Vendors, Please Stop Including Mesh Lights

I prefer setting up my own environmental lights, thank you.

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Comments

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517

    ...good point.  It really isn't that difficult to create emissive lights in Iray., but a bit of a pain to find and remove them all.

  • or maybe group them

    I find them useful for Octane too but they do need to be in one place

  • SorelSorel Posts: 1,389

    But then there are people who do want them? 

  • Maybe include a set with both?

  • nonesuch00nonesuch00 Posts: 17,890

    I like mesh lights, they are convenient for exporting especially.

  • KhoryKhory Posts: 3,854
    Nyghtfall said:

    I prefer setting up my own environmental lights, thank you.

    They have a distinctly different output and mixed in with other lights create more realistic specularity/gloss in many if not most cases. If they are what it takes for the content creator to get the look that they are going for then you can expect to continue to see them used in products.

    kyoto kid said:

    ...good point.  It really isn't that difficult to create emissive lights in Iray., but a bit of a pain to find and remove them all.

    They are all listed over in the scene tab and should be easy to locate and remove.

     

    Maybe include a set with both?

    Twice the work and include something that you don't like the look of? I'm doubting your going to sell many people on that one.

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,878

    Well, I think a variation of this would be 'vendors, please clearly mark/group your light sources.' If nothing else so that people can adjust lighting easily without needing special scripts (though those scripts are handy!)

  • I would think it's easier for lights to be included, as there are people who like and want them, and just remove them if they are not to your liking.  I can't think of any sets I have where lights aren't identifiable in the scene tab.  They can be easily deleted or changed around and modified.  It's possible that they might be parented to something like a lamp, and in those cases, you would normally want to use them.

  • WonderlandWonderland Posts: 6,697

    Yes, especially for newbies, I appreciate them being there! They can always be tweaked or removed by those who have more experience... Please keep them in! And camera presets. The best way to learn is to see how things are set up by the pros!

  • fred9803fred9803 Posts: 1,558

    I think that they think they're doing us a favour by including them, even though like Nyghtfall I never use them myself.

    It's a bit like asking for a newspaper without the sports section because you don't like sport.... while some people do.

  • Nyghtfall3DNyghtfall3D Posts: 753
    edited September 2016
    Khory said:

    They have a distinctly different output and mixed in with other lights create more realistic specularity/gloss in many if not most cases. If they are what it takes for the content creator to get the look that they are going for then you can expect to continue to see them used in products.

    They're welcome to set up whatever lighting they deem necessary for promotional renders, but only I know how I want my scenes lit, and would rather not have to spend time disabling a bunch of built-in emissives.  Otherwise, I'll switch back to Reality.

    I recently bought the Modern Villa, and have attached a screenshot of my Viewport in Iray Draw Mode.  I don't want the lights on if I'm creating a daylight scene.

    Khory said:

    They are all listed over in the scene tab and should be easy to locate and remove.

    None of the Villa's 13 mesh lights are in the Scene tab, they're all in the Surfaces tab.

    villa.jpg
    1951 x 1258 - 276K
    Post edited by Nyghtfall3D on
  • scorpioscorpio Posts: 8,301

    You're talking about emissive surfaces used as lighting on the surfaces of the prop/scene, not quite the same as mesh lights sets, I agree in that case it would be very useful and helpful if vendors could supply a mat preset to turn them off.

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479

    A one-click preset to turn those lights on and one to turn them off would make life easy for just about everybody. It can be a real pain trying to find every surface with an emissive setting in a complex set like that. And that's true whether you want to turn the lights off, or turn them on...

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    Khory said:
     
    kyoto kid said:

    ...good point.  It really isn't that difficult to create emissive lights in Iray., but a bit of a pain to find and remove them all.

    They are all listed over in the scene tab and should be easy to locate and remove.

     

    ...would be simpler to deal with if like in Reality they are in were all in the lighting tab.

  • xyer0xyer0 Posts: 5,639

    I bought this for... for just such an emergency. Of course, it's useful whenever you go crazy with lights.

  • Nyghtfall3DNyghtfall3D Posts: 753
    edited September 2016
    kyoto kid said:

    ...would be simpler to deal with if like in Reality they are in were all in the lighting tab.

    Studio's Lighting tab wasn't designed to list mesh lights.  It only lists spotlights, distant lights, and point lights, as part of Studio's core lighting system.  For example, if there's a photometric spotlight in a scene, you'll find it in the Lighting tab.

    Mesh lights, by definition, can only manipulated in the Surfaces tab.

    The Public Restrooms Ubiquitous Interiors environment is a good example of how bloated with Iray lights an environment can be, and equally annoying to remove.  It comes with 12 photometric spotlights and 10 emissives.  They can all be found in the Scene tab, but only the spotlights can be easily removed by simply deleting them.

    Post edited by Nyghtfall3D on
  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634

    All it would take from the Vendor is one Preload with lights and one without...simple really.

  • Should be simple to write a script that will find all surfaces with non-zero emissive strength and either select them or zero the strength - I will, time permitting (hah!), try to have a look later.

