Masking Rectangular Lights in a 3D set

[zackheimbegner]

I would like to use Rectangular Lights and the Volumetric Light effector to give my LED bars a more dynamic glow/reflection in my scene.
My large LED walls were easy enough to construct. I created 3 Content Areas per screen, added the Rectangular Lights (manipulated the settings so that they were directly on top of the Screen Meshes), assigned the Content Areas to the Lights, added the Volumetric Light Effector; and the large LED screens look great!
Now I find myself wanting to do the same with the hundreds of LED lightbars that have gaps between them. If I were to do this the same way I did the larger screens, I would have to create a Rectangular Light for each bar, scale it, position it, and map it to the desired area of the content.
I have tried creating 1 large Rectangular Light for each column, but I am not seeing a way to mask out the space between the LED Bars. Is there a way to mask out portions of a Rectangular Light?

[Walter_heen]

Hello!

Is the pipeline layer called "Stage Simulation" not doing its job for that ?
Because I think you will reach some f perf' problems by using too many rectangular light wit ha volumetric light.

Otherwise: have you try to create a rectangular light with your content area as map inside ?
Mask the reference of your content area in the rectangular light with a checkerboard, for dipsplaying 1 out of 2 lines. Duplicate the rectangulare light and invert the mask.

[zackheimbegner]

Thank you for responding.
Your Checkerboard recommendation is creative, but I am working from what will be a delivered piece of Content. As such, I have mapped my Content Area to the Rectangular Light. (See attachment)(the black area is alpha in the Compo feeding the Content Map)

Here is my Project breakdown; I am in a Processor I have labeled ‘Pre-Viz’ that my 3D assets and lights live in. I have also tried putting my LED 3D geometry in my Stage, and I have tried both the Stage Preview and the Stage Simulation with slightly different results in brightness. Neither the Stage Preview or the Stage Simulation offer the same emissive effect that Rectangular Lights do. (see the attached image)

The Stage Simulation does work better than the Stage Preview for screen brightness (thank you for that recommendation), but it does not reflect on the other mesh objects as dynamically as the Rectangular Light solution. I was hoping there would be a way to Mask/Boole the light so that I can preserve the deadspace between the LED bars without creating 160 (give or take) individually mapped Rectangular Lights. So far, the Alpha in my Compo comes through as black, and I am unable to add any kind of mask (that I know of) to the Rectangular Lights.

[Walter_heen]

Indeed, the Stage Simulation doesn't offer the same result as rectangular lights.
We are currently working on the stage light to allow the users to create better previsualisation of their show.

1 question: did you use fixture bank or ledscreen in your stage ?

[zackheimbegner]

I truly enjoy that Stage Simulation has better Profile performance, but yes, it does not have quite the same effect as the Volumetric lights.
I have not yet tried the Fixture Bank (Fixture Definitions). I am in the process of playing with/researching the bank.
I built the set in Cinema4D, and exported it as an FBX file with minimal meshes. The primary Screens Meshes are Screen A, Screen B, Screen C, and the Flown_LED (See the attachment).
Screen A, Screen B, and Screen C are all meshes that I can apply Content Maps to. Since they are planar, it has been pretty user friendly in recreating the surfaces with Lights and LED fixtures in the Stage Tab.
I did notice that the Flown_LED mesh came in with the LED tag on top of the Mesh tag. Is this because LED was included in the naming convention?

[RBasile]

Yes for the import as group there is a naming convention:

by default, an object will be imported as Surface
and Object named with "led" in it will be imported as Free Shape Led Screen

For example