of the light still and hit ADD - LAMP>SPOT. You should go from the first image to the next.
- Now if you go to front view again (1- On the number pad) and zoom out a bit, You should see that the light is pointing downwards.
- Select the light by right clicking on one of its lines, and it should turn pink, unless its still selected then just leave it. Hit the ® key on your key board and rotate it until its facing upwards like the image below.
- Now that you have the lamp in place, select the blue arrow and drag the lamp down until its to the very bottom of the bottom housing, but not sticking out.
Take a look at it from other angles to make sure that its low enough so that the light is covering the proper amount of the top of the housing. It should be a nice thick beam. you want the pink lines of the light shaft as close to the edges of your lamp as possible with out going beyond.
- Now that your light is in place its time to tweak its halo effect. In the shadows and spot settings of your spot light, press in the HALO button. This makes the shaft of light visible when rendered. Also Now play with the spot settings and change the size and distance of youre light as well as its energy to achieve the desired look. You can even change the color.I used the following settings.
- Now that you have tweaked everything, set up your shot ,dont forget to place another lamp near the base of the bronze spotlight so it shows up and hit F12 to do a render. You should hopefuly, if I explained things properly get this:
I hope this worked for you guys. As I said I am new to this myself but seemed to have hit a nerve with the spot light question and think I got it, and hope you do too. Let me know if it worked.
