SuperConeLightComponent (In-House Cone Light)
Applies to SuperStage 26H2.6 and later
SuperConeLightComponent is the in-house cone light pipeline added in 26H2.6. It replaces the UE SpotLight as the fixture key light, and all three beam pipelines (volumetric, ray beam, material) are built on top of it.
1. What It Handles
| Content | Description |
|---|---|
| Floor / surface pool | The patch of light the fixture casts on scene surfaces |
| Gobos | Gobo wheel projection |
| Colour wheels | Colour wheel projection, including scrolling |
| Framing | Four-blade framing |
| Prism | Prism splitting |
The aerial column is not its job. Whether and how the column is drawn is decided by the emitter's beam kind (see section 4.2 of The Fixture Definition Asset).
2. Why Replace the UE SpotLight
- One fewer engine light, one fewer component registration and one fewer light function material instance per fixture;
- The column and the floor pool share one set of optics and one time base, so their colour and angle cannot disagree;
- Gobos, colour wheels, framing and prisms are projected through the same shader path as the column.
3. What the User Sees
- The pool changes with intensity, colour, Zoom, Frost and Iris;
- Gobo and colour wheel scrolling, rotation and shake;
- Prism splitting consistent with the column;
Aperture glow — the bright ring at the light exit — is not the cone light's job. It belongs to the ray beam pipeline, and only switches on when the lens mesh is stripped.
4. Occlusion
The cone light and the volumetric beam share one shadow atlas and one sampling function. Which means:
- Whatever blocks the column also blocks the floor pool;
- Previously only the column was occluded and the floor pool was not, which appeared as "the beam is blocked but the pool is not".
5. Notes
- Users control it indirectly through the fixture definition, channel library and DMX channels; it rarely needs direct adjustment;
- Whether the pool is visible also depends on UE exposure, render settings and the scene surface materials;
- The lighting cone angle follows the column and is linked to the zoom channel.
6. Tuning and Diagnostic Switches
These console variables take effect at runtime — change one and you see it immediately, no restart. You do not need them day to day; they are for troubleshooting and for trimming cost.
6.1 Tuning
| Variable | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
r.SuperConeLight | 1 | Cone light master switch. 0 = off, 1 = on |
r.SuperConeLight.BrightnessScale | 1.0 | Global brightness calibration multiplier |
r.SuperConeLight.SpecularScale | 1.0 | Specular strength; 0 is pure diffuse. In previs, specular exists only to give metal parts a highlight |
r.SuperConeLight.MinScreenRadiusPx | 2.0 | Lights whose projected radius falls below this pixel count are culled. Cost is proportional to the pixels the cone covers, so drawing a full cone for something two pixels wide is not worth it |
r.SuperConeLight.ZoomRefAngle | 0.0 | Reference cone angle for zoom brightness (full angle, degrees). 0 means cone angle does not affect brightness (default); a positive value enables luminous-flux conservation, so narrowing the beam makes it brighter |
6.2 Diagnostics
| Variable | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
r.SuperConeLight.DebugMode | 0 | 1 = overdraw heat map. Each light adds a fixed amount, so the sum is the overdraw depth |
r.SuperConeLight.GateOrientation | 0 | Symmetry transform applied to gate-space UV: 0 as-is, 1 flip U, 2 flip V, 3 swap UV. Use it to pin down a gobo or colour wheel that comes out the wrong way round on the floor |
r.SuperConeLight.FlipCull | 0 | Flips face culling on the cone proxy. By default front faces are culled and back faces rasterized, so the light still renders with the camera inside the cone; use this to diagnose "only visible from inside the cone" on another platform |
6.3 Calibration Offsets
Both values are measured and calibrated. Do not change them without a solid reason:
| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
r.SuperConeLight.PrismRotationOffset | 90.0 | Angle offset for prism facet layout and spin. Only the prism needs it — gobo orientation is already correct |
r.SuperConeLight.BladeRotationOffset | 0.0 | Gate-space UV angle offset for blade framing, matching console calibration |