Lighting Effects

There are a couple of things I would like to achieve with lights and lighting effects;

- Animated lighting.

This would change the colour and intensity of a light over a specific time frame.

Used to produce flickering fire or candle light, changing traffic lights, a pulsing glow, moving lava, a flashing red LED, twinkling Christmas lights, etc.

- Lazer lights.

This would project a lit image (or pattern) from one point (and have it follow a path).

Used to produce the external Christmas lights people have now, project the bat signal, make a disco scene, have moving 'forest leaves' lighting patterns, have moving reflected water lighting...

Rather than start a new thread about a similar thing:

Can spotlights angle be increased beyond 90º?

... And a simple, visual* 'feather' command/tool that would not only change the drop-off from the center of the beam, but also the sharpness of the shadow that it throws. (*A sharp circle at 0% that increases in fuzzy edges until it is only a dot fading out to nothing at 100%)

(In other programs I tend to set downlighters to have a 120º spread and instead of spherical ilumination from pendant lights, I would use 300º spots.)

I know - that's why I asked in Ideas and Requests - I would like to see it as native...

Alternatively apply an easy way to alter an IES profile (I really like Enscape's ethos of making complex controls really easy/simple/intuitive to implement and get immediate, great results: applying this design process to IES profiles would be really cool.)

(Adding to an existing thread rather than starting a new one...)

I am finding myself using strip led recessed lighting a lot... or wanting to. But it's really hard to get the glow and balance to look right, especially in daylight scenes; it would be really useful to have a light similar to the 'line' or an emissive source that just followed a contour. (I'm just looking for some in-built help to re-produce the effect.)