Overcaster

OC Ambient

(OC_Ambimage.lsc)

This is THE replacement for lightwave's default, boring ambient lighting.  So, set LW ambient to zero, load Overcaster ambient and you'll never look back!

The rig consists of six distant lights, pointing at all the positive and negative main axises of the lightwave universe. For easier control, all the "horizon" lights (+/- X & Z) are controlled as a group.

When you run the script, a simple prompt will appear, asking if you wish to add Overcaster ambient to your scene.

As OC_Ambimage and OC_Ambient are meant for the same task, replacing the LW default ambient light (which the script will set to zero), the two should not co-exist. If you run OC_Ambient from the hub, the hub will automaticly delete the ambimage instance, if it finds one. If the OC_Ambient script is run by itself, it will notify you to delete Ambimage, but let both exist at the same time.

If the current camera doesn't have motion blur set up, the script will set up a requester where you can set up motion blur and anti-aliasing (Overcaster needs motion blur to work).

If there are no objects in the current scene, the script will add a null. This is because if the first object in the scene has sliders applied, the scripts will fail to apply the sliders plugin to the current mixer object.

The strength and color of the ambient light is controlled with Ambient mixer's slider bank.  

There are four slider groups: Global, Ground, Horizon and Sky. The functions are quite self-explanatory. You can control the color and intensity of the ambient solution separately for the sky, horizon and the ground.

The Global sliders "Boost ambient" and "Reduce ambient" will, as the name suggests, affect the whole ambient rig.  They are best used for quick tweaking AFTER the general ambient is somewhat decent.

Another controlling option is using an endomorph mixer, found in the Ambient_mixer object's properties/deformation tab.

If you set the number of OpenGL lights high, you can preview the results in near real time (The display will update when you let go of the slider).

You can rotate the rig by rotating the Ambient mixer object.

The ambient rig can be completely removed from the scene by deleting the Ambient mixer object and it's descendants.
 
 
PlugPak 1.0 notes

Only endomorph mixer slider controls are available, not the LightWave sliders.