Patterns for lights-Flamingo NXT

I am migrating from another 3D program to Rhino. Beyond the normal learning curve its been relatively painless. However there is one challenge I haven’t found a solution to yet. As a stage designer one of the things I often do on the lighting side is add a “gobo” or pattern to a light to project a texture onto a surface or across a series of surfaces and textures, In my old program this was a simple click or two. I can’t seem to find a function to accomplish the same thing in Rhino. Am I missing something obvious or is this not achievable in Rhino and something I need to deal with in post production?

Thanks!

I haven’t tried this myself (yet) but what if you draw some patterns and put them on picture frames (transparent) and then put those picture frames in front of the lights, then I suppose they would cast shadows, no?

// Rolf

Interesting thought. Thanks! Played with the idea a bit this morning. Couldn’t make a picture frame work, but did try a surface with a procedural applied. Sort of kinda started to work. To control spill from the light and eliminate other light sources passing through the gobo pattern I ended up building a primitive box, putting a spotlight inside with a hard edged beam, extracting one end surface and applying the pattern with transparency. Basically building a crude theatrical fixture. .Got a semblance of the pattern, but not a very clean projection. Need to play with the focal point and beam characteristics to see if I can clean that up. It’s a pretty kludgy way to get at it. Missing the one click solution for sure. Faking it in Photoshop might be a faster, if not as accurate solution. I suppose I could build the whole thing as a model, keep it on my desktop and insert it as needed… Just change out the pattern to work with the current design direction. I pull fron a jpg library of most of the patterns I use that are commercially available.