  • Sfariah DSfariah D Posts: 25,610

    I like Mesh lights but I understand.  but maybe a script to remove all those surfaces would be great, Richard.   Wish I still knew how to program so I could make it for you.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,878

    Some vendors are good about including lights/no lights, and yeah, I find the light manager extremely useful for this sort of thing.

    And, personally, I find it useful to HAVE such lights, sometimes. Like Winter Hall, with about fifteen billion candles... I don't want to place all those lights myself.

     

  • Should be simple to write a script that will find all surfaces with non-zero emissive strength and either select them or zero the strength - I will, time permitting (hah!), try to have a look later.

    I have a script semi-working, but I want to track down an oddity before doing some more testing and releasing it.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517

    Should be simple to write a script that will find all surfaces with non-zero emissive strength and either select them or zero the strength - I will, time permitting (hah!), try to have a look later.

    ...well, someone else will have to do it,  scripting is not my strong suit.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517

    Some vendors are good about including lights/no lights, and yeah, I find the light manager extremely useful for this sort of thing.

    And, personally, I find it useful to HAVE such lights, sometimes. Like Winter Hall, with about fifteen billion candles... I don't want to place all those lights myself.

     

    ...the other issue with emissive lights is they tend to impact render times the more of them you have.  When I was using Magus Manor for a scene I turned all the light bulbs into emissives, and an a test render without the characters, the process ground to a halt at around 20% for well over four hours (I ended up cancelling the process). When I changed the camera angle not to include the light fixtures and just used one emissive primitive behind the camera the entire scene rendered in just a little over that same amount of time with the characters (CPU mode).

    I remember Totte mentioning that it took something like two days to render Jack's Library using the emissive shader for all the lights.

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,294

    If the emissive shaders are on flat planes, they can be reasonably fast, they tend to take much longer when placed on multi-polygon objects like a sphere. I can only assume that each polygon is handled by the system like a separate emissive source, since light rays emitted will come from a different angle.

  • kyoto kidkyoto kid Posts: 40,517
    edited September 2016

    ..true, though a chandelier would look pretty odd with a bunch of square panes instead of flame shaped bulbs (or actual flames) on top of the fixtures.  Also the shadow casting would be odd unless you used the Two Sided option.  Now it may work in a lamp fixture where the bulb isn't seen, however then you are back to placing individual objects in every light in the scene so you may as well just use photometric point lights.

    Post edited by kyoto kid on
  • CypherFOXCypherFOX Posts: 3,401

    Greetings,

    I absolutely disagree; emissive materials are a key part of the value provided by sets.  I'm not just buying a bag of 3D objects, the thought that goes into texturing and lighting it is valuable, even if I don't use it for a particular scene.

    Having a preset that turns it off would be fine, but I treasure the PAs who do provide appropriately emissive materials.  E.g. Televisions and monitors should always emit light when on, and providing that is a very useful feature.

    I second the recommendation of Iray Light Manager Pro if you find yourself regularly wanting to turn off lights.  Or a simpler script, as Richard Haseltine is poking at.

    But especially when I want to re-use objects (and their materials) outside of the original scene, I really like it when things that should emit light do.

    --  Morgan

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 14,878

    Actually, a good tip is making sure emission lights are on a separate object. Often vendors have a light bulb that's one surface of an object that includes the base, glass, etc.

    Except, I often want to subdivide the lamp/chandelier/whatever, so it looks higher fidelity.

    Except if I do so, I'm DRASTICALLY reducing render time because I've quadrupled the light calculations with each subd step; I'd like to have the ability to keep the light bulb (which is glowing and you can't see much detail anyway) as Base resolution.

     

  • HavosHavos Posts: 5,294
    kyoto kid said:

    ..true, though a chandelier would look pretty odd with a bunch of square panes instead of flame shaped bulbs (or actual flames) on top of the fixtures.  Also the shadow casting would be odd unless you used the Two Sided option.  Now it may work in a lamp fixture where the bulb isn't seen, however then you are back to placing individual objects in every light in the scene so you may as well just use photometric point lights.

    This is correct. One issue I have is when putting emissive shaders onto fires and candles from older sets. These are often flat planes that use a texure and/or transparency mask to give the appearence of flickering flames. I find that in order to make the flames emit enough light I have to turn up the emission luminance so high that all the detail of the texture is washed out. Naturally properly modelled flames are the best way to have a good looking fire, but an emission shader on all this geometry this will go much slower. I normally end up adding an auxilary point light close to the flames to cast most of the light, which some what defeats the point of using an emissive shader in the first place.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    CypherFOX said:

    I second the recommendation of Iray Light Manager Pro if you find yourself regularly wanting to turn off lights.  

    oh that is shiny, missed that, thanks.

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634

    http://itiseyemeeszark.deviantart.com/art/Night-Full-614871763

    for me it is about getting enough light in the scene so things don't blow out too much but this is fake photography so blowouts are to be expected. BTW this is how The Library Iray Conversion came, I just messed with the Tone Mapping and cam angle

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