Deborah R. Fowler
Houdini Lighting
Light Linking
Posted on Dec 13 2017Light Linking is a very powerful tool allowing you full power over what is influenced by our light giving you great artistic freedom. Use it wisely and sparingly. In particular, with CG character lighting it can be very handy to add rim lights to characters, or desaturated lights from say a key light that lights the room but is making your character look jaundice (keep the direction the same so as not to confuse the viewer).
The how is as follows:
In the date tree, select the lights and which objects you want to link them to (by default the lights illuminate all objects)
Default all objects are illuminated
Date Tree allows you to turn
on and off light per geo container
The data tree allows you to turn on
and off light per geo container.In the figure the cone is "unlinked" from the light in the scene so it is no longer illuminated
Note, what the data tree interface is really doing is setting the category of that light to off on the geometry container for the tube_object1.
This is done for you, but if you were curious as to how it works, this is where it is set.
In the geometry
container under Shading / Light Selection you will see -lb:sunlight1