Sun direction when rendering sun studies

Rhino Developer
1

Hi

I am trying to pick up the sun vector for each frame of a sun study via the RKP rendering pipeline (in OnRenderBegin). I may be doing something wrong - however each frame of the animation has the sun in exactly the same Alt/Az & vector (which is the actual sun position in the Viewport - not the sun position setup in the animation). How can I pick up the sun director of the frame actually being rendered pls? Flythru’s do not have this issue - the camera position is being provided correctly.

This is my code in OnRenderBegin

                        LightTable lightTable = Rhino.RhinoDoc.ActiveDoc.Lights;
                        if (lightTable != null)
                        {
                            Sun sun = lightTable.Sun;
                            if (sun != null && sun.Enabled)
                            {
                                sunVector = sun.Vector;
                            }
                        }

Thanks

Paul

2

If you are using Rhino’s built-in sun study animation, then the reason is that it doesn’t use the document sun. It actually adds its own directional light to the scene.

3

Thanks Andy - yes using the inbuilt sun study animation.

It looks like it adds 8 direction lights. How can I determine which one is the sun pls?

Thanks

Paul

4

Paul

This is a question for @rajaa - hopefully she’ll drop by sometime later today.

  • Andy
5

Hi Paul,
Not sure what you mean by 8 directional lights.

AnumationTools creates one new directional light in the first frame. Then it deletes/adds (basically replaces) the light when capture the next frame. When done (all frames captured), the last directional light is deleted.

6

Thanks for this info. I finally got around to look at this again. In summary, the LAST light in the light table seems to be the sun direction from the Sun Study, and a new light get added each frame. However there are some complexities, because there does not seem to be any way to determine if a Sun Study is currently being rendered - so the plugin does not now whether to use the Rhino.RhinoDoc.ActiveDoc.Lights.Sun, or the Rhino.RhinoDoc.ActiveDoc.Lights[last light] for the sun direction.

Paul