Correct way to make emitters invisible in Iray?

RenderPretender

Hi -

I have:

https://www.daz3d.com/li-incandescent--portrait-lighting-for-iray

and it's a great product. However, what is the correct way to make the emitter objects invisible and have them still emit light? Is it "Visible in Render - Off/On" in the current version of DAZ?

Thank you.

fastbike1

Well, one way is to not have the emitter in the viewport. As for your specific question, you can answer that yourself with a couple of quick small renders (~500x500 of 750x750).

narkfestmojo

set the opacity really low, but not zero. for example 0.0001

the light will still be produced, but you can see straight through it.

RenderPretender

narkfestmojo said:

set the opacity really low, but not zero. for example 0.0001

the light will still be produced, but you can see straight through it.

Thank you, I'll try that.

ChangelingChick

You can also leave opacity at 1 and put a solid black map in the channel. That keeps the emission level at the initial output and makes the emitter invisible. Even at .0001 you can get reflections/artifacts from them.

RenderPretender

ChangelingChick said:

You can also leave opacity at 1 and put a solid black map in the channel. That keeps the emission level at the initial output and makes the emitter invisible. Even at .0001 you can get reflections/artifacts from them.

Thank you. Good to know that trick. I could have sworn, though, that there was a setting in DAZ Iray that allows one to turn off an emitter and still have it output light. Maybe I'm thinking of something else.

Paintbox

The ghost light product does this. You can set up a shape and intensity and at the end you turn it invisible. One of my most used tools.

RenderPretender

Paintbox said:

The ghost light product does this. You can set up a shape and intensity and at the end you turn it invisible. One of my most used tools.

Yes, I use those a lot. But I'm trying to avoid introducing additional lights, since this is a pictorial series and I want the light to be uniform across all the images. I have found that one additional light in one image of a series can make it stick out like a sore thumb.