Spot light gobos (textures)

[gregzaal]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobo_(lighting)

A simple way to add a texture to lamps with 3d widgets for positioning the texture.

Would be nice to have options for blur, tint, etc.

[gregzaal]

Some great CC0 gobos from Sebastiaan Fiolet here: https://www.3d-render.nl/tag/gobo/

[gregzaal]

I won't have time to implement this properly for the 3.2 release, but here's what I've learnt for when I do get to it:

There's two ways to do gobos in Blender:

1. Light textures
   • Only works in Cycles.
   • Really easy to set up (literally plug an image texture into the Emission node.
   • Works best with spot lamps, but also technically works on point light and area lights. Does not work at all on sun lamps.
2. Physical planes
   • Works in any renderer.
   • Fairly straightforward to set up the basics: It's just a plane with an image plugged into a Transparent shader, parented to the lamp.
   • Works with any type of light.
   • Will need controls for distance which affects softness of the shadows and potential issues like intersecting objects or casting additional shadows from other lights.
   • Can look weird in reflections