Working with lighting in animation - both "source" lighting from controlled point, spot, distant, and area light types, and solar lighting - differs very little from working with animating other aspects of the modeled scene within a MicroStation file. Just like objects can be keyframed and animated, so can lights. In facts, source lights are geometric objects, and keyframing their positions is as simple as keyframing the positions of other such geometric objects in the file. Click on the below animation to see the results of this.

In addition to animating the location of a light, we can also control various other aspects of the quality of a light in the space over time. These include being able to turn the light off and on, vary it's intensity or brightness over time, change it's color, change the cone angle of a spot light, and more. The below animation evidences the dimming of a light until it is nearly completely off.

These controls are brought about in MicroStation's Animation producer using a method that differs slightly from keyframing, but not by a lot. This method is found under the Settings menu of the Animation Producer, under the Animate Settings submenu. In this, we can choose to animate Source Lighting or to animate General Settings, several of which deal with lighting. Using these tools, we specify, in a manner very similar to creating a keyframe (but not using the keyframes library), what property we wish to animate, what the value of this property is, and what frame it will occur at. We have already looked at a similar interface when scripting a camera for viewing a scene. The interface for animating lighting settings works the same.

The animation of Solar Time, from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm has been added to this animation using the Animate General Settings options. The animation simply interpolates the position of the sun given solar time settings.

Animating General Settings includes a vast array of other controls on the animation scene that can be modified over time. These include background scenes, ambient lighting, and the flahbulb light. The animation below exhibits the use of modifying the Camera Lens Angle from a Wide angle to a Fisheye over the course of 40 frames, simultaneous with the lighting animation that has been developing thus far.

Download this file to try these animation techniques on your own: lightanim.dgn