Light Tracer Animations

Finalise your model and animations in VoxEdit and test them in game before doing anything. Ensure that anything you want to have lighting effects for in game have lighting effects set in VoxEdit. I always test everything in game before going anywhere near Light Tracer. This should really be used for final polish, and for showing off your results. Light Tracer can be great for highlighting issues and giving a different view, but the time involved (especially in rendering a video) is going to be costly.Any mistakes or running without being sure could mean that 5 hours later you have nothing usable to work with!

Decoupling

So for example looking at the image on the right, you have a sword in a single piece/node. I want that gem in the blade to glow like you see here. There are no doubt other ways to do this but I decoupled the gem and made it a separate element so I could then increase the Power of the gem to make this gem glow like it does, without impacting the rest of the model.

If you plan to use this in game, or for a competition, then you should only display what you produce. Decoupling decreases performance in game and you can set it to glow without decoupling (obviously not as bright as this) so great for showing it off. This could be argued but I am against it. This was not done for a competition, and I also decoupled so I could animate it. However the default sword is already in 3 pieces...

Setting Lighting (Glowing Effects) in VoxEdit

To make a particular element glow/light up...click the following button in VoxEdit... and it should work pretty well both in game, and when imported to Light Tracer. See note on decoupling, or how to handle if you have multiple colours in the same model you want to treat differently, or which require multiple lighting effects in LT.

Exporting From VoxEdit

Within VoxEdit go File, Export, Export GLTF to create a .gltf file. This will export your model(s) and all animations in a format that will work in LightTracer.

TODO (Explain better including how to fix if animations are missing) Export the file from VoxEdit as GLTF so you can import into LightTracer.

Creating LT Templates

TODO: Set up multiple Templates with lighting/colour background to suit your setup. Go through backgrounds, mirrors, extra lights, creating ground/walls and "bounce points" etc. A lot of the settings required here are not available in the web version.

BackPlate

Using Gradient

Model Stand / Floor

Create a floor, by using the Model Stand (see image).

Re-align it, and move and increase size as required...

Mirrors / Glass / Rivers / Lakes

Setting Scene / Light Bounce / Planes

TODO: As per templates explain light bounce and setting objects to bounce off (see eclipse example below). Creating ground/walls/articles which are not in your picture but allow light to bounce.

Importing to LT

Open aTemplate

Drag and Drop your GLTF into LT.

Replace or Add as required.

The Glitter! Boosting Lighting Effects in LT Basics

This is the absolute basic, there is so much more to it than this, but it provides fast and nice results!

Depending on your setup, and whether you have multiple colours in the same model with lighting effects, this method might produce some weird results if you don't decouple the element (see above). This example would not be possible if all elements of the blade were a single node.

But for the most part it should work fine if you only set the voxels you need to glowing in VoxEdit and/or you only need 1 colour changed.

So here the sword is in standard Sandbox template in 3 parts, sort of...I think naming is slightly messed up here but just click on what you want to change.

First off I want the gem in the guard to glow the same colour I set in VoxEdit (white). In this case it's In this case it's Handle-Local. Properties, Emission, Power (see first image). I set the power to 75 here just for demo. 1 is the default!

Ok that's fine but actually I now want to change it to red, and at power 75 as it doesn't show so well in red compared to white, so I want to increase the power. I want the pommel to glow as well and be orange.

In this case as they are separate nodes there is no issue, if they are the same node you may need to decouple.

Select the Guard, increase power to 150, and select colour red.

Do same for pommel but set it to orange.

Absolute basics only...

Note On Animations & Timings

This is also a good example of where light bounce is needed, and this is a really bad example and what NOT to do! This did not work until the foreground planets were added, and still has some big issues. This could be massively improved on here on multiple fronts but was my first test...the point was to show the timing issue!

Note that if you import a GLTF with multiple animations, or animations with multiple lengths, or multiple GLTFs you will have issues with the default setup.

It will time stretch to match the animation lengths.

You can see this in this image where the "wave" animation is slowed down to match the "eclipse" animation. The eclipse animation here also has a delay set...

This can be fixed by editing within LT. (will provide details WIP).

TODO: Explain Stretch/Loop/Once/Delay/etc...

Importing Multiple GLTF & Animations

2 GLTF imported into Light Tracer, first is "Avatar" on left (yellow) other is "miniwraith" (red).

Select the "Root-Global" (you might want to rename these) for the one you want (red), select "Animation", select Animation from Drop Down (green).

Note that the web version has menus in different locations but solution same...I'm not sure if web version allows multiple GLTF imports though!

Adding The Official Sandbox Logos

Logos Require an image with transparent background. We will be doing a separate tutorial on how to create your own Logo.

Note we are deliberately not providing files here, or links...this is for YOUR security, and so you get the latest logos from the Sandbox website.

Go to the Official Sandbox Website

Scroll right to the bottom footer and find "Press"

Scroll down To "LOGO"

There are multiple Logos in Multiple Colours and types (.PNG and .SVG). Right click, save link as...

Light Tracer

Settings, Watermark, Custom, Load Image

Select the above downloaded file.

Reposition to corner as per the 4 options. Also you can manually edit the x and y co-ords to adjust as required..

Scale will change the size.

GIMP

Open the above downloaded Logo...

Copy

Open your image

Paste

Re-position / Re-Size as required.

Test Images

Test Animation from multiple angles

Low Quality Settings

High Quality Settings

Pixel vs Smooth Textures

Removing Edge Light Bounce on "Rounded" Objects

Test Single Frame @ Max Quality

Test Random Frame @ Max Quality

Tweaks

Render Options

SPP

Low Res Test Video

High Res Short Test Video

movement/swing/turntable

Full Quality

Light

Bounces

Ratio

Resolution

High Res Rendering (go do something else, or go to sleep)

Make sure you are 100% happy, otherwise you could come back hours later to find it's useless!

Turn Off Screen Savers/Auto Shut Down while rendering!

Performance Tips (Windows)

Settings

Using EZGif to create a GIF

Optimisation Methods

Low & High Quality GIFS.

Frame Count.