How do I make a spotlight with geometry emit light but not be visible in render?
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In Daz Studio. I want to use a disc for the geometry on a spotlight for softer light, but there's a mirror so the disc can be seen. I can't move it so that it's not visible in the mirror.
Is there a way to make it hidden, but still cast light?
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I don't think there is a way to hide a reflection.
You can toggle the Render Emitter switch... but all that is going to do is hide the light source itself; you are still going to have the relection of the light.
That's what that setting was. It does enable so that you don't see a light, but instead of a big bright disc you see a big black disc.
I tried setting opacity to 0, that didn't work either. There was a way to do it with Octane, I think it may have also been a cast shadows setting.
Render Emitter off should hide a light -is this a model with an emissive surface?
Maybe?
It's a spotlight, but then I gave it geometry (disc) under Parameters.
In that case turning the Render Emitter setting off should work - I had a problem yesterday when my scenes suddenly started rendering black and realised I was being blocked by the back of my light's geometry, turning Render Emitter off fixed that.
But... its a reflection. The reflection is always going to be visible, isn't it?
Yes, sorry.
OK, I sorta have a workaround... There's a light prop, but no bones to adjust the angle. It should be simple to rig to swivel on the one axis, I got to find time to give that a try.
How did I miss this! Richard told me I was RIGHT for a change! Why weren't there bells ringing or something?
And yes, reflections of lights in a PBR setting really can suck. I ran into this long ago with Luxrender.
SickleYield posted this in DA. Will that work for a spotlight?
Dimension Theory is an expert on all things light and HDRI-related, and I use his products regularly. The other day he said something extremely useful on the forum:
You can actually use mesh lights without them being visible in your scene. Set the cutout opacity to .001, then set the mesh light settings as normal. They will not appear in the scene or in reflections.
You, good sir, are a hero. This tip should be stickied everywhere for iray users. Rendering interiors via small windows in iray is an absolute nightmare, even with a pretty hefty rig. If you can ninja in a few light planes with no camera angle sacrifice or glaring reflections, it's a win win.
I would normally bow to DT's extreme skill and experience, but I'm gonna have to test that. The reflection part seems... not right to me.
Ooh, I'm going to have to give this a try!
It works! I tested it. My character is still lit when I set the emissive plane cutout opacity to 0.0001. I lose the reflection of the white emitting surface in the mirror and also on other reflective surfaces in the scene. Somehow I was expecting it to disappear from the mirror, but I hadn't thought about losing reflections from metal, glass, etc.
Emissive Plane Cutout Opacity 1 (normal):
Emissive Plane Cutout Opacity 0.0001:
Emissive Plane made invisible with the "eye" in Scene Pane (no light emitted):
Yeah, I had to up the cutout on mine, too. I had this set to .001, http://prnt.sc/bu4b45
I spoke with DimensionTheory and he suggested adding a few more zeroes and that finally worked.
Hey all,
This is an old thread, but I was refered to it this week because I am having the same issue with lights seen through any translucent or in any reflective surface. Snow, mirrors, metal... you can clearly see the light geometry.
So I was of course thrilled to see this post and the solution from Dimension Theory... but I am too much of a newb to understand how to put it into practice. Lights don't have a cutout opacity, do they? I cannot find that property. And I am not sure how to set up an emissive plane to act as a light source, if that's the solution.
A regular light doesn't have cutout opacity but mesh lights do. Because a mesh object has a surface with its own surface settings, you can change it in the surfaces tab. With the Iray Uber Base shader applied to the object, there will also be surface settings for emission color. Change the color to something other than black and you will get the options for adjusting the light settings.
Humm no works on DAZ 4.21 I see MEsh Light in mirror... xD
Oh oki change at 4.20, we need to put very sloooooow value:
but austic no works with this method xD