Any way to view from a light without spread angle affecting the FOV?

Falco

I like to set my spotlights to have a spread angle of 180 to create very soft light splash and act like a short range directional light.  The only issue with this is that if you set the viewport to that light so that you can fly it around, the viewport uses the spread angle as the FOV and makes the viewport FOV 180, which is unsable.  If I temporarily set the spread angle to something lower so I can see properly, it creates a tighter light beam which isn't representative of what the final lighting will look like, so I can't get an accurate representation of the scene lighting as I'm flying it around.

Is there any way I force the viewport not to use the light FOV when switching to lights, or perhaps some other solution that would let me fly the light while still seeing accurate 180 spread angle lighting? The only workaround I've found so far is to use the property manager script to create a toggle for all lights in the scene to switch the spread angle back and forth more quickly. 

I know it's probably a long shot, but thought I'd ask.   

Ninefold

I don't know offhand if there's a "good" way to do this, but there's definitely a hacky way:

Make two lights, one with the preferred FOV, one with the preferred spread angle. Toggle the visibility of the first light off. Parent the second light to the first. Use the first light as a camera.

I often do a similar thing with a mesh light as the second light.

crosswind

1st, Spread Angle just has influence on the range and intensity of the light, it has nothing to do with making a light "soft" (i.e. a mesh light). If you wanna have a mesh light, increase Height property on the light.

2nd, yes, the side-effect of tweaking Spread Angle's value is changing FOV if you switch current View to it. This effect is similar to Focal Length on a Camera. It could not be overridden.

If you do need such a big value of Spread Angle when tweaking light view, I would suggest an alternative : 1) Switch View to this light, reset Spread Angle ( to 60); 2) Create a new Camera, tick Copy Active View: <this light>. Switch View to this Camera and parent the light to it; 3) Dial Spread Angle to 180 and fly around as you wish.

 

Falco

Not a bad idea, it might get too messy, but i'll try parenting the lights to a camera and operating it that way and see if thats not too annoying as a workflow.