This quick tip article guides you through the process of creating a gobo/projector light effect using V-Ray Lights.
Step 1
Create a V-Ray Light and set its type to “Disc”:
Step 2
Make the light fully directional by setting the Directional parameter to 1.0 in the light’s Rectangle/disc light parameters rollout:
Step 3
Plug the texture you want to project in the light’s Texture map slot:
Step 4
If you render now you’ll get the following result:
Depending on the case, you might need to lower the light’s intensity to get the texture
projection visible.
You’ll notice the gobo light has a very sharp edge, but you might want to add a bit of a falloff to make the transition smoother. The next steps show you how to do that.
Step 5
Open the Material editor and drag-and-drop the projection map that’s plugged into the light’s Texture slot:
Step 6
Create a VRaySoftbox map and plug the projection map into its Base slot:
Make sure to turn on the Base Color map in the VRaySoftbox Base parameters.
Step 7
Plug the new VRaySoftbox map into the light’s Texture slot:
Step 8
In the VRaySoftbox parameters, scroll down to the Gradients rollout and turn on Radial Vignette.
The Radial Vignette gradient goes from black to white which doesn’t give us the result we are
after. Flip the gradient colors either manually or by using the Flip checkbox.
Conclusion
If you render now, you get a nice falloff toward the edges of the projection. Feel free to adjust it as needed by tweaking the Radial Vignette Gradient ramp of the VRaySoftbox map.
