Overcaster

OC Screen

(OC_Screen.lsc)

Overcaster Screen is used to mimick the illumination caused by TV screens, computer monitors etc.

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.

When you run the script, a following requester will appear (If running from the hub, as many times as specified):

You can set the Screen rig to affect Diffuse, Specular or both.

There are five options for setting colors for the lights in the Screen interface:

1. Skip
This setting will either set all the lights in the rig to a default light grey, or, if you already have adjusted the lights, let you modify the existing settings.

2. Trace BG
The lights will get their coloring from the backdrop. Use this method if you wish to match the lighting to SkyGen, SkyTracer, Textured environment, Image world etc.

3. BG Gradient
The lighting rig will be set to match the scene backdrop color, be it a gradient or just a single color.

4. Manual Gradient
This will open a requester similar to the LW BG Gradient, letting you set the Zenith, Sky, Ground and Nadir colors for ambient light.

5. Image
Lets you choose any of the images loaded into your scene and match the ambient light to it. This works great if you use a BG image, or if you have a wide (Preferably a spherical panorama) render of your scene.

Tip: You can use either RefGen or Juan Jose Gonzalez's special projections to render the panorama.

There are also two resolutions to choose from.

1. Screen 24
This is the same as in previous version of OC Screen. It sets up 24 spot lights in rectangular array.

2. Screen 12
This sets up 12 lights.

Choosing the correct resolution depends on your scene. Doubling the amount of lights roughly equals doubling the amount of AA passes when quality is concerned.

In some scenes, more lights but less AA will render faster, in others the opposite.

Parenting, shadow type and resolution, as well as intensity falloff can now be set. If the script is run again while Screen mixer is selected, these settings can be modified.

After selecting your method, click OK to get to the settings window .

You can adjust the color of any of the 24 lamps here. If a setting with lower resolution is chosen, only the active light's controls are shown.

You can think of this panel as a 6*4 pixel version of your image - the color that was in the upper left corner will be the color in, uhm, upper left corner etc.

Each of the colors represents a light in the rig, and the lights are positioned in a way that can be thought of as the 6*4 pixel image illuminating your scene, planar mapped to the Screen mixer object in the Z axis.

There are three slider settings, for intensity, range and spread (cone angle). There's also an option to use an endomorph mixer, found in the Screen_mixer object's properties/deformation tab.

Position, scale and rotate the Screen mixedr to match your luminous panel in the scene.

The rig can be completely removed from the scene by deleting the Screen mixer object and it's descendants.

PlugPak 1.0 notes
Some of the features mentioned above do not apply.